Are We Really Living in an Infodemic? Deconstructing a Buzzword

Dr Chico Camargo is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Data Science, and Felix M. Simon is a Leverhulme Doctoral Scholar student on the DPhil in Information, Communication & the Social Sciences at the OII.

Together, they describe the main consequences of the uncritical adoption of the term ‘infodemic’ in the development of rigorous science on the topic, and further argue how the uncritical adoption of it in policymaking can do more harm than good, highlighting the risk of terms such as ‘an infodemic crisis’ being used to validate authoritarian government politics.