Communication strategies in the infodemic era

Abstract

The disruptive revolution brought by internet and social media platforms in the last two decades have had major repercussion in the conceptualization of the world of information and many of its dynamics. In the last decade we have a conspicuous crescent amount of scientific literature focused on social media environments and, consequently, many new fields of application and research studies have spread. Social media platforms possess an accessible democratic nature that opens to everyone the territories once lead by the mass media, official sources of political parties, organizations, and governmental institutions. In this article we will explore some of these peculiar dynamics and phenomena examining how social media have been involved by and have contributed to constructing the frame of the current global pandemic caused by Coronavirus. We also try to demonstrate that structural changes in communication, made possible by the very nature of the digital dimension of social media, and the narrative-subjective approach to the facts have undermined the epistemological basis of truth.

Keywords

• Communication
• COVID-19
• Fake News
• Infodemic
• Social Media