Pandemic vs Infodemic

 

Friendly handshakes have become a no-no; conferences, events, games and large gatherings have been canceled; universities are conducting their classes online to keep their students off campuses; tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook and many companies - big and small are asking their employees to work from home.

While the pandemic of Covid-19 is plummeting stocks, emptying shelves at grocery stores and forcing the leaders of the world to close their doors to economic boom and travelers, here are a few snippets of what the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling the “infodemic,” created by social media.

·         TikTok raked up 27 million views of the first video posted by WHO, on measures that people can take to protect themselves from coronavirus.

·         Sprinklr counted a record nearly 20 million mentions of coronavirus-related terms on March 11.

·         The medical face mask emoji was No. 5 on the most used emojis.

·         Twitter has been getting a tweet on Coronavirus every 45 milliseconds!

What’s Trending

On March 11^th, Tom Hanks fed his Instagram followers his “unusually” usual post of a lone glove – except this time it was a lone disposable glove in a medical hazard bag - after declaring that he and his wife had the coronavirus and were quarantining themselves. This post has received 2.7 million views within a couple of days.

Google Trends showed the following search terms to be at the top and that hit 100 within the last several days:

1)      Coronavirus: beat the search term Trump - which is unusual in any given week, as Trump has been the most popular search term for years.

2)      Lysol: beat Kim Kardashian, which has never happened in Google’s Search history and stores are announcing that they are out of Lysol.

3)      Perishable Foods, “prepping” and “survivalism” saw a boost when it was announced that perishables must be stocked up.

4)      Social distancing also saw an increase in search when school closures were announced, and large gatherings were canceled.

5)      Cancel trip also a boost as people were trying to figure out if they should cancel their preplanned trips and vacations as they searched areas for outbreak of the virus.

6)      Another interesting search was dog coronavirus as people worried about their pets and animals catching the virus when one story was rumored that a dog tested positive for the virus in China.

7)      Beards drew a lot of attention when CDC put out a visual explaining how different facial hair would break the seal of respirators. However, shaving was not searched indicating that maybe men were not about to part with their facial hair yet!

8)      Netflix Stock search term took a boost even though rest of the stocks plummeted – as people hoped that it would rise in value as the general population practiced social distancing and self-quarantining.

The Social Media Response

In their blog post “Brand communications in times of crisis,” Alex Josephson and Eimear Lambe  of Twitter have suggested that brands inform, rather than sell. “It’s about understanding the unique role your brand plays in people’s lives, how that has changed and how your brand can help or be useful during this crisis.”

Facebook is scrambling to clean up misinformation about the virus and has pledged to give WHO as many free ads as it needs to disseminate accurate information about Covid-19. Facebook has also banned any ads selling face masks.

LinkedIn has announced that it will offer many of its courses for free for those working at home. Google has said that it would give free access to the advanced features of its G-Suite to its G-Suits customers so they can hold virtual meetings or stream live events to thousands of people.

Final Thoughts

In a Martech Today article about working during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dana Tan of Under Armor says, “I am very happy that as a digital marketer I can do my job from my home. Grocery store clerks, food service workers and many others do not have this luxury.”

Hmm.. will digital marketers really be able to keep working if everybody around us is unable to? Well, that’s a topic for another blog post! For now, as digital marketers staying home, let us not contribute to the “infodemic,” instead, let’s learn from it and apply that knowledge to our work at Reingold; also practice good hand washing and yup, go ahead – reach for that Corona beer but for sure do not hug the elderly!