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This article is published in the Sydney Morning Herald here
There are two pandemics happening right now, a medical one and an information one. Both wildly destructive to our health.
We have been inundated with a massive wave of information since the Delta outbreak in Sydney began. Every intricacy about each vaccine, stay-at-home orders for every region, government grants. The next day more explosive intricacies and details about the vaccine, new stay-at-home orders, new government grant analysis
Then we have every person weighing in on all of this on social media. About 6000 tweets are posted onto Twitter every second. That’s 350,000 tweets a minute or 500 million tweets a day. “COVID NSW” has been trending for weeks, full of tweets devoted to giving us even more information, opinions, criticisms about COVID-19. The same thing is happening on Facebook, Reddit, WhatsApp, websites and blogs. The list goes on and on.
We are mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted from information overload. The problem is that that exhaustion can encourage us to step out of the mainstream news and seek out simpler information and solutions. I’ve been told multiple times by friends and colleagues lately that they have stopped listening to “The News”, stating that it’s too much and that they’re losing hope.
Hello misinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories! Posts on WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook present extreme yet easy to understand solutions. Such posts are everywhere and because we are information-tired they are becoming our quick-fix, go-to place to keep up to date.
Think of the information landscape as a layered cake. The bottom layer is the real and fact-based information that we find on the Service NSW website or from reputable news platforms. This, however, is squashed by layers and layers of opinions, conspiracy theories, unfounded information and lies that enter our field of vision every time we go online. It’s appealing because it is easy to understand, there’s not too much detail and it is written to convince us.
The problem is all this content sits alongside each other when we see it online, and it’s difficult to differentiate one layer from the other. We are highly vulnerable right now, our faith in authorities is waning and, as a result, we can make some poor decisions based on unfounded, non-fact-based content.
I’ve been studying our engagement with technology for over 15 years and I see our digital lifestyle much more clearly than I ever have. With all the good that technology offers, the information-overload/misinformation nexus is a defining feature of the digital age, and we have to shape our practices so that we stay healthy despite this. By we, I mean us as individuals, but also the government and other places we need to get the facts from.
We need new strategies; here are some ideas to kick us off. Colour-code posts by the organisations that we need to hear from for our health. NSW government posts that provide vital information should not look the same as posts by “Rogerlovesus” who says he is telling us the information the government is keeping from us. These colour-coded posts can then be distributed along all social media channels and will stand out.
Official government information needs to be written for a changing audience. This not only means that it’s translated into different languages, but considers the audience’s needs and shapes content so it speaks to us in different contexts and moods.
It also means being aware of who and what we are listening to and why. If we are going to thrive in the digital age we need to be aware of how misinformation seeps into our world and how it impacts us. Self-awareness and digital literacy are key. That’s the only way we can have our digital cake and eat it too.
