The influence of social media in fuelling health-related disinformation, misinformation, false information and infodemics
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Background: The proliferation of health information in Internet-based programming, in particular, social media, has introduced novel challenges for promoting health in society. As such, it is imperative to devise innovative approaches to overcome these challenges. such as social media, health advocates are faced with great challenges of curtailing the spread of false and inadequate information especially in public health emergencies where the lack of verifiable sources of health information may disrupt existing health service delivery. Risk communication is an important health communication strategy, but when it is not properly managed, it degenerates into infodemics. A situation that is very harmful to health promotion. This paper explores the influence of social media on health information promotion and provides a guide to managing information for behavioural change in health promotion. Contents from individual and group pages were purposively selected from two social media, namely, Facebook and WhatsApp. The researchers adopted qualitative content analysis in analysing the data. A few cases, such as the case of chloroquine publicity and incautious use of medical plants as alternative medicine in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, were purposively selected from WhatsApp and Facebook accounts. The result shows that as relevant as social media is to health advocacy, it is not devoid of spreading unfathomable information to the general public. This degenerates into a case of infodemics which has constituted a clog in the wheel of health promotion. In this contemporary world, where diverse races and nations have been levelled up on the platform of information access through social media tools, the spread of information on health management of an ailment or during an outbreak has often been characterised by a lack of control, quality, and reliability. The report of cases and management of an epidemic on social media tools are usually overblown to the extent that what normally should have been a solution becomes a catalyst for the spread of the initial problem.
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