Infodemic Management for Social and Behavior Change: Youth Mobilization for Combating Disinformation During COVID-19

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Abstract

This study discusses an undergraduate elective university course as a notable case for youth mobilization in combatting misinformation during COVID-19 with positive social and behavior change outcomes of an indicative nature. Remote modality of the civic engagement course entailed students’ voluntary work at partnering with society organizations specialized in new media technologies. Students’ engagement with the civil society organizations’ three different research and implementation projects as a form of voluntary work enabled them to mobilize in accordance with a vital dimension of infodemic management, namely engagement of communities to take positive action. Results derived from a mixed model research present that individual change observed on the students’ knowledge, attitudes and practices as well as social change objectives of partnering institutions and the course are modestly positive, suggesting replication of adapted course design and implementation in relevant contexts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The Global Youth Mobilization (GYM) is a movement of young people taking action to improve their lives and their communities founded in the context COVID-19. Powered by the world’s largest global youth organizations – also known as the Big Six and supported by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Foundation, GYM aims to address the negative impacts of the pandemic on young people and support them to build back better (Global Youth Mobilization, 2022, p. 4).

² Video recordings of public presentations and group reports submitted upon project completion were subjected to a qualitative content analysis to seek themes and patterns which indicate changes in knowledge, attitude or behavior.

³ The significance of a node (smallest unit in a network) is identified by employing network metrics. In this study centrality measures are utilized accordingly to rank the relative importance of nodes, revealing the shared meaning of students’ outcomes. The number of edges or lines connected to a node is called degree, a node’s total distance, proximity from the other nodes in the network refers to closeness, based on shortest paths betweenness shows how well a node serves as a link with other nodes (Montazeri, de Bildt, Dekker, & Anderson, 2020). Articulation point is a node that separates a connected component into two or more distinct parts when the node and its connections are removed (Ohara, Saito, Kimura, & Motoda, 2018). Lastly, a valued core is a maximal sub-network in which each node co-occurs with other nodes at least a specific number of times, depending on the measure’s value (Criscuolo, Salter, & Sheehan, 2007).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.