ABSTRACT
This paper applies an anthropological lens to understand how news literacy education is shifting in response to what the WHO has termed an “infodemic” of misinformation about COVID-19. By applying anthropology’s long-standing interest in the power of metaphors to make sense of dramatic social changes, I explore how the WHO’s conceptualization of misinformation as being like a pandemic is reshaping news literacy education in the United States. According to the WHO, the infodemic is characterized by an “overabundance” of information, both accurate and not. Because of this, popular news literacy strategies like lateral reading, forensic fact-checking, and media bias analysis that encourage students to seek out additional information are not included in the WHO’s approach to combating misinformation. Instead, the WHO focuses on building trust in authoritative sources of health information and focusing on behavioral interventions over beliefs. This approach of building trust in key institutions and focusing on the actions enabled by information, accurate and not, holds important lessons for news literacy initiatives. Simultaneously, media literacy’s focus on empowerment and skill-building suggests important underexplored avenues for the WHO’s largely top-down efforts at combating health misinformation.
