Coronavirus, conspiracies and cries of election fraud marked 2020 as the year of the infodemic. But the worst may be yet to come
RMIT ABC Fact Check
TueTuesday 22
updated
WedWednesday 23
Misinformation has spread like wildfire in 2020.
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Bill Gates became a supervillain, arson was blamed for catastrophic bushfires and dead people were said to have cast votes in the US presidential election: never before has there been a year so polluted by misinformation as has 2020.
When the director-general of the World Health Organisation declared in February that the world was fighting not just a pandemic but also an infodemic , it was not immediately clear just how prophetic that statement would prove to be.