还记得新冠疫情爆发之初，“米国懂王”“防疫猪队友”特朗普一直用“武汉病毒”甩锅中国吗？

今天要聊的Buzzword Infodemic就和这没有来由、没依据的“甩锅行为”有关。

Infodemic is a combination of two words “information” and “pandemic”.

中文里把它翻译成 “信息疫情”, 简称 “信疫”。

I'm sure you've heard of the expression going viral.

现在网络特别是社交媒体上, 如果一条新闻或者一条视频火了, 我们通常会说going viral病毒式的传播。

But with more and more Information going viral overnight, what we can encounter is an infodemic.

By definition, an infodemic is a rapid and far-reaching spread of both accurate and inaccurate Information about something, such as a disease.

所谓 “信息疫情” 就是指关于某一个话题一个事情, 比如说一个病毒, 整个网络会涌现出大量的真真假假的信息, 而这些信息会迅速的蔓延到互联网的每一个角落。

As facts, rumors, and fears mix and disperse, it becomes difficult to learn essential information about an issue.

而随着这些事实、谣言还有恐惧不断的交织和传播, 作为普通人, 我们就很难了解关于这个事情的核心的有效信息。

Origin of Infodemic

Now since we're still not out of the current pandemic, you might think the word infodemic has come out of the covid years;

but actually this word isn't new, it was coined in 2003, the year of SARS.

可能有的人会觉得infodemic这个词是在新冠这几年才出来的新词, 但实际上它是在03年非典的时候就被创造出来了。

And it was coined by journalist and political scientist David Rothkopf in a Washington Post column.

Back then he said, SARS is the story of not one epidemic but two, and the second epidemic, the one that has largely escaped the headlines, has implications that are far greater than the disease itself.

That is because it is not the viral epidemic but rather an "information epidemic" or infodemic that has transformed SARS into a global economic and social debacle.

他当时就说非典其实要对付的是两个疫情, 一个是病毒的疫情, 还有一个造成更大的社会和经济影响的就是infodemic.

Infodemic

An infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.

So what is Infodemic ？

And to explain what is infodemic, he said,

a few facts, mixed with fear, speculation, and rumor, amplified and relayed swiftly worldwide by modern information technologies,

have affected national and international economies, politics and even security in ways that are utterly disproportionate with the root realities.

简单来讲, 他嘴里的infodemic就是说一些事实, 但是掺杂进了恐惧、猜测、流言;

然后被现代信息技术在世界范围内迅速放大和传递, 以完全扭曲根本现实的方式, 在国家和国际范围内影响经济、政治甚至安全。

And two decades later, in 2020, alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, an infodemic of misinformation and disinformation raises concerns for information quality in online environment.

而非典之后差不多20年, 我们这几年经历的新冠疫情, 让人们对infodemic有了更多的担忧和讨论。

This effect was demonstrated in a study of news stories shared on Twitter;

And in the study, news stories rated as incorrect by fact-checking organizations spread to far more people than factual articles did.

推特上就做了一个这样的研究, 结果发现经过事实核查被证明是不实的信息, 它的传播速度远远超过真正的事实。

就连世卫组织总干事谭德赛也在2020年时候就说到,

We're not just fighting an epidemic.

We're fighting an infodemic, referring to fake news that spreads faster and more easily than this virus.

他就说到，我们不光在打疫情这场仗, 还在打infodemic信息疫情的这场仗, 说的就是疫情期间虚假的信息传播的比病毒还要快。

And WHO explains that infodemics are an excessive amount of information about a problem, which makes it difficult to identify a solution.

They can spread misinformation, disinformation and rumors during a health emergency.

从世卫组织的角度, infodemic它的危害就在于在我们面临一个health emergency公共卫生的紧急事件的时候,

比如说大规模的疫情, infodemic会传递很多misinformation错误信息, disinformation虚假信息, rumours流言/谣言...

会阻碍我们真正寻找有效解决方案的进程。

How to combat infodemic ？

But living in such an information era, how to combat infodemic?

那到底怎么样面对和管理infodemic.

Now researchers have come up with a few suggestions.

Information monitoring or infoveillance；

信息监控和监管。

Building eHealth Literacy and science literacy capacity;

提升公众的认知, 这里主要是指的公众对于网上医疗卫生类信息的检索能力和分辨能力。

Encouraging knowledge refinement and quality improvement processes such as fact-checking and peer-review;

鼓励知识求精和知识质量的提升, 比如推广事实核查 fact-checking和同行评审 peer -review.

Accurate and timely knowledge translation which minimizes distorting factors such as political or commercial influences.

为了避免因为政治经济因素对于信息进行了扭曲, 我们也需要对各种语言的信息进行及时和准确的翻译。

Now to combat or to even control epidemic in this day and age is going to be gigantic task, but hopefully at least we now know where to start.

Now to combat or to even control epidemic in this day and age is going to be gigantic task, but hopefully at least we now know where to start.

Now let's move on the sample sentence.

例句示范

Example 1：

-Infodemics can spread misinformation and create confusion and distrust among people.