Infodemic Management

World Health Organization image showing people pushing away unwelcome information

Infodemic Management is a World Health Organization initiative designed to suppress information counter to the WHO narrative. An "Infodemic" is described as "too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak."^[1]

Infodemic Definition

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization defines an "infodemic" in part as "too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak." "Infodemic Management", therefore, is the "systematic use of risk- and evidence-based analysis and approaches to manage the infodemic and reduce its impact on health behaviours during health emergencies."^[2]

Confronting Health Misinformation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Healthy Information Environment

A document by US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's office titled "Confronting Health Misinformation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Building a Healthy Information Environment" explains:^[3]

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been exposed to a great deal of information: news, public health guidance, fact sheets, infographics, research, opinions, rumors, myths, falsehoods, and more. The World Health Organization and the United Nations have characterized this unprecedented spread of information as an “infodemic.”

[...]

"Misinformation has caused confusion and led people to decline COVID-19 vaccines, reject public health measures such as masking and physical distancing, and use unproven treatments. For example, a recent study showed that even brief exposure to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation made people less likely to want a COVID-19 vaccine. Misinformation has also led to harassment of and violence against public health workers, health professionals, airline staff, and other frontline workers tasked with communicating evolving public health measures.

Research & Innovation

From the Infodemic webpage:^[4]

WHO is working with partners across society to strengthen the scientific discipline of infodemiology. The purpose is to build and deliver sustainable tools that health authorities and communities can use to prevent and overcome the harmful impacts caused by infodemics.

Through partnerships, WHO works to bolster digital capabilities and leverage social inoculation principles to foster higher digital and health literacy, build resilience to misinformation, and deliver innovative ways to reach communities with reliable health information. Here are a few of those innovations:

Developing a public health research agenda that provides guidance for where to invest in research to better understand, measure and respond to infodemics

Establishing EARS [Early AI-supported Response with Social Listening]^[5], an early AI-supported response and social listening tool to help health authorities quickly identify rising narratives and “information voids” that interfere with people getting the information they need to make good health choices

Running a weekly aggregate of publicly available social and news media, web analytics and online search data to identify and understand online infodemic-related conversation patterns

Conducting visual network analyses to better understand the ecosystems where misinformation is able to thrive

Establishing a repository of ~200 active COVID-19 fact-checking groups that verify COVID-19 related claims in more than 40 languages

Refining an AI-based infodemic observatory to assess the current status of misinformation and disinformation diffusion

To advance progress on infodemiology, WHO regularly convenes the global community for conferences to discuss and chart ways forward on infodemic management topics.

Social Listening Webinar

Social Listening in Infodemic Management for Public Health Emergencies

A World Health Organization Webinar titled "WHO EPI-WIN Webinar: social listening in infodemic management for public health emergencies: guidance on ethical considerations" dated April 7, 2025 aims to suppress "misinformation", build trust, and ensure consistent health messaging:^[6],^[7]

"The Social listening in infodemic management for public health emergencies: guidance on ethical considerations being launched provides ethical guidance for governments, ministries, departments, agencies, organizations and individuals engaging in social listening for infodemic management practices in preparation for, during and after public health emergencies. As infodemic management involves addressing the spread of overwhelming health information during public health emergencies, it focuses on reducing misinformation and building trust in health authorities and ensuring consistent public health messaging to prevent confusion and harmful behaviours.

Social listening has a crucial role in identifying community questions and concerns, values and beliefs. Data gathered from social listening provides additional evidence to allow informed decisions and recommendations to be made to address health misinformation, disinformation, information voids and other critical issues that are related to recommended public health action. Although they are useful activities, social listening and infodemic management come with risks, including privacy breaches, misuse of data, human rights violations, potential harm to vulnerable populations, and erosion of trust in health institutions. To mitigate these risks, this document offers an ethical framework to govern and ensure responsible and ethical social listening in infodemic management practices. The document covers the technical definitions of terms, ethical challenges in infodemic management, alignment with human rights, substantive and procedural ethical principles. The document presents proposed actions for translating ethical principles for infodemic management into real-world practice.

Moderator: Kai von Harbou
Opening remarks: Chikwe Ihekweazu
Social listening and infodemic management in the context of community protection: Nedret Emiroglu
Motivation of the project and objectives: Andreas Reis / Kai von Harbou
Overall structure of the document, architecture, process, evidence: Nikola Biller Andorno
Experience from representative of expert group:

David Scales

Elodie Ho

Q&A session: Sandra Machiri / Becky White
Closing remarks: John Reeder

American Public Health Association Conference

American Public Health Association 2023 Conference logo

The World Health Organization Infodemic Management team presented at the 2023 American Public Health Association Conference.

One presentation titled "Infodemic insights on evidence and research narratives: A deep-dive exploration of digital data"^[8] discussed "different ways published research and official evidence and data has been used to drive or reinforce people’s misinformation, public health and social measure acceptance, and vaccine hesitancy narratives." Further:

There are examples of misinterpretation and misuse of data, as well as a lack of trust in health authorities and institutes. The number of studies that appear to show conflicting findings led to confusion. There is a need to increase scientific literacy on a broad scale and to build the capacity of those reporting on research. Better understanding the ways official research and data is discussed on digital channels can help in help with prevention and preparedness planning."

The authors were: