Infodemic and digital literacy : the role of digital literacy in combating misinformation of covid-19 on facebook

Abstract EN

Amid the spreading of COVID-19 globally since March 2020, Facebook has played a vital role in spreading information about the virus, its effects, and its consequences.

However, the viral nature of Facebook and its ease of spreading the information helped in circulating the misinformation about the virus and made it hard for its users to seek the correct sources of information about COVID-19 Pandemic among the millions of misinformed posts and content on it.

Hence, large populations of our world were facing a the COVID-19 and an infodemic along with it.

This is where digital literacy shows up as a vital skill to be possessed by the users of Facebook to find and evaluate information about COVID-19 Pandemic to help them understand the current situations and consequences of the ongoing pandemic.

The paper tackles the role of digital literacy as a skill possessed by Egyptian users in combating misinformation of COVID-19 Pandemic on Facebook amid the breakthrough of the pandemic since March 2021.

The paper also sheds light on the relevance of the topic on SDG no.3 (Good Health and Well-being) and SDG no.4 (Quality Education).

A survey was conducted to collect primary data to test the hypotheses of the paper's suggested model.