Another virus is spreading more and more. When fake news cause an info-demic
The terms epidemic and pandemic are unfortunately more current than ever and scary, because they are related to a virus that is causing too many victims and is changing our lives. But there is another word that we should start to know, because it identifies another phenomenon that is doing more and more damage, often very serious. This word is “infodemic””.
Infodemic is the uncontrolled spread of a multitude of distorted, partial or even deliberately invented news that alarms and makes it difficult – if not impossible – to distinguish the true from the false about facts and situations that, like the coronavirus emergency, would instead need correct information.
Infodemic has always existed. The day before yesterday it was created by legends, more or less metropolitan, mostly spread orally. Yesterday it was called disinformation and it was blamed on radios, televisions and newspapers.
Today we talk about fake news and we point the finger at the internet and social networks, identified as the main perpetrators of the infodemics that poison our understanding of the present, our expectations for the future and even our memories of the past.
So much so that there are those who have proposed new regulations inspired by the intention to hit their own and above all social networks, criminalizing them and/or forcing them to control published content, censoring false information.
A dangerous trend because the decision regarding truthfulness of a news is not always easy or objective
