Krenare Rushiti

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic saw an increased interest of citizens around the world into the origin of this pandemic. The interest and curiosity to know more about the pandemic makes citizens believe any news that appears on this topic, without any screening whether it is true or not. Thus, the increase in cases of COVID-19 infections led to an increased need to deal with fake news during the pandemic.

The spread of fake news during the pandemic was also known as the “infodemic”. The risk of the infodemic was first mentioned by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Guterres. According to him, “with the spread of COVID-19, a tsunami of misinformation, hatred, scandals and intimidation started”.

Kosovo was also affected from this infodemic. For example, some of the comments on the website of the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) are:

“Stop lying, because you can’t even protect yourselves with this vaccine”,“The vaccine destroys your future”, “Who guarantees that taking it has no consequences?”etc.

In addition to comments of this nature, anti-vaccine groups have been formed on Facebook, calling for non-vaccination. These types of groups have around one thousand members and, in addition to videos and photos distributed and allegedly showing forced vaccination of people in different parts of the world, these groups also call for the avoidance of media information, in search for other information alternatives.

In addition to the formation of groups, online media in Kosovo also tend to spread disinformation, and according to a research conducted by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), from March 2020, around 3613 online media posts had content with irregular information. According to this study, many conspiracy theories have been spread in Kosovo through social networks during the pandemic, showing the ‘cure’ for the virus. According to this research, in 2020, a news item on Facebook showing that the PCR test only detects the infection but not who caused it, was shared 108 times on this social network, and 111,000 people liked it. Another fake news shared on Facebook stated that persons infected with COVID-19 were forcibly placed in hospital rooms and were killed, which post was shared 890 times, and 83,000 people liked it.

Consequences from such news may be cause of anxiety and stress, doubts on immunization, and total boycott of the anti-covid vaccine, which, in turn, further spreads the virus, and the emergence of increasingly more new variants. According to researchers from the World Health Organization, “about 800 people have died as a result of fake news about COVID-19.

Since fake news is disseminated through social networks and online media, with or without reason, it is important to use sanctioning mechanisms to prevent the spread of such news. In Kosovo, the sanctioning mechanism for traditional media, namely TV and radio, is the Independent Media Commission (IMC), as a body regulated by law. However, traditional media do not disseminate fake news as much, thus the IMC’s sanctioning role is more limited. The Press Council (PCK) is the sanctioning authority for the printed media, responsible for monitoring and raising awareness. PCK operates based on the code of ethics, and in case of violation PCK will issue an opinion, which is court-accepted evidence in a matter of a defamation or insult.

The recommendations of Democracy Plus for relevant institution in this regard are:

• The Ministry of Health should in cooperation with PSC, through the support of donor agencies, design a communication campaign where disinformation and fake news impact on COVID-19 are central part of the campaign.
• The campaign should illustrate cases showing how to distinguish real vis-à-vis fake news and design activities targeting youth to prevent creation and distribution of disinformation and fake news about COVID-19. Illustrations, scenarios should be used to better convince citizens for vaccination as well as prepare against fake news and disinformation.
• The campaign must target youth, media outlets, certain region, specific group age and deliver the messages accordingly. As such, campaigns through which general messages to the general audience are provided should be limited.
• The Ministry of Health, the PSC and Kosovo Police should cooperate closely in identifying fake news including sources of fake news and coordinate the fight against fake news and disinformation.
• The PSC should continuously work with the online media to prevent from publishing misinformation and fake news from translated articles from international media.
• The Ministry of Health and the PSC should work with the Kosovo Police to inform the latter on fake news cases either created or shared by Facebook fake accounts. The PSC and the Kosovo Police should then report such cases to the Facebook to close such accounts and remove fake news from Facebook.
• The Ministry of Health supported by donor agencies should draft instructions informing citizens about fake news during the pandemic, mitigating their effect in the vaccination process.
• Education and online training on fake news should be made available for citizens. A good example can be the D+ platform on fake news to learn more about the difference between true and false news. https://fakenews.dplus.org

  Disclaimer:

This article was produced under the EU funded project “Contribution to exposing flaws in institutional efforts to fighting COVID-19 pandemic through new legislation pieces and public contracts” implemented by Democracy Plus (D+). Its contents are the sole responsibility of its author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.