The fight against conspiracy theories and other fake news about the coronavirus crisis is receiving more help from the social media and other tech platforms, as a number of thought leaders have argued.[1] However, in my opinion, a more important factor has been more successful outreach by governmental, industry, and academic researchers. Too often, the research community has been too complacent about getting the results of their research to opinion leaders and the broader public. Years ago, I argued that too many scientists held a ‘trickle down’ theory of information dissemination.[2] Once they publish their research, their job is done, and others will read and disseminate their findings.
Even today, too many researchers and scientists are complacent about outreach. They are too focused on publication and communication with their peers and see outreach as someone else’s job. The coronavirus crisis has demonstrated that governments and mainstream, leading researchers, can get their messages out if they work hard to do so. In the UK, the Prime Minister’s TV address, and multiple press conferences have been very useful – the last reaching 27 million viewers in the UK, becoming one of the ‘most watched TV programmes ever’, according to The Guardian.[3] In addition, the government distributed a text message to people across the UK about it rules during the crisis. And leading scientists have been explaining their findings, research, and models to the public, with the support of broadcasters and social media.
If scientists and other researchers are complacent, they can surrender the conversation to creative and motivated conspiracy theorists and fake news outlets. In the case of Covid-19, it seems to be that a major push by the scientific community of researchers and governmental experts and politicians has shown that reputable sources can be heard over and amongst the crowd of rumors and less authoritative information. Rather than try to censor or suppress social media, we need to step-up efforts by mainstream scientific communities to reach out to the public and political opinion leaders. No more complacency. It should not take a global pandemic crisis to see that this can and should be done.
[1] Marietje Schaake (2020), ‘Now we know Big Tech can tackle the ‘infdemic’ of fake news’, Financial Times, 25 March: p. 23.
[2] Dutton, W. (1994), ‘Trickle-Down Social Science: A Personal Perspective,’ Social Sciences, 22, 2.
[3] Jim Waterson (2020), ‘Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 address is one of the most-watched TV programmes ever’, The Guardian, 24 March: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/24/boris-johnsons-covid-19-address-is-one-of-most-watched-tv-programmes-ever