Reference no: EM133262000

Question: Explain some factors that prevent people having access to correct and reliable information about important issues that affect them, such as public health. (Write ONE paragraph only, of a maximum of two hundred words.)

Kant et al. (2021, pp.49-50)

The widespread increase of COVID-19 and the resultant global pandemic has become a focus of intense social media discourse with Twitter reporting a COVID-19 related tweet every millisecond and the hashtag #coronavirus surging to become the second most used in 2020 (Cinelli et al., 2020; Josephson & Lambe, 2020). Unfortunately, false, and misleading information about COVID-19, potentially dangerous treatments, and eventual vaccination continue to grow on social media platforms. 'Infodemic' was the subject of an early COVID-19 study by Cinelli et al. (2020), who used epidemic modelling to the spread of information on multiple platforms to determine fundamental reproduction numbers for the 'transmissibility' of postings on each platform. Additionally, irrespective of platform, there were no significant differences between the disseminating patterns of information considered questionable compared with reliable ones. There is also growing worry that vaccine-related conversations are not confined to legitimate human accounts. Broniatowski et al. (2018) looked at how accounts belonging to robots (software programmes which create automated material) and trolls (internet accounts that falsify the user's identity and whose goal is to provoke conflict) operate on Twitter. It is worth noting that the current trends in COVID-19vaccine discourse bear a striking similarity to historical trends. Vaccine discourse on social media has had time to evolve, with such trends in discourse often coinciding with real-world public health events (Gunaratne, Coomes, & Haghbayan, 2019). For instance, Gunaratne et al. (2019) demonstrated that anti-vaccine discourse on Twitter experienced a significant surge in 2015, coinciding with the 2014 2015 measles outbreak, publication of the anti vaccine book Vaccine Whistleblower (#cdcwhistleblower), and the release of the film Vaxxed (#vaxxed). It also demonstrates that pro and anti-vaccine content may also naturally disseminate into distinct communities, possibly due to self selection on social media, further enhanced by online algorithms, amalgamating like-minded communities to contrasting online information and content. For example, anti-vaccine content on Twitter largely coalesced into a community centred around #cdcwhistleblower and #vaxxed proponents, while pro-vaccine content primarily centred around the hashtag #vaccineswork (Gunaratne et al., 2019; Ortiz-Ospina, 2019). Content appears to transfer between users who share similar sentiments regarding vaccination but rarely across those with differing opinions, suggesting the structure of such platforms may give the illusion of debate, but in practice mainly serves to reinforce previously held opinions rather than the consideration of new ones (Yuan, Schuchard, & Crooks, 2019). Such ideological isolation may limit the ability of public health to promote vaccination on social media (Yuan et al., 2019). TOP

Piller et al. (2021, pp.505-506)

Around the world, the exclusion of linguistic minorities from fair and equitable access to social participation, including education, employment, welfare, or health is common (Avineri et al. 2018; Piller 2016a). During a disaster, the availability of timely, high-quality information becomes even more vital, not only for the general public but also health professionals and decision makers at all levels (Xiang et al. 2020). A mismatch between the language in which such information is communicated and the linguistic repertoires of those who need the information serves to exacerbate the effects of disasters on linguistic minorities in comparison to the majority population (Uekusa 2019).

States are not the only actors in our globalized world, and information circulating on traditional and social media emanates from a wide variety of social actors, ranging from media corporations via political parties to large numbers of highly diverse community groups and grassroots efforts. Some of these are specifically dedicated to making public health information available in languages insufficiently served by state actors (e.g., Haimovich & Márquez Mora 2020; Lising 2020; Yu 2020). Others have contributed to an "infodemic", where populations who do not have access to timely, high-quality information are simultaneously being swamped with TOP misleading information (Zarocostas 2020). A combination of language barriers, on the one hand, and low levels of trust in official communications, on the other, have made minority populations particularly vulnerable to misinformation and fake news, as has been found in Dutch (van Liempt and Kox 2020) and European Union (Burke 2020) research. All these communication challenges matter because individual outcomes have greater influence on the overall course of the COVID-19 pandemic than is the case in most other disasters. As anyone can become a carrier of the virus, prevention and containment efforts minimizing the personal risk of individuals are deeply intertwined with the overall risk to the community.

Manca et al. (2021, p.13)

Ellison and Boyd (2013) argued that social media researchers ought to describe not just what participants in social media research are doing, but also the socio-technical context in which participants are acting. This review suggested that researchers are still navigating the tension between literacy as autonomous skills that can be carried from one platform to the next, and literacy as situated and contextualized. This review suggests a sort of middle ground, with skills often being context-dependent (i.e., knowing how to collaborate on Facebook is different than on Twitter), while metaknowledge about the purposes and outcomes of participation may be similar across social media spaces (i.e., identity change or political mobilization). That is, social media literacy may be a combination of local skills and global meta awareness. The "glocal dimension" of social media suggests not only the complexity of social media literacy, but how composition, dynamics, and affect shape literacy - that is, while researchers continue to combination of local skills and global meta awareness. The "glocal dimension" of social media suggests not only the complexity of social media literacy, but how composition, dynamics, and affect shape literacy - that is, while researchers continue to argue for global approaches to social media literacy, the context in which local skills were realized influences literate practices. For example, reading on Twitter and Facebook may appear be similar (i.e., reading from the top down, facilitated by scrolling design, perusing content shared by connections), but localized skills of critical thinking, media literacy, and resistant reading may be more or less meaningful to combat mis- and disinformation depending on platform policies. That is, social media literacy may entail cognitive skills, collaborative practices, and participatory approaches that are influenced by local context and commercial imperatives. This dimension of literacy seems particularly relevant and crucial now, as being socially media literate demands conceptual knowledge of information flow in a platform economy (van Dijck, Poell, & de Wall, 2018), as well as an ability to understand how this information flow may be shaped by a range of non-human actors, such as the conjecture that almost 50 percent of accounts involved in a recent disinformation campaign may be bots (Hao, 2020). Being literate in a social media space also demonstrates a need to attend to critical competencies and orientations known as "technoethics" (Krutka et al., 2019), where users go beyond a cognitive understanding of social media platforms to advocate for greater transparency, systematic challenges to mis-and-disinformation promulgated on social media, and regulatory approaches to rein in the abuses that stem from competencies and orientations known as "technoethics" (Krutka et al., 2019), where users go beyond a cognitive understanding of social media platforms to advocate for greater transparency, systematic challenges to mis-and-disinformation promulgated on social media, and regulatory approaches to rein in the abuses that stem from media consolidation and concentration. Of course, attending to techno-ethical dimensions of social media literacy implies a certain comfort and orientation towards collaboration, if not embrace of the participatory practices of meaning-making. It may be the case that becoming socially media literate means not just demonstrating behavioral or conceptual awareness, but spurs one to act in collaborative or participatory ways that demonstrate more than passing interest in equitable learning and techno-ethical behavior.

NOTE: 'et al.' means 'and other authors'. So use 'Kant et al.' as the author name for the first text. If you refer to the authors in your own sentence, use Kant et al. (2021).... If you place the citation after the information, use (Kant et al., 2021).