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Information Pollution as Social Harm: Investigating the Digital Drift of Medical Misinformation in a Time of Crisis

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The coronavirus pandemic struck the world in a very distinctive way: experience from past pandemics or from more recent outbreaks could give us only a limited understanding of how the situation was likely to unfold. In this context, and with cyberspace being increasingly used to support health-related decision making and to market health products, potentially harmful behaviours have been carried out by individuals propagating non-science-based health (mis)information and conspiratorial thinking. This includes, among other actions, boycotting the use of masks and physical distancing, proactively opposing the use of the COVID-19 candidate vaccines, and promoting the use of useless or even dangerous substances to prevent or resist the virus. By relying on a virtual ethnography approach carried out on Italian-speaking alternative lifestyle and counter-information online communities, this book shows how the nature of personal interactions online and the construction of both personal and group identities through the development of an 'us vs. them' narrative, are central to the creation and propagation of medical misinformation.

This book is essential reading for researchers in the social, health, and data sciences and also professionals interested in scientific communication.

Author(s): Anita Lavorgna
Series: Emerald Studies in Digital Crime, Technology and Social Harms
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Year: 2021

Language: English
Pages: 107
City: Bingley

Half Title Page
Series Editors Page
Editorial Board
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
1: Social Harms in Pandemic Times
1.1. Introduction
1.2. The Pollution of Medical Information
1.3. Why Looking at Social Harms?
2: Methodological and Theoretical Approaches
2.1. Introduction
2.2. Background of this Book and Notes on Research Methods
2.3. Drifting into Medical Misinformation: An Integrated Approach
Note
3: WEB of Ties: The Actors Behind Medical Misinformation
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Receivers
3.3. Supporters
3.4. Providers
3.5. Conspiratorial Ideation and Epistemic Mistrust
4: Building Identities and Networks Through Converging Frames
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Narratives of the Self
4.2.1. I am the Expert!
4.2.2. Outgroup Hostility and Ingroup Belonging
4.2.3. Politics of (Negative) Liberties
4.3. Agency and Empowerment
4.3.1. My Body, My Self
4.3.2. Spirituality
4.3.3. Privacy and Self-disclosure
5: Drifting Off The Polluted Pathway
5.1. Contexts of Crossdisciplinarity
5.2. Juggling Divergent Needs
5.3. Recognizing the Maze
References
Index