106-423: An infodemic is a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate information about certain issues. The word is a portmanteau of information and epidemic and is used as a metaphor to describe how misinformation and disinformation can spread like a virus from person to person and affect people like a disease. This term, originally coined in 2003 by David Rothkopf , rose to prominence in 2020 during
212-562: A COVID-19 vaccine prompted negative reactions in Iran. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi denied initial reports that he had ruled that a Zionist-made vaccine would be halal , and one Press TV journalist tweeted that "I'd rather take my chances with the virus than consume an Israeli vaccine." A columnist for the Turkish Yeni Akit asserted that such a vaccine could be a ruse to carry out mass sterilization . An alert by
318-607: A Level 4 virology lab, revoked after a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation. Canadian officials described this as an administrative matter and said there was no risk to the Canadian public. Responding to the conspiracy theories, the CBC stated that its articles "never claimed the two scientists were spies, or that they brought any version of [a] coronavirus to the lab in Wuhan". While pathogen samples were transferred from
424-442: A " stish " or a " starsh ", it would be a blend. Furthermore, when blends are formed by shortening established compounds or phrases, they can be considered clipped compounds , such as romcom for romantic comedy . Blends of two or more words may be classified from each of three viewpoints: morphotactic, morphonological, and morphosemantic. Blends may be classified morphotactically into two kinds: total and partial . In
530-544: A WeChat search of "Coronavirus [disease 2019] is from the U.S." reported to mostly yield articles explaining why such claims are unreasonable. In March 2020, two spokesmen for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang , alleged at a press conference that Western powers may have "bio-engineered" COVID-19. They were alluding that the US Army created and spread COVID-19, allegedly during
636-570: A bio-weapon or to profit from the sale of vaccines. According to the World Health Organization, genetic manipulation has been ruled out by genomic analysis. Many other origin stories have also been told, ranging from claims of secret plots by political opponents to a conspiracy theory about mobile phones. In March 2020, the Pew Research Center found that a third of Americans believed COVID-19 had been created in
742-413: A concept is "journalistically powerful, intuitively satisfying, and in strong resonance with personal experiences and intuition", Simon and Camargo argue that empirical evidence for many of the claims surrounding the term is lacking. Instead of a genuine phenomenon they see the infodemic as "a territorial claim for those who want to apply their skills, a signal to others that they are working in this area, or
848-409: A conspiracy was occurring. The ensuing controversy became known as the " Proximal Origin ". However, despite claims to the contrary in some US newspapers, no new evidence has surfaced to support any theory of a laboratory accident, and the majority of peer-reviewed research points to a natural origin. This parallels previous outbreaks of novel diseases, such as HIV, SARS and H1N1, which have also been
954-485: A deadlier strain of coronavirus against Iran." Similarly, some Arab media outlets accused Israel and the United States of creating and spreading COVID-19, avian flu , and SARS . Users on social media offered other theories, including the allegation that Jews had manufactured COVID-19 to precipitate a global stock market collapse and thereby profit via insider trading , while a guest on Turkish television posited
1060-754: A foreign force was behind COVID-19, with 72% of them naming the USA as that force. Theories blaming the USA have also circulated in the Philippines, Venezuela and Pakistan. An October 2020 Globsec poll of Eastern European countries found that 38% of respondents in Montenegro and Serbia, 37% of those in North Macedonia, and 33% in Bulgaria believed the USA deliberately created COVID-19. Iran's Press TV asserted that " Zionist elements developed
1166-535: A form suitable for carrying on horseback; (now esp.) one in the form of a stiff leather case hinged at the back to open into two equal parts". According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ( AHD ), the etymology of the word is the French porte-manteau , from porter , "to carry", and manteau , "cloak" (from Old French mantel , from Latin mantellum ). According to
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#17327731285751272-517: A former Trump strategist, and Guo Wengui , an expatriate Chinese billionaire. This misinformation was further seized on by the American far-right, who have been known to promote distrust of China . In effect, this formed "a fast-growing echo chamber for misinformation". The idea of SARS-CoV-2 as a lab-engineered weapon is an element of the Plandemic conspiracy theory, which proposes that it
1378-437: A framing device to tie one's work to larger debates". Along the same lines, Krause, Freiling, and Scheufele warn of difficulties related to creating "an infodemic about the infodemic" and that research surrounding the term warrants clarification and acknowledgment of uncertainties related to its novelty and impact. Portmanteau In linguistics , a blend —also known as a blend word , lexical blend , or portmanteau —is
1484-427: A kind of bath), the attributive blends of English are mostly head-final and mostly endocentric . As an example of an exocentric attributive blend, Fruitopia may metaphorically take the buyer to a fruity utopia (and not a utopian fruit); however, it is not a utopia but a drink. Coordinate blends (also called associative or portmanteau blends) combine two words having equal status, and have two heads. Thus brunch
1590-510: A lab rather than having a natural evolution. In an ad hoc peer-review (as the paper was not submitted for traditional peer review as part of the standard scientific publishing process), her claims were labelled as misleading, unscientific, and an unethical promotion of "essentially conspiracy theories that are not founded in fact". Yan's paper was funded by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, two non-profits linked to Steve Bannon ,
1696-552: A lab, and a quarter thought it had been engineered intentionally. The spread of these conspiracy theories is magnified through mutual distrust and animosity, as well as nationalism and the use of propaganda campaigns for political purposes. The promotion of misinformation has been used by American far-right groups such as QAnon , by rightwing outlets such as Fox News, by former US President Donald Trump and also other prominent Republicans to stoke anti-China sentiments, and has led to increased anti-Asian activity on social media and in
1802-553: A lack of evidence, is that the virus may have accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the course of standard research. A poll in July 2021 found that 52% of US adults believe COVID-19 escaped from a lab. Unsubstantiated speculation and conspiracy theories related to this topic have gained popularity during the pandemic. Common conspiracy theories state that the virus was intentionally engineered, either as
1908-481: A more ambitious scenario in which Jews and Zionists had created COVID-19, avian flu, and Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever to "design the world, seize countries, [and] neuter the world's population". Turkish politician Fatih Erbakan reportedly said in a speech: "Though we do not have certain evidence, this virus serves Zionism's goals of decreasing the number of people and preventing it from increasing, and important research expresses this." Israeli attempts to develop
2014-664: A remote region in Guangdong, China , in November 2002. By the time the outbreak ended in May 2003, it had reached 30 countries and there were over 8,000 confirmed cases and 774 deaths. Rothkopf, who was at that time, a member of the advisory committee's board of directors at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 's Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security which provides policy recommendations to
2120-486: A total blend, each of the words creating the blend is reduced to a mere splinter. Some linguists limit blends to these (perhaps with additional conditions): for example, Ingo Plag considers "proper blends" to be total blends that semantically are coordinate, the remainder being "shortened compounds". Commonly for English blends, the beginning of one word is followed by the end of another: Much less commonly in English,
2226-423: A word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together. English examples include smog , coined by blending smoke and fog , as well as motel , from motor ( motorist ) and hotel . A blend is similar to a contraction . On the one hand, mainstream blends tend to be formed at a particular historical moment followed by a rapid rise in popularity. Contractions, on
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#17327731285752332-1064: Is frankenword , an autological word exemplifying the phenomenon it describes, blending " Frankenstein " and "word". Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic False information , including intentional disinformation and conspiracy theories , about the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the origin , prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of the disease has been spread through social media , text messaging, and mass media . False information has been propagated by celebrities, politicians, and other prominent public figures. Many countries have passed laws against " fake news ", and thousands of people have been arrested for spreading COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of COVID-19 misinformation by governments has also been significant. Commercial scams have claimed to offer at-home tests, supposed preventives, and "miracle" cures . Several religious groups have claimed their faith will protect them from
2438-511: Is "part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases". Accusations in Turkey of Americans creating the virus as a weapon have been reported, and a YouGov poll from August 2020 found that 37% of Turkish respondents believed the US government was responsible for creating and spreading
2544-477: Is a Japanese blend that has entered the English language. The Vietnamese language also encourages blend words formed from Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary . For example, the term Việt Cộng is derived from the first syllables of "Việt Nam" (Vietnam) and "Cộng sản" (communist). Many corporate brand names , trademarks, and initiatives, as well as names of corporations and organizations themselves, are blends. For example, Wiktionary , one of Misplaced Pages 's sister projects,
2650-496: Is a blend of wiki and dictionary . The word portmanteau was introduced in this sense by Lewis Carroll in the book Through the Looking-Glass (1871), where Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the coinage of unusual words used in " Jabberwocky ". Slithy means "slimy and lithe" and mimsy means "miserable and flimsy". Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the practice of combining words in various ways, comparing it to
2756-499: Is a financial motive as well. Multiple countries have been accused of spreading disinformation with state-backed operations in the social media in other countries to generate panic, sow distrust, and undermine democratic debate in other countries, or to promote their models of government. A Cornell University study of 38 million articles in English-language media around the world found that US President Donald Trump
2862-440: Is both phonological and orthographic, but with no other shortening: The overlap may be both phonological and orthographic, and with some additional shortening to at least one of the ingredients: Such an overlap may be discontinuous: These are also termed imperfect blends. It can occur with three components: The phonological overlap need not also be orthographic: If the phonological but non-orthographic overlap encompasses
2968-699: Is neither a breakfasty lunch nor a lunchtime breakfast but instead some hybrid of breakfast and lunch; Oxbridge is equally Oxford and Cambridge universities. This too parallels (conventional, non-blend) compounds: an actor–director is equally an actor and a director. Two kinds of coordinate blends are particularly conspicuous: those that combine (near‑) synonyms: and those that combine (near‑) opposites: Blending can also apply to roots rather than words, for instance in Israeli Hebrew : "There are two possible etymological analyses for Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár 'bank clerk, teller'. The first
3074-410: Is not a new phenomenon, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this can lead to adverse health effects. Cognitive biases, such as jumping to conclusions and confirmation bias , may be linked to the occurrence of conspiracy beliefs. Uncertainty among experts, when combined with a lack of understanding of the scientific process by laypeople, has likewise been a factor amplifying conspiracy theories about
3180-433: Is represented by various shorter substitutes – ‑otel ... – which I shall call splinters. Words containing splinters I shall call blends". Thus, at least one of the parts of a blend, strictly speaking, is not a complete morpheme , but instead a mere splinter or leftover word fragment. For instance, starfish is a compound, not a blend, of star and fish , as it includes both words in full. However, if it were called
3286-435: Is spun, twisted, recontextualised, or reworked"; less misinformation "was completely fabricated". The study also found that "top-down misinformation from politicians, celebrities, and other prominent public figures", while accounting for a minority of the samples, captured a majority of the social media engagement. According to their classification, the largest category of misinformation (39%) was "misleading or false claims about
Infodemic - Misplaced Pages Continue
3392-405: Is that it consists of (Hebrew>) Israeli כסף késef 'money' and the ( International /Hebrew>) Israeli agentive suffix ר- -ár . The second is that it is a quasi- portmanteau word which blends כסף késef 'money' and (Hebrew>) Israeli ספר √spr 'count'. Israeli Hebrew כספר kaspár started as a brand name but soon entered the common language. Even if the second analysis is the correct one,
3498-401: Is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak." Eysenbach described infodemiology as the study of "the determinants and distribution of health information and misinformation". As COVID-19 swept across the globe, information about how to stay safe and how to identify symptoms became vital. However, especially in
3604-423: Is unlikely, due to the intense scrutiny and government oversight gain-of-function research is subject to, and that it is improbable that research on hard-to-obtain coronaviruses could occur under the radar. The exact meaning of "gain of function" is disputed among experts. In May 2020, Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused Anthony Fauci of having "funded the creation of COVID" through gain-of-function research at
3710-656: The CCP " and "maybe a miracle will happen". In response to the propagation of theories in the US of a Wuhan lab origin, the Chinese government promulgated the conspiracy theory that the virus was developed by the United States army at Fort Detrick . The conspiracy theory was also promoted by British MP Andrew Bridgen in March 2023. One idea used to support a laboratory origin invokes previous gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. Virologist Angela Rasmussen argued that this
3816-422: The 2019 Military World Games in Wuhan , where numerous cases of influenza-like illness were reported. A member of the U.S. military athletics delegation based at Fort Belvoir, who competed in the 50mi Road Race at the Wuhan games, became the subject of online targeting by netizens accusing her of being " patient zero " of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, and was later interviewed by CNN, to clear her name from
3922-605: The 2022 German coup d'état plot ) were charged with conspiring to kidnap the German health minister Karl Lauterbach . According to a study carried out by the University of Oxford in early 2020, nearly one-fifth of respondents in England believed to some extent that Jews were responsible for creating or spreading the virus with the motive of financial gain. In India, Muslims have been blamed for spreading infection following
4028-522: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , the Russian Defense Ministry stated that US President Joe Biden 's son, Hunter Biden , as well as billionaire George Soros , were closely tied to Ukrainian biolabs. American right-wing media personalities, such as Tucker Carlson , highlighted the story, while Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times further stated that the labs had been studying bat coronaviruses, which spread widely on
4134-634: The COVID-19 pandemic . In his 11 May 2003 article in the Post , Rothkopf wrote that the information epidemic or "infodemic" was a "combination of "[a] few facts, mixed with fear, speculation, and rumor, amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies." On 2 February 2020, the World Health Organization defined infodemic as a "an over-abundance of information—some accurate and some not—that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it." A 21 February 2021 WHO publication, said that "[a]n infodemic
4240-533: The OED Online , the etymology of the word is the "officer who carries the mantle of a person in a high position (1507 in Middle French), case or bag for carrying clothing (1547), clothes rack (1640)". In modern French, a porte-manteau is a clothes valet , a coat-tree or similar article of furniture for hanging up jackets, hats, umbrellas and the like. An occasional synonym for "portmanteau word"
4346-551: The United States government and the World Health Organization , said that the infodemic was the second of two concurrent epidemics. Rothkopf described how the "information epidemic" transformed SARS from a regional health crisis into a "debacle" that spread globally with both economic and social repercussions. He said this infodemic "was not the rapid spread of simple news via the media, nor is it simply
Infodemic - Misplaced Pages Continue
4452-476: The "false accusations in starting the pandemic". In January 2021, Hua Chunying renewed the conspiracy theory from Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originating in the United States at the U.S. biological weapons lab Fort Detrick . This conspiracy theory quickly went trending on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, and Hua Chunying continued to cite evidence on Twitter, while asking
4558-480: The "over 200 U.S. biolabs" around the world. In February 2020, US officials alleged that Russia is behind an ongoing disinformation campaign, using thousands of social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to deliberately promote unfounded conspiracy theories, claiming the virus is a biological weapon manufactured by the CIA and the US is waging economic war on China using the virus. In March 2022, amid
4664-699: The CIA in order to "keep China down". According to an investigation by ProPublica , such conspiracy theories and disinformation have been propagated under the direction of China News Service , the country's second largest government-owned media outlet controlled by the United Front Work Department . Global Times and Xinhua News Agency have similarly been implicated in propagating disinformation related to COVID-19's origins. NBC News however has noted that there have also been debunking efforts of US-related conspiracy theories posted online, with
4770-651: The COVID-19 pandemic. In his 11 May 2003 article in the Washington Post —also published in Newsday , The Record , the Oakland Tribune , and the China Daily —foreign policy expert David Rothkopf , referred to the information epidemic—or "infodemic", in the context of the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak . The outbreak of SARS , which was caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 1 began in
4876-458: The COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to health effects, harms resulting from the spread of misinformation and endorsement of conspiracy theories include increasing distrust of news organizations and medical authorities as well as divisiveness and political fragmentation. In January 2020, the BBC reported on the developing issue of conspiracy theories and bad health advice regarding COVID-19. Examples at
4982-775: The Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", which was distributed unsolicited in April 2020 to mail customers in areas of the United States, Canada, and Australia. In the newspaper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is known as the " CCP virus", and a commentary in the newspaper posed the question, "is the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan an accident occasioned by weaponizing the virus at that [Wuhan P4 virology] lab?" The paper's editorial board suggested that COVID-19 patients cure themselves by "condemning
5088-522: The Chinese internet for insinuating that the United States had created SARS-CoV-19 in Ukrainian laboratories. According to Washington, DC-based nonprofit Middle East Media Research Institute , numerous writers in the Arabic press have promoted the conspiracy theory that COVID-19, as well as SARS and the swine flu virus, were deliberately created and spread to sell vaccines against these diseases, and it
5194-529: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has also not been released. In a January 2020 press conference, NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg , when asked about the case, stated that he could not comment specifically on it, but expressed concerns about "increased efforts by the nations to spy on NATO allies in different ways". According to The Economist , conspiracy theories exist on China's internet about COVID-19 being created by
5300-431: The SARS-CoV-2 virus to be natural crossover from animals , having spilled-over into the human population from bats, possibly through an intermediate animal host, although the exact transmission pathway has not been determined. Genomic evidence suggests an ancestor virus of SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats . An alternative hypothesis under investigation, deemed unlikely by the majority of virologists given
5406-539: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the possible threat of far-right extremists intentionally spreading COVID-19 mentioned blame being assigned to Jews and Jewish leaders for causing the pandemic and several statewide shutdowns. Flyers have been found on German tram cars, falsely blaming Jews for the pandemic. In April 2022, two members of the Reichsbürger movement (later implicated in
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#17327731285755512-597: The US government supported such research. Baric likewise rejected Paul's allegations, saying that his lab's research into the potential in bat coronaviruses for cross-species transmission was not deemed gain-of-function by NIH or the University of North Carolina, where he works. A 2017 study of chimeric bat coronaviruses at the WIV listed NIH as a sponsor; however, NIH funding was only related to sample collection. Based on this and other evidence, The Washington Post rated
5618-619: The US has also been perceived as a source of inaccurate or misleading commentary on COVID-19. In August and September 2021, several radio hosts who had discouraged COVID-19 vaccination, or expressed skepticism toward the COVID-19 vaccine, subsequently died from COVID-19 complications, among them Dick Farrel , Phil Valentine and Bob Enyart . Misinformation on the subject of COVID-19 has been used by politicians, interest groups , and state actors in many countries for political purposes: to avoid responsibility, scapegoat other countries, and avoid criticism of their earlier decisions. Sometimes there
5724-472: The WHO described this scenario as "extremely unlikely" and not supported by any available evidence. The report acknowledged, however, that the possibility cannot be ruled out without further evidence. The investigation behind this report operated as a joint collaboration between Chinese and international scientists. At the release briefing for the report, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated
5830-640: The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Citing an essay by science writer Nicholas Wade , Carlson alleged that Fauci had directed research to make bat viruses more infectious to humans. In a hearing the next day, US senator Rand Paul alleged that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had been funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, accusing researchers including epidemiologist Ralph Baric of creating "super-viruses". Both Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins have denied that
5936-521: The actions or policies of public authorities, including government and international bodies like the WHO or the UN". In addition to social media, television and radio have been perceived as sources of misinformation. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States , Fox News adopted an editorial line that the emergency response to the pandemic was politically motivated or otherwise unwarranted, and presenter Sean Hannity claimed on-air that
6042-502: The beginning of one word may be followed by the beginning of another: Some linguists do not regard beginning+beginning concatenations as blends, instead calling them complex clippings, clipping compounds or clipped compounds . Unusually in English, the end of one word may be followed by the end of another: A splinter of one word may replace part of another, as in three coined by Lewis Carroll in " Jabberwocky ": They are sometimes termed intercalative blends; these words are among
6148-408: The claim of an NIH connection to gain-of-function research on coronaviruses as "two pinocchios", representing "significant omissions and/or exaggerations". Another theory suggests the virus arose in humans from an accidental infection of laboratory workers by a natural sample. Unfounded online speculation about this scenario has been widespread. In March 2021, an investigatory report released by
6254-649: The disease as well as information about SARS, perhaps there might not have been a worldwide panic. The infodemic spread globally, far beyond the countries that had SARS victims and "set off a chain reaction of economic and social consequences". It also made it harder for health organizations to control the SARS epidemic as panic spread online. In his 15 December 2002 article entitled "Infodemiology: The epidemiology of (mis)information" in The American Journal of Medicine , health researcher Gunther Eysenbach coined
6360-456: The effects of COVID-19 more seriously, while a second program downplayed the threat of COVID-19. The study found that audiences who were exposed to the news downplaying the threat were statistically more susceptible to increased COVID-19 infection rates and death. In August 2021, television broadcaster Sky News Australia was criticised for posting videos on YouTube containing misleading medical claims about COVID-19. Conservative talk radio in
6466-585: The emergence of cases linked to a Tablighi Jamaat religious gathering. There are reports of vilification of Muslims on social media and attacks on individuals in India. Claims have been made that Muslims are selling food contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 and that a mosque in Patna was sheltering people from Italy and Iran. These claims were shown to be false. In the UK, there are reports of far-right groups blaming Muslims for
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#17327731285756572-571: The emergence of truth. Social media companies may offer a variety of cues to help people make better judgments of whether a message is legitimate or not. For example, Facebook might, in addition to showing how many "likes" a post has received, allow the count of "dislikes" to offer a more symmetric view of opinions. Research on information dissemination during the COVID-19 pandemic identified issues with standardization and presentation of related information on official U.S. government sources, specifically state and federal government COVID-19 dashboards. When
6678-518: The end of January 2020. Such claims spread rapidly on social media networks, leading to the spread of misinformation in what has been likened to a "digital wildfire". In March 2020, Thomas Cowan, a holistic medical practitioner who trained as a physician and operates on probation with the Medical Board of California , alleged that COVID-19 is caused by 5G. He based this on the claims that African countries had not been affected significantly by
6784-599: The final syllable ר- -ár apparently facilitated nativization since it was regarded as the Hebrew suffix ר- -år (probably of Persian pedigree), which usually refers to craftsmen and professionals, for instance as in Mendele Mocher Sforim 's coinage סמרטוטר smartutár 'rag-dealer'." Blending may occur with an error in lexical selection , the process by which a speaker uses his semantic knowledge to choose words. Lewis Carroll's explanation, which gave rise to
6890-469: The first phases of the pandemic, the amount of false, not validated and partially true information on the media was huge. Even seemingly reliable government sources did not always follow best practices in disseminating data about COVID-19, with many potentially misleading maps published on official websites. The inappropriate use of maps on these websites may have contributed to political polarization in response to COVID-19 epidemiological control measures. There
6996-495: The future. However, scholars emphasize that traditionally proposed ways to combat misinformation tend to rely on the assumption that if people encounter the correct information about an issue, they will make rational decisions based on the best scientific information available. Research shows that this is often not the case and that people do not act in the best interest of scientific fact for reasons including "cognitive preferences for old habits, forgetfulness, small inconveniences in
7102-700: The government of the United States to open up Fort Detrick for further investigation to determine if it is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In August 2021, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman repeatedly used an official podium to elevate the Fort Detrick's origin unproven idea. According to a report from Foreign Policy , Chinese diplomats and government officials in concert with China's propaganda apparatus and covert networks of online agitators and influencers have responded, focused on repeating Zhao Lijian 's allegation relating to Fort Detrick in Maryland, and
7208-600: The ill and "inoculate the public" endorsed the Singaporean POFMA legislation, which criminalises misinformation. The Aspen Institute even started their misinformation project before the pandemic. A blue-ribbon working group on infodemics, from the Forum on Information and Democracy , produced a report in November 2020, highlighting 250 recommendations to protect democracies , human rights , and health. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary tracked its renewed usage during
7314-615: The information on ProMED, a Federation of American Scientists Web site. The general public did not learn of the outbreak until 23 February 2003, when an elderly woman died of SARS in her home in Toronto , Canada, from Hong Kong. Her son, who spread the disease in a Toronto hospital, also died. With the first death in North America, the Western media began to cover the outbreak. Rothkopf said that if more had been done earlier to manage
7420-403: The ingredients is the head and the other is attributive. A porta-light is a portable light, not a 'light-emitting' or light portability; light is the head. A snobject is a snobbery-satisfying object and not an objective or other kind of snob; object is the head. As is also true for (conventional, non-blend) attributive compounds (among which bathroom , for example, is a kind of room, not
7526-472: The lab in Winnipeg to Beijing in March 2019, neither of the samples contained a coronavirus. The Public Health Agency of Canada has stated that the shipment conformed to all federal policies, and that the researchers in question are still under investigation, and thus it cannot be confirmed nor denied that these two were responsible for sending the shipment. The location of the researchers under investigation by
7632-407: The laboratory leak theory as "debunked" or a "conspiracy theory". On the other hand, scientific opinion that an accidental leak is possible, but unlikely, has remained steady. A number of journalists and scientists have said that they dismissed or avoided discussing the lab leak theory during the first year of the pandemic as a result of perceived polarization resulting from Donald Trump's embrace of
7738-471: The moment, preferences for the path of least resistance, and motivated reasoning." Thus, combatting misinformation should rely on a more nuanced analysis of both the content of the misinformation, as well as the socio-political environment in which it was disseminated. Financial Times journalist Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan said in his 20 August 2021 article that casting the spread of misinformation and disinformation in terms of disease risks oversimplifying
7844-495: The morphemes or phonemes stay in the same position within the syllable. Some languages, like Japanese , encourage the shortening and merging of borrowed foreign words (as in gairaigo ), because they are long or difficult to pronounce in the target language. For example, karaoke , a combination of the Japanese word kara (meaning empty ) and the clipped form oke of the English loanword "orchestra" (J. ōkesutora , オーケストラ ),
7950-522: The most authoritative sources of information are not presenting the data accurately, bad conclusions are inevitable. The research suggested official sources for information take steps to ensure the way data are collected, analyzed, and presented is up to the highest standards and adheres to all conventions. Standards of web-maps for government agencies should be developed, widely published, and adhered to. The web-based maps and dashboards are, if properly employed, suggested as possible ways to combat infodemics in
8056-542: The most heightened state of terrorism panic in our history" even though terrorism globally had decreased to its "lowest level since 1969". His company, the Washington DC–based strategic intelligence and analysis firm Intellibridge, which he had founded in 1999, tracked the January 2003 Chinese reports on the outbreak. On 9 February 2003, Intellibridge provided their analysis to the U.S. defense community, and then posted
8162-495: The original "portmanteaus" for which this meaning of the word was created. In a partial blend, one entire word is concatenated with a splinter from another. Some linguists do not recognize these as blends. An entire word may be followed by a splinter: A splinter may be followed by an entire word: An entire word may replace part of another: These have also been called sandwich words, and classed among intercalative blends. (When two words are combined in their entirety,
8268-491: The other hand, are formed by the gradual drifting together of words over time due to them commonly appearing together in sequence, such as do not naturally becoming don't (phonologically, / d uː n ɒ t / becoming / d oʊ n t / ). A blend also differs from a compound , which fully preserves the stems of the original words. The British lecturer Valerie Adams's 1973 Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation explains that "In words such as motel ..., hotel
8374-578: The pandemic and falsely claiming that mosques remained open after the national ban on large gatherings. According to the BBC, Jordan Sather, a YouTuber supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the anti-vax movement, has falsely claimed that the outbreak was a population-control scheme created by the Pirbright Institute in England and by former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates . Piers Corbyn
8480-551: The pandemic was a "hoax" (he later issued a denial). When evaluated by media analysts, the effect of broadcast misinformation has been found to influence health outcomes in the population. In a natural experiment (an experiment that takes place spontaneously, without human design or intervention), two similar television news programs that were shown on the Fox News network in February–March 2020 were compared. One program reported
8586-1262: The pandemic, making decisions related to combatting misinformation becomes complicated by a volatile political environment and frequently changing scientific information. A U.S.-based survey research revealed that during March and April 2020 higher news consumption about COVID-19, especially through social media, was associated with lower levels of knowledge and more fake news beliefs. However, preliminary research published in fall 2021 suggested that visual information (e.g., infographics) about science and scientists, designed to address trust, might be able to mitigate belief in misinformation about COVID-19. Researchers have been seeking tools to combat infodemics. Gunther Eysenbach brings up four pillars of infodemic management: (1) information monitoring ( infoveillance ); (2) building eHealth literacy and science literacy capacity; (3) encouraging knowledge refinement and quality improvement processes such as fact-checking and peer-review ; and (4) accurate and timely knowledge translation which minimizes distorting factors such as political or commercial influences. Scholars also advocate for tech platforms to police their content more effectively, and empower individuals to make better decisions on their own to promote
8692-402: The pandemic. Communication scholars Felix Simon and Chico Camargo at Oxford University said in their 20 July 2021 New Media & Society article that infodemic as metaphor "can be misleading, as it conflates multiple forms of social behaviour, oversimplifies a complex situation and helps constitute a phenomenon for which concrete evidence remains patchy." Pointing out that the infodemic as
8798-415: The problem and that "unlike the status of being healthy or infected by an actual disease, what constitutes accurate information is also subject to change." Venkataramakrishnan also pointed out that the focus of the infodemic has often been on "conspiracy theorists and snake-oil salesmen", largely ignoring the at times problematic actions and confusing messaging of governments and public health bodies throughout
8904-422: The real world. This has also resulted in the bullying of scientists and public health officials, both online and in-person, fueled by a highly political and oftentimes toxic debate on many issues. Such spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories has the potential to negatively affect public health and diminish trust in governments and medical professionals. The resurgence of the lab leak and other theories
9010-615: The report's calls for a deeper probe into all evaluated possibilities, including the laboratory origin scenario. The study and report were criticised by heads of state from the US, the EU, and other WHO member countries for a lack of transparency and incomplete access to data. Further investigations have also been requested by some scientists, including Anthony Fauci and signatories of a letter published in Science . Since May 2021, some media organizations softened previous language that described
9116-453: The result is considered a compound word rather than a blend. For example, bagpipe is a compound, not a blend, of bag and pipe. ) Morphologically, blends fall into two kinds: overlapping and non-overlapping . Overlapping blends are those for which the ingredients' consonants, vowels or even syllables overlap to some extent. The overlap can be of different kinds. These are also called haplologic blends. There may be an overlap that
9222-478: The rumor mill on steroids. Rather, as with SARS, it is a complex phenomenon caused by the interaction of mainstream media, specialist media and internet sites, and 'informal' media, which is to say wireless phones, text messaging, pagers, faxes, and e-mail, all transmitting some combination of fact, rumor, interpretation, and propaganda." Rothkopf citing the State Department, said that 2002 was the "year of
9328-546: The spread of conspiracy theories. Preprints about COVID-19 have been extensively shared online and some data suggest that they have been used by the media almost 10 times more than preprints on other topics. According to a study published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism , most misinformation related to COVID-19 involves "various forms of reconfiguration, where existing and often true information
9434-411: The subject of allegations of laboratory origin. One early source of the bio-weapon origin theory was former Israeli secret service officer Dany Shoham, who gave an interview to The Washington Times about the biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology . A scientist from Hong Kong, Li-Meng Yan , fled China and released a preprint stating the virus was modified in
9540-535: The term infodemic during the COVID-19 pandemic as early as 2 February 2020. The related term disinfodemic (referring to COVID-19 disinformation campaigns) has been used by UNESCO . By the time that the Journal of Medical Internet Research published their June 2020 issue featuring the WHO's framework for managing the infodemic related to the COVID-19 pandemic , the WHO and public health agencies had acknowledged infodemiology as an "emerging scientific field" that
9646-418: The term infodemiologist and later used the term to refer to attempts at digital disease detection. Use of the term infodemic increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. A study found that from 2010-2020 there were 61 articles mentioning the word infodemic , while between 2020 and 2021 there were 14,301 published stories using the term. The United Nations and the World Health Organization began using
9752-484: The then-common type of luggage , which opens into two equal parts: You see it's like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word. In his introduction to his 1876 poem The Hunting of the Snark , Carroll again uses portmanteau when discussing lexical selection: Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take
9858-585: The theory. Some social media users have alleged that COVID-19 was stolen from a Canadian virus research lab by Chinese scientists. Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada said that this had "no factual basis". The stories seem to have been derived from a July 2019 CBC news article stating that some Chinese researchers had their security access to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg,
9964-705: The time included false health advice shared on social media and private chats, as well as conspiracy theories such as the outbreak being planned with the participation of the Pirbright Institute . In January, The Guardian listed seven instances of misinformation, adding the conspiracy theories about bioweapons and the link to 5G technology, and including varied false health advice. In an attempt to speed up research sharing, many researchers have turned to preprint servers such as arXiv , bioRxiv , medRxiv , and SSRN . Papers are uploaded to these servers without peer review or any other editorial process that ensures research quality. Some of these papers have contributed to
10070-462: The two words "fuming" and "furious". Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first … if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say "frumious". In then-contemporary English, a portmanteau was a suitcase that opened into two equal sections. According to the OED Online , a portmanteau is a "case or bag for carrying clothing and other belongings when travelling; (originally) one of
10176-406: The use of 'portmanteau' for such combinations, was: Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all. For instance, take the two words "fuming" and "furious." Make up your mind that you will say both words ... you will say "frumious." The errors are based on similarity of meanings, rather than phonological similarities, and
10282-421: The virus, and because early cases had been mistaken for influenza. In Iraq, pro-Iranian social media users waged a Twitter campaign during Trump's Presidency to end U.S. presence in the country by blaming it for the virus. The campaign centered around hashtags such as #Bases_of_the_American_pandemic and #Coronavirus_is_Trump's_weapon. A March 2020 survey by USCENTCOM found that 67% of Iraqi respondents believed
10388-476: The virus. An Iranian cleric in Qom said Donald Trump targeted the city with coronavirus "to damage its culture and honor". Reza Malekzadeh , Iran's deputy health minister and former Minister of Health, rejected claims that the virus was a biological weapon, pointing out that the US would be suffering heavily from it. He said Iran was hard-hit because its close ties to China and reluctance to cut air ties introduced
10494-438: The virus. Without evidence, some people have claimed the virus is a bioweapon accidentally or deliberately leaked from a laboratory, a population control scheme, the result of a spy operation , or the side effect of 5G upgrades to cellular networks. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared an " infodemic " of incorrect information about the virus that poses risks to global health. While belief in conspiracy theories
10600-542: The whole of the shorter ingredient, as in then the effect depends on orthography alone. (They are also called orthographic blends. ) An orthographic overlap need not also be phonological: For some linguists, an overlap is a condition for a blend. Non-overlapping blends (also called substitution blends) have no overlap, whether phonological or orthographic: Morphosemantically, blends fall into two kinds: attributive and coordinate . Attributive blends (also called syntactic or telescope blends) are those in which one of
10706-471: Was also a proliferation of systematic reviews of COVID-19-related evidence, not all of which was robustly conducted. Researchers have pointed out a few primary challenges of communicating with the public about COVID-19. First, social media platforms that prioritize engagement over accuracy and allow fringe opinions to thrive without correction create an information ecology that is difficult to understand. Second, as fast-moving science and politics intertwine during
10812-413: Was deliberately released by China. The Epoch Times , an anti- Chinese Communist Party (CCP) newspaper affiliated with Falun Gong , has spread misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in print and via social media including Facebook and YouTube. It has promoted anti-CCP rhetoric and conspiracy theories around the coronavirus outbreak, for example through an 8-page special edition called "How
10918-427: Was described as "dangerous" by physician and broadcaster Hilary Jones during their joint interview on Good Morning Britain in early September 2020. Corbyn described COVID-19 as a "psychological operation to close down the economy in the interests of mega-corporations" and stated "vaccines cause death". The first conspiracy theories purporting a link between COVID-19 and 5G mobile networks had already appeared by
11024-538: Was fueled in part by the publication, in May 2021, of early emails between National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Anthony Fauci and scientists discussing the issue. Per the emails in question, Kristian Andersen (author of one study debunking genomic manipulation theories) had heavily considered the possibility, and emailed Fauci proposing possible mechanisms, before ruling out deliberate manipulation with deeper technical analysis. These emails were later misconstrued and used by critics to claim
11130-620: Was of critical importance during a pandemic. By 2021, the WHO had published a number of resources clarifying the infodemic. A Royal Society and British Academy joint report published in October 2020 said of infodemics that: " COVID-19 vaccine deployment faces an infodemic with misinformation often filling the knowledge void, characterised by: (1) distrust of science and selective use of expert authority, (2) distrust in pharmaceutical companies and government, (3) straightforward explanations, (4) use of emotion; and, (5) echo chambers," and to combat
11236-461: Was the single largest driver of the misinformation. Analysis published by National Public Radio in December 2021 found that as American counties showed higher vote shares for Trump in 2020, COVID-19 vaccination rates significantly decreased and death rates significantly increased. NPR attributed the findings to misinformation. The consensus among virologists is that the most likely origin of
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