Global public health emergency due to Covid-19 pandemic

misinformation, information asymmetry and discursive validation

Abstract

The aim is to investigate and discuss the informational processes and dynamics surrounding the global public health emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with an emphasis on the manifestations of disinformation surrounding the origin of the virus, the measure of social isolation and treatments. As theoretical foundations, it discusses the concepts of informational disorder, misinformation, information asymmetry and discursive validation. The Covid-19 pandemic updates the discussion of power strategies, in a context characterized by the diffusion and intense use of information in real time, the simple use of technologies for the editing of images and texts and the emergence of scientific negacionism and post-truth. This is one of the main novelties of this pandemic, which raise critical questions of sincerity, truthfulness and honesty. Sincerity concerns the subjective dimension, truthfulness about the objective dimension and honesty about the social dimension. At the same time, news on the Internet resumes the discussion about fraud which is, in a way, an update on the issue of "manipulation" in the media. The health warning statement by the World Health Organization gives a global dimension to controversies about objectivity in thepandemic. Changing the way of communicating from one to many, to communicating from many to many, makes information issues more complex. In the Covid-19 pandemic, there are many tensions, controversies and conflicts among health authorities, researchers, health professionals, critical thinkers and human and social rights defenders. Highlights the importance of discursive validation of information as the dissemination of information in society faces the filter of public use of reason, particularly sharpened by the horizon of human finitude.