Abusage & Opprobrium of Social Media: Exploring the Roots of the COVID-19 Infodemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only reshaped our world but also redesigned our everyday lives. Since the pandemic broke out, there has been an audacious mushrooming of both disinformation and misinformation. While a layman might confuse disinformation and misinformation to mean the same, an informed eye can analyse that such is not the case. The former implies information that is false and deliberately created to harm a person, social group, organization, or country, the latter stands for false information not created with the intention of causing harm to anyone. Both forms of information, however, share a common and popular medium of dissemination, which is social media. In both cases, various popular social media platforms have been found aiding and abetting ignorant, irresponsible citizens spreading unverified news, and false information. In the absence of lack of regulation and restrictions, the two have snowballed into an Infodemic of never seen before proportions. This Infodemic has today engulfed the pandemic, proving to be a more lethal and long-term threat. The paper argues that the social media have driven, and fuelled, COVID-19 Infodemic we suffer today, has its genesis much before the breakout of the actual pandemic, and if left incontinent, shall outlast it as well. For ease of understanding the paper is divided into three main sections. The paper begins with a theoretical part in which the term 'Infodemic' is explained, and its genesis is traced back. This section explores the role that social media plays in spreading misinformation and disinformation. The second section analyses how countries like India are combating the Infodemic by enacting special provisions in their existing laws. The concluding part of the paper is advisory in nature. The research contends that the ongoing Infodemic is the result of a larger malaise affecting society, which is ignorance and irresponsibility. This moral and ethical malaise cannot be checked by laws alone, but by a larger, nationwide media literacy campaign. The only solution available to us is to cultivate mass media literacy, both for social media platforms and citizens who use them regularly, so that everyone involved in creating, consuming, and sharing information is held accountable