I did some serious rage tweeting in 2020. It was a dark time.

But a year later, I repurposed that energy and found myself on a misinformation journey.

I teach a freshman undergraduate seminar course at Stanford University entitled, “Does Social Media Make Better Physicians.” The course is about knowledge translation in medicine in the digital era, done through an examination of exemplar online educational resources. In the course, I discuss 3 rules for developing one’s professional brand online: (1) being consistent with messaging, (2) choosing the correct social media platform for your goals, and (3) producing relevant content for your online audience.

Until 2020, I was pretty good about the consistency of my brand. In general, I posted only about three topics: medical education, emergency medicine, and Stanford sports. Sure, I slipped in the occasional pop culture reference or responded to threads that didn’t concern medicine… but I largely remained committed to my burgeoning online brand.

That was until 2020.

I broke my social media rules that year in response to the overwhelming amount of false information about COVID-19 and the US presidential election on social media platforms. Though I didn’t use the words at the time, I was enraged about misinformation and disinformation… about the origins of the virus, farcical treatments, and the life-saving vaccine. Sick of the constant lies on social media, I rage tweeted. And the more I engaged in that practice, the angrier I became.

Then I came across a call for proposals for a grant from the Stanford Ethics, Society, and Technology Hub that allowed me to redirect my emotions into something productive. I partnered with one of my former students and we successfully obtained the grant to create a virtual conference about social media and COVID-19 misinformation named INFODEMIC. The conference was held in August 2021 and convened ethicists, physicians, public health experts, community health organizers, physician influencers, social medial representatives, politicians, and religious leaders… basically, as many types of stakeholders as we could get to offer unique opinions about how to address COVID-19 misinformation and disinformation online.

INFODEMIC was successful in two ways. First, we drew participants from 71 countries and hosted oral research presentations from investigators around the world. The reach of the conference was broad and our call to action was disseminated widely. But more importantly, the conference generated new knowledge about the subject, resulting in two papers that summarized specific recommendations for social media companies and physicians to better address misinformation online. (Links to the papers are below.)

INFODEMIC continues to live on. Listeners have viewed a recording of the conference online or listened to the audio of the conference as a podcast many thousands of times. And the Journal of Medical Internet Research sponsored a special theme issue in conjunction with the conference on the topics of “Social Media, Ethics, and COVID-19 Misinformation.” Researchers from around the world submitted manuscripts to this theme issue, many of which have been published or are in peer review at the time of this post. The investigators analyzed COVID-19 misinformation on social media platforms in different ways, adding to the body of knowledge created at INFODEMIC. Finally, I have been invited to lecture on the topic, “Combating Health Misinformation” numerous times at other institutions and professional society meetings; I speak about the findings of INFODEMIC, the related research it generated, and how to better communicate with patients about the issue.

In retrospect, I engaged in the topic of health misinformation for the first time in my career through rage tweeting. I had to get it out. But I’m proud of the energy later channeled into research and scholarship about this issue, and I am grateful to my colleagues who collaborated with me as I went on my misinformation journey.

For more information:

View the entire INFODEMIC conference here, or listen to individual INFODEMIC panel discussions and presentations as a podcast series.

Check out the JMIR special theme issue as it continues to grow.

Read an editorial that my colleagues and I wrote about, “The Deadly Infodemic.”

Read an original research paper that summarizes the INFODEMIC conference proceedings.

May 31, 2022

Co-Authors of INFODEMIC manuscript: Daniel Chambers, Tatum Minh La, Alexa Ryan, Adyant Shankar, Athena Xue, Rachel Anne Barber (all from Stanford University)