How do we make sense of an overload of information during a crisis? The CIP’s Kate Starbird reflected on that question and her experience as a crisis informatics researcher in light of the recent COVID-19 epidemic and accompanying “infodemic” in a Medium post she shared on Sunday, March 8, 2020.
She writes:
“Historically, the biggest challenge for communities experiencing a crisis event was often a lack of information, especially information from official sources. In that void, people would share information with their families, friends, and neighbors, to try to make the best decisions. In the connected era, the problem isn’t a lack of information, but an overabundance of information and the challenge of figuring out which information we should trust and which information we shouldn’t trust.”
