Managing the infodemic

WHO/Europe supports countries to detect, assess, analyse and respond to infodemic risks while maintaining and strengthening national and regional (sub)systems with training and broader capacity-building.

Infodemics are characterized as too much information, including false or misleading information online or in physical environments. They represent a growing challenge to health emergency response. By making trustworthy information harder to find, infodemics can lead people to adopt fake, and sometimes deadly, cures, and ignore, avoid or actively resist protective and life-saving measures, including vaccines. They can undermine trust in science, health interventions, and health systems and ultimately put health and lives at risk.    

Infodemic management (IM) is an interdisciplinary area of work that is based on areas such as behavioural science, data science, epidemiology, media science and user experience. Every part of a health system can be affected by and interact with an infodemic, including responding to rumours based on genuine community concerns. IM is therefore collaborative, with connections to other parts of the health system and other systems.