Infodemic Emergency in Italy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Web Interest in Sources of Dis-Misinformation, Epidemiologically Dangerous Behaviors, and Vaccine Hesitancy During COVID-19

Abstract

Infodemic Emergency in Italy: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Web Interest in Sources of Dis-Misinformation, Epidemiologically Dangerous Behaviors, and Vaccine Hesitancy During COVID-19This paper investigates the web interest of Italian users in sources of COVID-19 dis-misinformation and assumption of behaviors in contrast to the anti-pandemic vaccination regulations. Infodemic keywords have been mined and verified thanks to the fact-checking websites "Bufale.net" and "Butac.it" and then searched on Google Trends. Multi-comparative tests and linear regressions were employed to compare the relative search volumes of the pre-pandemic (2017-2020) and post-pandemic (2020-2022) periods. These findings reveal a drastic and widespread growth in the web interest of Italian netizens towards sources of fake news and illegal and epidemiologically risky practices such as the purchase of counterfeit green passes. Among the investigated keywords, the web interest in disinformation channels such as "ByoBlu" and "Radio Radio" recorded the most significant relative increase, especially during the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022. The relative search volume towards keywords such as "buy green pass," "unlimited green pass," (buy green pass-related query), "fake green pass cost," "fake green pass where to find it" increased from 40% to 350% during the first week of February 2022. Other relevant queries in the same period were "create fake green pass," "how to create fake green pass," "how to have fake green pass" and "fake qr code green pass". Moreover, the query "cancel vaccine" reached 7% of all web searches containing the word "covid" from January 2021 until February 2022. All related queries concerned the cancellation of the COVID-19 vaccine reservation and were reported as "breakout" (i.e., drastically increasing) and were growing during the first week of February 2022 (from 50% to 110%). Nonetheless, this query could be influenced by the number of new COVID-19 infections (cross correlation=0.46, P<.001, lag=4 weeks). In conclusion, government authorities are recommended to take appropriate action to limit these phenomena promptly.

Rapid-antigen testing for SARS-CoV-2 in Germany: Citizens’ selective granting of freedoms for negatively tested, vaccinated, recovered, and other citizens

“…In sum, evidence-based information about testing benefits and testing performance may contribute to both the individual (informed testing decisions and informed acceptance of granting) and the societal perspective (population-wide highly frequent testing intentions) on the large-scale implementation of rapid testing in times of a pandemic. Our indirect assessment of acquaintances' expected behaviors to cope with test-based granting suggests that between 10 to 30% of people potentially would cheat or prepare cheating to pretend a negative status, which is in line with actual web queries (Rovetta, 2022) and Darkweb markets (Georgoulias et al, 2022). At the same time, responses regarding compensation behavior indicate that up to 50% of people would have avoided untested people or places where they meet.…”

Request for Immediate Intervention by the Public Health Authorities to Counter the Infodemic Related to the Russian Attack in Ukraine

“…Furthermore, the population has already fronted pandemic fatigue resulting from two emotionally challenging years. In this regard, in Italy -one of the countries most affected by COVID-19 -there has been an alarming increase in the nonadherence to anti-contagion measures, even going so far as to buy or make counterfeit green passes [3].…”

“…Users frequently search for conflict news, which can easily lead to fake news reading. The accredited anti-hoax website "Butac.it" -known for having been adopted in various infodemiological investigations and for collaborating with the Italian National Federation of Orders of Physicians and Dentists [3] -reported that the same sources of COVID-19 disinformation are now active about the conflict [5]. For all these reasons, we strongly suggest that government authorities implement adequate information strategies and use Google Trends to quickly monitor citizens' war-related web searches and topics of growing hype in order to intervene promptly and in a targeted manner.…”