The increasing trend of environmental disaster due to changing climate has escalated the occurrence of Tsunami, Forest fire, Flood, Epidemics and other extreme health and environmental and hazardous events across the globe. Establishment of effective and transparent communication during the crisis phase is extremely important to reduce the after-effects of the events. In recent times, fake news or news with fabricated content have emerged as major threats of communications during and and post -disaster phase. The present study critically evaluates the nature and consequences of fake news spread during the four major environmental disasters in recent era (Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Keralan Flood, Amazon Forest Fire and African Ebola Epidemic) and prepared a framework for present COVID-19 Pandemic. The criticality and potential threat created by the fake news have been quantified and analyzed through the timeline of news spreading. It has been observed that the adverse impact related to the African Ebola Epidemic was highest due to its multiple fake news origin sites, both online and offline propagation methods, well fabricated content and relatively low effort on containment. However the COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing disaster expected to have a long- drawn impact covering most countries in the world with combined consequences hence it tends to overtake all other events. Policy recommendations have been prepared to combat the spreading of fake news during the present and future environmental disasters. The importance of the study relies on the fact that the number of environmental disasters will increase in future and strategy for risk communication during the time is still not explored adequately. In addition the study will contribute significantly for understanding the present status of information paradigm for COVID-19 and helps in preparing region-specific real-time contingency measures for effective risk communication.

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The present study is an attempt to understand the propagation of health-related fake news in India during COVID-19 pandemic in diversely distributed WhatsApp groups comprising uneven groups of members. Ten different WhatsApp groups were selected covering demographic and socio-economic profile and ten most important health-related fake news were studied. Different fake news circulation paths like forward, react, multi-forward, reference etc. were analyzed for different groups. It was observed that older generations (boomers) were more susceptible towards fake news and they tended to distribute the fake news in different groups. Male boomers actively circulate pseudo-science information whereas female boomers distribute faith-based information in the WhatsApp group. It was found that the Gen X as well as Millennials played a role as the first recipients or first responders but primarily most of the forwards were attributed to the Boomers of both genders. Levels of education, social media influence or ignorance, technology access, age, gender and understanding played a major role in the distribution and propagation of fake information during times of COVID. It can be also inferred that easy availability of data and devices, lack of understanding of the game of social media and unscientific baggage of age old beliefs were some factors for over -dependence and reliance on fake news.