Note: This Paper Has Not Yet Undergone Formal Peer Review
Note: This paper has not yet undergone formal peer review Evaluating the infodemic: assessing the prevalence and nature of COVID- 19 unreliable and untrustworthy information in Aotearoa New Zealand’s social media, January-August 2020 6 September 2020 Max Soar1,2, Victoria Louise Smith1,3, M.R.X. Dentith4, Daniel Barnett5,6, Kate Hannah1,2,7, Giulio Valentino Dalla Riva8, Andrew Sporle5,6 1. Te Pūnaha Matatini: Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems and Networks, New Zealand 2. Centre for Science in Society, Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington 3. Faculty of Science, University of Auckland 4. University of Waikato 5. Department of Statistics, University of Auckland 6. iNZight Analytics 7. Department of Physics, University of Auckland 8. School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury Abstract The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand saw New Zealanders presented with the accompanying infodemic. Aotearoa New Zealand’s experience, which is characterised by mis- and dis-information, as well as the emergence of a number of conspiracy theories, is linked to international patterns within the COVID-19 infodemic overall, but also displays significant situated and differential themes and impacts. We evaluate the prevalence of the COVID-19 infodemic in social and mainstream media February-August 2020, and analyse the narrative intent and social or political discourses of the content collated. In evaluating the nature of COVID-19 narratives over this time period, we find that there are significant changes in the types of discourses these narratives engage with, with an increasing prevalence of conspiracy narratives noted since the re-emergence of community transmission in August.
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