Background An infodemic is an overflow of information of varying quality that surges across digital and physical environments during an acute public health event. It leads to confusion, risk-taking, and behaviors that can harm health and lead to erosion of trust in health authorities and public health responses. Owing to the global scale and high stakes of the health emergency, responding to the infodemic related to the pandemic is particularly urgent. Building on diverse research disciplines and expanding the discipline of infodemiology, more evidence-based interventions are needed to design infodemic management interventions and tools and implement them by health emergency responders. Objective The World Health Organization organized the first global infodemiology conference, entirely online, during June and July 2020, with a follow-up process from August to October 2020, to review current multidisciplinary evidence, interventions, and practices that can be applied to the COVID-19 infodemic response. This resulted in the creation of a public health research agenda for managing infodemics. Methods As part of the conference, a structured expert judgment synthesis method was used to formulate a public health research agenda. A total of 110 participants represented diverse scientific disciplines from over 35 countries and global public health implementing partners. The conference used a laddered discussion sprint methodology by rotating participant teams, and a managed follow-up process was used to assemble a research agenda based on the discussion and structured expert feedback. This resulted in a five-workstream frame of the research agenda for infodemic management and 166 suggested research questions. The participants then ranked the questions for feasibility and expected public health impact. The expert consensus was summarized in a public health research agenda that included a list of priority research questions. Results The public health research agenda for infodemic management has five workstreams: (1) measuring and continuously monitoring the impact of infodemics during health emergencies; (2) detecting signals and understanding the spread and risk of infodemics; (3) responding and deploying interventions that mitigate and protect against infodemics and their harmful effects; (4) evaluating infodemic interventions and strengthening the resilience of individuals and communities to infodemics; and (5) promoting the development, adaptation, and application of interventions and toolkits for infodemic management. Each workstream identifies research questions and highlights 49 high priority research questions. Conclusions Public health authorities need to develop, validate, implement, and adapt tools and interventions for managing infodemics in acute public health events in ways that are appropriate for their countries and contexts. Infodemiology provides a scientific foundation to make this possible. This research agenda proposes a structured framework for targeted investment for the scientific community, policy makers, implementing organizations, and other stakeholders to consider.

Background COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by an Infodemic (overabundance of information, including misinformation and disinformation, both online and offline); in response to this Infodemic, WHO launched the EARS platform (Early AI-assisted Response with Social Listening), showing real-time information about how people are talking about COVID-19 online. This information is intended to serve health information professionals to understand narratives and needs of the general public, in order to inform policy or communications decisions. Methods Data is collected daily from online conversations in publicly available sources, including Twitter, online forums, and blogs in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, for 20 pilot countries. Once the data is collected, it is processed and classified into 39 categories, according to a set of pandemic public health taxonomy. The classification is made based on semi-supervised machine learning. Results Top 5 categories across regions are Covid-19 vaccine, Transmission settings, Personal measures, Testing and Industry (industry refers to the impact of the pandemic on the economy). We find that conversations around Covid-19 vaccines usually rank in the second or third position in all regions and represent 9%-12% of the conversation. Conclusions The configuration and application of the EARS platform has enabled progress towards more scalable and sustainable social listening to inform Infodemic management and response, compared to previous methods which were more manual, required data scientists in the team, or had fewer analytics capabilities. Future work will focus on gradually adding more data sources which can expand coverage and representativity. Key messages Discuss social listening methods for greater accountability to affected populations. Formulate insights into how digital media and information technology can be better utilized for more rapidly responding to the evolving needs of communities.

Background Following the World Health Organization's initial infodemic consultation in April 2020, a major infodemic conference was organised virtually in June-July 2020. Hundreds of experts participated to define science of infodemiology and build a public health research agenda that serves as a playbook for conducting relevant researches. Research Agenda provides guidance to invest in research and innovation so that we have better interventions and tools to understand, measure and respond to infodemics, and steer people towards timely, accessible, understandable information for good health choices. Methods The research agenda was developed during a virtual meeting, followed by research question prioritization exercise. It consisted of eight days spread out over four weeks. These were made up of: public preconference meeting; scientific conference, consisting of opening/closing plenary meetings either side of four separate “topic sprint” days; final public meeting to present the meeting outcomes. After the meeting, a process took place to gather and rank research questions based on the research agenda created during the meeting. Results The following five streams and 65 research questions were developed. Measuring and monitoring the impact of infodemics during health emergencies Detecting and understanding the spread and impact of infodemics Responding and deploying interventions that protect against the infodemic and mitigate its harmful effects Evaluating infodemic interventions and strengthening resilience of individuals and communities to infodemics Promoting the development, adaptation and application of tools for managing infodemics. Conclusions Five streams with 65 research questions were developed and prioritized to structuralise infodemic management based on evidence. The conference yielded on the development of an infodemiology glossary, which can be used by the community of research. Key messages Discuss investments in research and innovation to enable a whole-of-society response to infodemics. Explain the practice of infodemic management as a discipline.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying infodemic are significant public health issues. The COVID-19 infodemic has been prolific from early in the pandemic response, and has continued to escalate during vaccine rollout. COVID-19 is the first pandemic in the social media era, expediting the need for effective measures to manage the high volume of information and misinformation. To address the infodemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) and others have commenced a comprehensive program of work, building capacity, raising awareness and developing new tools and methods. As part of the WHO capacity building effort, they have developed a comprehensive infodemic manager training program. The authors of this paper are Australian alumni from the first two training courses, all authors have health promotion backgrounds. Health Promotion Practitioners are uniquely positioned to build on existing skills, knowledge and reach to develop preventative strategies to help mitigate infodemics. This paper offers our combined perspectives on why the infodemic is a significant health promotion concern and the role we believe Health Promotion Practitioners can play in managing and mitigating the infodemic.

Issue The World Health Organization describes an infodemic as an “overabundance of information - good or bad - that makes it difficult for people to make decisions for their health.” Description of the problem On April 7-8, 2020, the WHO Information Network for Epidemics (EPI-WIN) held a global online to crowdsource ideas from an interdisciplinary group of experts to form a novel COVID-19 infodemic response framework. The online consultation comprised of four plenary sessions and a brainstorming session conducted entirely online. Nearly 1500 individuals from over 100 countries and territories spanning social scientists, epidemiologists, staff from ministries of health and institutes of public health, registered for the consultation. Results A set of 50 proposed actions for a framework for managing infodemics in health emergencies was developed that will provide guidance for governments and public health institutions to take in five key areas of action that emerged from the consultation: strengthening evidence and information simplifying and explaining what is known fact-checking and addressing misinformation amplifying messages and reaching the communities and individuals who need the information quantifying and analysing the infodemic, including information flows, monitoring the acceptance of public health interventions, and assessing factors affecting behaviour at individual and population levels strengthening systems for infodemic management in health emergencies Lessons Everyone has a role to play Read the Call for Action Sign the Call for Action https://www.who.int/news/item/11-12-2020-call-for-action-managing-the-infode Key messages The confusion due to Infodemic can lead people to ignore public health measures and take risks that can cause serious harm. Recognizing this WHO convened an interdisciplinary group of experts 7-8 April 2020 virtually to form a novel COVID-19 infodemic response framework.