Misinformation and Covid-19 Infodemic: Identifying Offline Social Spaces for Infodemic Diffusion in Selected Communities in Northern Nigeria
Keywords:
Infodemic, Misinformation, Offline Social Spaces, Covid-19Abstract
The paper argues that there exists an intersection between social media and Informal Offline Social spaces. For the world to win the war against Misinformation on the Covid-19 ‘infodemic’, there is a compelling need to disseminate information on the pandemic and its safety protocols in Informal Offline Social spaces for information dissemination where even the vulnerable population in communities have access to. The structure proposition of Nugent's (2016) amendment to the Information grounds theory helped in identifying these channels. A qualitative case study design with embedded cases is adopted. 10 participants are purposively selected and interviewed from three tea houses that were chosen for the study. Findings indicated six informal channels of information dissemination exist in the Samaru community, Kaduna State. They are Businesses, Local Hangouts, and Venues for ceremonies, Transportation service stations, Essential Services, and Workspaces. The paper recommended diffusing information on coronavirus in these channels as they are used by people of different social classes in the community as information sources. This is because information emanating from these spaces is habitually trusted by people in the community.
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