Club Online Breakfast Zoom Event: Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic – A Matter of Life and Death

As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc internationally, the World Health Organization says we are facing an “infodemic” of misinformation that is hampering the public health response and causing confusion and distrust among people. With Hong Kong confronting its own third wave of infections and cases, receiving timely and science-based information on the disease and what precautions to take can be a matter of life or death. In this virtual FCC breakfast event, our speakers will discuss the real-world impact of misinformation about COVID-19 and how they are fighting it.

Kristin Urquiza launched her Marked By Covid online campaign after her father Mark, an otherwise healthy 65-year-old, died of the disease on June 30. He contracted COVID-19 after Arizona reopened and the governor encouraged people to resume their normal activities. The campaign statement says “we’re building a movement to fight back against misinformation” about the virus, with the aim of preventing similar tragedies. Kristin is also deputy director of the environmental organisation, Mighty Earth.

Claire Wardle is the director of First Draft, a non-profit that has been promoting news literacy, fact-checking and content verification on a global scale. She will explain how COVID-19 has left her organisation confronting a misinformation epidemic on an unprecedented level.

With most of the bogus information about COVID-19 being shared online, Alice Budisatrijo, who heads Facebook’s misinformation policy work in Asia-Pacific, will explain how the social media giant is dealing with the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on its platform.

This is the latest in a series of FCC discussions focusing on the impact of the pandemic, and we shall be holding more events related to the pandemic in the coming weeks.