Communication and misinformation : crisis events in the age of social media

"With crisis events, risk and health communication play increasingly critical roles, particularly in examining the dissemination and impact of misinformation on various segments of the population. Both traditional broadcasting media and online news organizations often focus on crisis events since they generate interest, and tailor their content to audience segments based on political beliefs. This may lead audiences to be exposed to relatively limited or politically-biased information about the causes of crisis events or the best policies/course of action to mitigate risk to individuals. As we saw with COVID-19, during times of uncertainty and crisis, the public may increase their reliance on social media to obtain information from social media platforms and online social network members they trust. At the same time, user-generated content on social media continues to proliferate at a rapid rate, allowing audience members to take on the role of "news" producer. Such content, including misinformation, is rapidly shared, reshared, and commented upon by others online as the (mis)information disseminates across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok"--