By Kati Bremme, Innovation and Foresight Department.
Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2025 3:56 am
In the spring of 2020, a report from the US State Department published by the Washington Post reported 2 million tweets relating to the virus, 7% of which spread conspiracy theories about Covid-19. The spread of false information does not date from the pandemic, but the phenomenon has increased during the crisis, with the WHO even going so far as to speak of an " infodemic ", an overabundance of information, some of which can be misleading or even harmful. Pauline Adès-Mevel points out: " Chinese storytelling is a story that has nothing to do with what happened. When we rewind, there is the Chinese discourse... and then the events since October and the arrival of the disease in this territory."
The implementation of emergency legislation is teacher database increasingly accompanied by a very broad interpretation of the notion of false information . Governments use the notion of “fake news” and disinformation to censor journalists and independent media. Bolivia defines disinformation so broadly that virtually any information can be declared “false”.
A resurgence of sanctions on this subject has been seen in Hungary (89th out of 180 countries in the RSF press freedom index), under the so-called “Coronavirus” law, adopted on March 30 by the Hungarian parliament. Russia also adopted a bill in April that provides for up to five years in prison for the dissemination of fake news relating to the coronavirus. Brazil (107th in the RSF index) and the United States (45th) are also practicing this strategy of discrediting the media. In Egypt , the Supreme Council for Media Regulation is calling on citizens to report questionable information published about Covid-19 by telephone.
The implementation of emergency legislation is teacher database increasingly accompanied by a very broad interpretation of the notion of false information . Governments use the notion of “fake news” and disinformation to censor journalists and independent media. Bolivia defines disinformation so broadly that virtually any information can be declared “false”.
A resurgence of sanctions on this subject has been seen in Hungary (89th out of 180 countries in the RSF press freedom index), under the so-called “Coronavirus” law, adopted on March 30 by the Hungarian parliament. Russia also adopted a bill in April that provides for up to five years in prison for the dissemination of fake news relating to the coronavirus. Brazil (107th in the RSF index) and the United States (45th) are also practicing this strategy of discrediting the media. In Egypt , the Supreme Council for Media Regulation is calling on citizens to report questionable information published about Covid-19 by telephone.