This article is more than 6 months old

This article is more than 6 months old

The NHS is launching a new initiative to fight coronavirus misinformation, a day after the government announced its own DCMS-led counter-disinformation unit, as conspiracy theories continue to spread on social media and elsewhere.

But, disinformation experts say, there remains little evidence of concerted efforts to spread falsehoods about the virus, suggesting that the misleading information in circulation is spread primarily through grassroots chatter.

For now, the health service’s efforts are focused on spreading accurate information about how to treat and prevent the virus, which causes the disease Covid-19.

NHS England has been “fighting bad advice and misinformation about the virus in the media and online, working with Twitter to suspend a false account posing as a hospital and putting out inaccurate information about the number of coronavirus cases, and publicly condemning homeopaths promoting false treatments”, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

The organisation is also working with social media companies to verify more than 800 accounts belonging to NHS organisations, including hospital trusts and local commissioning groups, in order to ensure that users know where to find trustworthy information.

It has already partnered with Google, Twitter and Facebook to ensure that members of the public searching for news about the virus are given the option of finding accurate information on the NHS website.

In a statement, Facebook’s vice-president for Northern Europe, Steve Hatch, said the company was “determined” to ensure users “can access credible and accurate information”.

Pointing to the way searches of relevant material on Facebook and Instagram trigger pop-up information from the NHS, he added: “We’re also removing false claims and conspiracy theories which have been flagged by leading health organisations and that could cause harm to people who believe them.”

Despite the prevalence of false claims about the virus, there is slim evidence of a concerted effort to spread misinformation.

Coronavirus: US says Russia behind disinformation campaign Read more

Experts said that while they detected Russian disinformation around coronavirus, the efforts did not seem particularly organised.

Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at social media intelligence firm Graphika, said that various “overt” false stories had been circulating, in particular that the virus was created by the US, Bill Gates or China.

But he added: “I haven’t seen what looks like a substantial covert campaign. It looks more like the sort of opportunistic disinfo that latches on to any developing story to troll perceived enemies, rather than a systematic and planned campaign.”

One of the criticisms that has been levelled at government agencies who have warned about Russian and Chinese disinformation relating to the coronavirus is that they have struggled to provide many examples, prompting criticism that the threat may be exaggerated.

Whitehall sources acknowledged that the work of the government’s counter-disinformation unit was in its early stages, and provided only a handful of already familiar examples of widely spread false claims – such as the allegation that coronavirus was originally a biological weapon – as well as medical misinformation, such as narratives casting doubt on the effectiveness of hand sanitiser.

Insiders said the unit “won’t provide heavy-handed rebuttals” but instead would analyse social media activity to work out how to promote narratives and reliable information.

Virus-based misinformation has spread particularly rapidly among subgroups already prone to conspiratorial thinking. On the UK’s largest anti-5G Facebook page, for instance, seven of the 10 most recent posts linked the mobile phone upgrade to the virus. Connections suggested by users included the claim that bats were “very sensitive to frequencies”, that the disease spread only in nations with 5G coverage, or that the pandemic was the first step in a plan to ban cash worldwide.

Researchers at media monitoring firm Commetric found similar overlap between coronavirus misinformation and pre-existing anti-vaccine groups. They also found strong connections between pre-existing “alternative news sources” and the spread of false narratives on Twitter, including alt-financial news site ZeroHedge and the Epoch Times, a Trump-supporting newspaper linked to China’s banned Falun Gong movement.