Marcia Diaz - WhatsApp and Disinformation around COVID-19

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WhatsApp and Disinformation around COVID-19

Abstract

This paper examines the role of WhatsApp in the spread of disinformation in the context of the Covid-19 epidemic. Disinformation has been a big problem on this platform for many years, experts argue that it's harder to control the spread of it because of the private nature of the groups that communicate through the platform. WhatsApp has been central to many information phenomenons in places of the so called "developing world", from supporting the rise of right wing candidates in Brazil, to causing violent lynchings in India.

How did WhatsApp become the default instant messenger in these regions? what does this mean for the safety of people in this places during a global pandemic? In this essay I explore how WhatsApp has been used both as a tool in the spread of disinformation, as well as a medium to combat it. I will do this by comparing the cases of Brazil and India, two different countries that share surprising similarities in their internet use.

Whatsapp has been used as a tool in a lie machine, to generate distrust in governments and institutions, putting the lives of people at risk and causing thousands of deaths, the only way we can stop lie machines is to learn how they work.

WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular instant messaging applications with 2 Billion active users in more than 180 countries around the world (“About WhatsApp”, n.d), it’s the preferred instant messenger of people who live in regions such as Latin America, the Caribbean, India and Africa. In 2020 WhatsApp has played a central role in the Covid-19 pandemic; On the one hand it’s being used to spread misinformation and disinformation about the virus. On the other hand it’s being used by governments to give reliable information to citizens to protect themselves and to access state resources and help.

In this essay I will question how and why WhatsApp became the default messenger in many parts of the world. I will also explore the affordances of this specific app and what this means for the spread of disinformation in the context of a global pandemic. For this I will examine the use of WhatsApp in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic by focusing in the cases of Brazil and India, two countries which might not seem related but are similar in many ways: Both are growing economically especially in the tech sector and are in the top 5 countries with most internet users (Čirjak, 2020). They’re also the two countries with most WhatsApp users in the world (WhatsApp, 2019) and also have the most Covid-19 cases after the United States (“WHO Coronavirus Disease Dashboard”, 2020).

WhatsApp was designed as an alternative to SMS, it allows for end-to-end encryption of text, images, voice messages and videos for safe messaging through the internet. WhatsApp was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who are ex-yahoo employees. The app was launched in 2009 with an investment of $250,000 seed funding from other ex-yahoo employees. The app attracted the interest of sequoia capital, a venture capital firm which invested $8 million dollars in the company in 2011 (Wauters, 2011). WhatsApp was later acquired by facebook in 2014 for $19 Billion US — One of the largest acquisitions to that date — According to a facebook news press release the objective of this acquisition was to “bring more connectivity and utility to the world by delivering core internet services efficiently and affordably” (“Facebook to Acquire WhatsApp”, 2014).

WhatsApp is very popular in so-called “emerging” markets, this success can be attributed to the following factors: Its simple design allows for less data use in markets where data is very expensive such as Brazil, India and Mexico (Meola, 2016). In other countries such as Argentina it’s included in telephone’s data plans so it’s free to use, unlike text messaging which is expensive. This creates a problem according to journalist Valentin Muro who explains that this generates an unfair advantage for WhatsApp over other messengers, discouraging competition and forcing users to use WhatsApp (Muro, 2017). Another reason for the success of WhatsApp is internet.org, a facebook initiative to “bring” the internet to the developing world through “a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use” (Lunden, 2014), which would give facebook the power to acquire, monetize and exploit data from people who live in these places.

In 2020 WhatsApp reported a 40% increase in usage during the Covid-19 epidemic (Perez, 2020), this is due to factors such as users connecting with family and friends during the crisis as well as people having more free time to spend using social media. The increased use of WhatsApp has also unleashed a second pandemic: One of disinformation which has been referred to as a “disinfodemic” by the WHO (Galhardi et al, 2020). WhatsApp's design affordances make it very hard to moderate: Unlike facebook or twitter, WhatsApp’s groups are private and are composed of people who know and trust each other. Messages can be forwarded to thousands of contacts without a trace because all messages on WhatsApp get encrypted when they’re sent and received. Messages don’t specify a creator, so every time a message is re-shared the sender looks like the original source of the content. And finally users are only attached to a phone number, but no real names are necessary to use the service. These characteristics make it very hard for fact-checking organizations to stop or follow certain messages, which makes it very hard to correct or debunk the disinformation that is being shared (Funke, 2018).

The messages and content that are being shared on the platform are a mix of misinformation and disinformation, Caroline Jack defines misinformation as “information whose inaccuracy is unintentional” this type of information spreads when journalists don’t verify their sources before publishing the news (Jack, 2017, 2) In the case of WhatsApp, these news get picked up and shared by individual users thus spreading mistaken information. On the other hand disinformation always has a purpose to destabilize, Philip Howard explains that disinformation is purposefully crafted and placed to deceive someone and trick them into believing a lie that serves someone’s political interest (Howard, 2020).

In countries where WhatsApp is popular political parties have used it to circulate positive propaganda about their candidates and to distribute disinformation about rival parties. Such is the case in Brazil, where the current administration has used WhatsApp, twitter and facebook in massive operations to boost the image of the controversial far-right president (Avelar, 2019) who as other populist far-right leaders has had a deficient response to the pandemic. When covid-19 first hit Brazil in early march 2020 false news started spreading through brazilian social media, 73% of these messages were shared through WhatsApp (Galhardi et al, 2020), which is very popular in Brazil reaching 120 million users.

Brazil has many characteristics that made it easy for misinformation about Covid-19 to spread: there is little trust in the institutions that are supposed to keep citizens safe; the president made light of the pandemic and attacked public health institutions producing conflicting information that confused citizens. This atmosphere of distrust was exploited by various agents to spread disinformation about the virus, generate doubt around official cases and data, and in some cases to take advantage of people by seizing people’s confidential information (Galhardi et al, 2020).

In this climate many groups that were already fact-checking political disinformation began investigating false information about the Covid-19 epidemic, they have used WhatsApp as a channel to receive reports of false messages which are later fact-checked in their web portals and social media accounts. Groups such as agencia lupa, aos fatos and boatos.org have been crucial in the fight against disinformation, these groups make part of the #DatosCoronaVirus Alliance which is led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute (Tardáguila & Mantas, 2020). By using WhatsApp as a medium to fight disinformation these groups have reached the people who are already in the platform, and have also created a direct communication channel between journalists, researchers and the general public, creating a more transparent connection where trust can be built.

Another country that is fighting back against disinformation is India, where there are 340 million WhatsApp users. India had already struggled with disinformation in WhatsApp in 2018 when a series of messages with disinformation that became viral resulted in a series of lynchings that claimed the lives of 30 people (Dixit, 2020). At the beginning of the pandemic multiple rumors about home remedies started spreading on the app, as well as many conspiracy theories surrounding the origin of coronavirus, Journalist Nishita Jha explains that “The scary part of coronavirus-related misinformation isn’t the people who believe it, it’s the lack of good information to counter it” (Jha, 2020). Faced with this lack of good information the Indian ministry of health launched a chatbot with WhatsApp to help fight disinformation and to create awareness about the virus, citizens can contact this line to receive information in the form of text, videos or infographics (Chaturvedi, 2020)

Attending the controversies around the disinformation that was spreading in the platform facebook and the IFCN have awarded more than half a million grants to projects that were focused in combating disinformation in the platform through fact-checking, translation of trusted content and support to public authorities. Some of the groups I have discussed above have been supported by these grants (“The Coronavirus Fact-Checking Grants”, 2020). Facebook also took steps to stop the spread of disinformation by limiting the times a message can be forwarded in WhatsApp, this doesn’t stop the spread but it makes it a slower process (Dixit, 2020).

To conclude, WhatsApp has become a platform that is susceptible to be used to spread false information. In the context of Covid-19 governments, journalists, researchers and even facebook have joined forces to stop disinformation by using the same tools that are being used to generate it. It’s possible to stop disinformation if we learn why and how disinformation is being produced, how it’s being spread and who benefits from it, as Howard explains “By closely examining lie machines, we can understand how to take them apart.” (Howard, 2020).

References:
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