From Pandemic to Infodemic: The Virus of Infoxication

Abstract

Aside from the biological pathogen, the sars CoV-2 outbreak brought along another virus: that of technologically replicable viral information on an unprecedented social scale. Far from contributing to a better understanding of the pandemic and the most efficient means for countering it, the amount and kind of information that has been circulating around this virus has given rise to pernicious social dispositions and responses. Although many previous collective prejudices and dispositions against science and public health policies can be attributed to the lack of sufficient information or access to it, today the opposite seems to be the case: there is too much information available, of all sorts, on the same plane. Additionally, some of it—fake news—is intentionally designed to be misleading (following political, media o commercial interests). The result is that together with the medical pandemic, we are in the midst of an informational pandemic, an issue the who has dubbed as infodemic and infoxication, added to the gradual yet constant mistrust and lack of social credibility that medical, governmental and information institutions are suffering, with potentially serious consequences for collective life.