{"id":16700,"date":"2020-05-14T21:49:57","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T21:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/?p=16700"},"modified":"2024-12-11T00:51:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T00:51:26","slug":"new-survey-report-inoculating-against-an-infodemic-a-canada-wide-covid-19-news-social-media-and-misinformation-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/2020\/05\/14\/new-survey-report-inoculating-against-an-infodemic-a-canada-wide-covid-19-news-social-media-and-misinformation-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"[New Survey Report] Inoculating against an Infodemic: A Canada-Wide COVID-19 News, Social Media, and Misinformation Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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TORONTO, May 11, 2020 \u2014  Facebook<\/a>, Reddit<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, TiKTok<\/a> and other social media platforms have recently announced that they are stepping up their efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on their platforms but despite these efforts, 68% of Canadians reported encountering COVID-19 misinformation on at least one of the social media sites\/apps they use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This finding comes from a new, census-balanced, survey report \u201cInoculating against an Infodemic: A Canada-Wide COVID-19 News, Social Media, and Misinformation Survey<\/a>\u201d by the\u00a0Social Media Lab<\/a>\u00a0at Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University. The survey is released as part of the\u00a0COVID-19 Misinformation Portal<\/a>\u00a0(covid19misinfo.org), a rapid response project funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the first COVID-19 lockdown order, social media has emerged as an indispensable lifeline for people to connect to friends, families, classmates, and co-workers. This increasing reliance on social media is not without its problems; social media is well-established<\/a> as a vector in the spread of false narratives<\/a>. To examine the \u201cdigital hygiene<\/a>\u201d practices of Canadians during this unprecedented health crisis, we asked 1,500 online Canadian adults (18+) about where they get news about COVID-19 from, how often they encounter misinformation on this topic, and what do they do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the primary goals of this Canada-wide survey was to understand what strategies social media users employ when seeing COVID-19 content that they think is false or misleading<\/em>,\u201d say Anatoliy Gruzd and Philip Mai, co-authors of the report and co-directors of the Toronto Metropolitan University Social Media Lab.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Other Highlights From the Survey<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n