El reto de la tecnología en la lucha contra la infodemia por COVID-19

An investigation was carried out to find out the effect of the use of technology in the fight against the COVID-19 infodemic, through searches in Google Trends, using Google and Instagram trending hashtags, between the months of January to June 2020. The search it consisted of the use of trending hashtags or nicknames from the official nomenclature on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. To determine the severity of the various infodemic nicknames that circulate on the Internet, the median of the individual scores provided by 5 experts in digital library science was used, values that were later totaled to generate the infodemic scale, which ranges from 0 (minimum) to 10 (maximum). Most of the information searched in those periods consisted of generic or unofficial sources; in contrast, it stood out in specific searches with a non-infodemic term: “COVID-19”. Of this group, 5 were sustained over time (without a breakpoint) and 11 with a breakpoint, that is, they increased their relative volume with respect to the previous period. The challenge of technology is to induce the population to use the official terminology of health events in the search for information, news and knowledge on the web, thus avoiding the infodemic and its consequences.