How a Crisis Researcher Makes Sense of Covid-19 Misinformation: Collective sensemaking during times of uncertainty and anxiety

Archiving the Pandemic
Dossiers Temáticos

Archiving the Pandemic

CES (com)vida 2020

Kate Starbird

OneZero

Overview

In this article Kate Starbird reflects on the double crisis we are experiencing, the Covid pandemic 19 and the information crisis. Starbird analyses how, in times of enormous uncertainty and anxiety, people actively seek information that allows them to interpret and make sense of the problems they face in order to make decisions, sometimes of life and death. It questions how disinformation phenomena and fake news, sometimes carried by political leaders, represent an information crisis that raises problems and challenges for populations, government institutions and social scientists.

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Photo: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images