Kigali–  Last week, I woke up on a WhatsApp text that was circulating across different groups, and as it has been the case during this period, the message was about coronavirus.

The message was telling people that the Ministry of Health was conducting a mass testing for the new coronavirus – Covid-19 – at two designated places, Nyamirambo Stadium and and Petit Stade in Remera.

The person who drafted the message made it look like they were doing people a favour.

"I felt like sharing this little info on the group just in case some1 needs to do the test,” the message read in part.

This was completely wrong, first, because this is not "little” information as he claimed and second, there is no single person authorized to announce such information other than a government institution or designated public officials.

A handful of countries like Germany and South Korea have been praised for their efforts to aggressively test for coronavirus on a mass scale, but many others do not have that muscle since they don’t really have financial safety net.

There was also something cliché about the message: a lot of grammatical errors and impolite language. If the person tried to sound genuine enough, he wouldn’t have used "some1” to mean someone or "+ve” to imply positive.

Quite similar false message had been widely circulated in March, indicating that 10 people had been tested positive. At a time, Rwanda had registered only one Covid-19 case.

The Ministry of Health came out to refute these messages, but such false information and rumours create more anxiety among people and limit the response to the virus.

The proliferation of fake news has taken a different direction in the era of the coronavirus pandemic, and it has been labelled a dangerous infodemic.

When the director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was speaking at the Munich Security conference, he said the world "was not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.”

He stated that fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous. And if we don’t tackle this "we are headed down a dark path that leads nowhere but division and disharmony.”

At a time, there were varied versions of what the virus was about that in some countries it caused riots and chaos.

In the US, Republicans and Democrats didn’t have the same language on how to respond to it, they had divergent views on the danger that the virus poses.

In Ukraine, citizens took to the streets to demonstrate against nationals and foreigners who had left Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus, because there were rumours that they were infected by Covid-19.

Why do we seem to see a lot of fake news coming our way in times where people desperately need real information?

In times of crisis like this, there’s a lot of anxiety among the people because of the uncertainty around it, so they tend to go around looking for information. That’s human nature.

Because of how desperate they need information, they will consume everything at their disposal even before giving it a second thought.

The upsurge of social networks and the internet has fuelled the spread of fake news. Today, when new cases of coronavirus are announced, you will find everyone’s status and feed posted.

The rise of social networks, technically, is not bad because clearly when an emergency situation happens in a village, someone with a phone could save people by simply sharing information in a faster way.

The problem comes when people share what they don’t understand about the source of that information.

People may share information for ideological purposes, economical reasons because many earn out of it. And since social media is an open platform, it is easier for such information to easily move faster. 

What to do

Media organisations and journalists are no longer guards of information, but the single most important task right now is to sensitise masses about the dangers of consuming every information that comes their way.

A picture of empty shelves in a supermarket and elsewhere is likely to fuel panic buying, for instance.

People have to rely on us but we also need to earn that trust. Journalists must avoid sensationalist reporting of events, and guess what, this is the time to go back to the basics: Verification.

It’s important to not throw information out there before verifying its source.

To the audience, always vet authors to find out if they have written anything before, be suspicious of sites that exaggerate in the way they report information, carefully check the grammar because trusted media organizations have strong editorial teams that ensure proper use of language and correct grammar.

It’s also critical to always follow trusted official government agencies.

Fighting infodemic is more than important today as the world grapples with coronavirus. It is everyone’s role.

The writer is a journalist .

The views expressed in this article are of the author.