Managing an infodemic in the global south: a systematic evidence synthesis from COVID-19 social listening reports

Vollständiger Abstract

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The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by a widespread infodemic characterised by rapidly evolving information, misinformation, and uncertainty, particularly within low- and middle-income country contexts. Social listening emerged as a critical tool for risk communication and community engagement by enabling real-time monitoring of public concerns, misinformation, and information gaps. This study presents a systematic evidence synthesis of national COVID-19 social listening reports produced in South Africa between 2021 and 2023 to inform infodemic management in the Global South. A total of 91 publicly available social listening reports were identified through coordinated national repositories and screened according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Following PRISMA 2020 guidance for transparent reporting, misinformation signals and corresponding recommended actions were extracted, thematically coded, and synthesised. The synthesis identified 964 instances of misinformation across 12 thematic categories, with dominant themes relating to COVID-19 disease management, vaccine safety, side effects, and conspiracy narratives. In parallel, 573 recommended action items were consolidated into eight thematic response domains, emphasising community-based engagement, targeted health education, communication strategy development, political and public figure credibility, and continuous monitoring and research. Building on these findings, the study proposes a circular social listening health priority nexus that operationalises the translation of misinformation signals into adaptive public health communication responses. While this synthesis does not evaluate the effectiveness of implemented interventions, it provides structured evidence to support decision-making and priority setting for infodemic management. The findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive, adaptive communication strategies and sustained social listening systems to strengthen public health responses to future infodemics in the Global South.