An Investigation of Misinformation Harms Related to Social Media During Humanitarian Crises

Abstract

During humanitarian crises, people face dangers and need a large amount of information in a short period of time. Such need creates the base for misinformation such as rumors, fake news or hoaxes to spread within and outside the affected community. It could be unintended misinformation with unconfirmed details, or intentional disinformation created to trick people for benefits. It results in information harms that can generate serious short term or long-term consequences. Although some researchers have created misinformation detection systems and algorithms, examined the roles of involved parties, examined the way misinformation spreads and convinces people, very little attention has been paid to the types of misinformation harms. In the context of humanitarian crises, we propose a taxonomy of information harms and assess people’s perception of risk regarding the harms. Such a taxonomy can act as the base for future research to quantitatively measure the harms in specific contexts. Furthermore, perceptions of related people were also investigated in four specifically chosen scenarios through two dimensions: Likelihood of occurrence and Level of impacts of the harms.