The Government has stepped up its fight against disinformation on the internet.

It may have taken the coronavirus pandemic for the UK Government to take a coordinated approach to tackling fake news but today’s move to create a Rapid Response Unit is welcomed.

Infodemic unit

The unit operating from within the Cabinet Office and 10 Downing Street is tackling disinformation. It targets range from individuals and organisations sharing disinformation to criminal fraudsters running phishing scams.

“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization.

The Tortoise has worked with the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy to study the infodemic. It showed that misinformation about a virus behaves like a virus.

“46,000 tweets were posted every day linking to unreliable information about the virus, ranging from conspiracy theories that China had created it in a lab to fake cures advising people to drink bleach, gargle water, or eat garlic.”

The Rapid Response Unit sits at the heart of Government coordinating a response with appropriate departments. This includes direct rebuttal on social media, working with Google, Facebook and Twitter to remove harmful content and ensuring public health campaigns are promoted through reliable sources.

“We need people to follow expert medical advice and stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives,” said Oliver Dowden, Culture Secretary.

“We’re working with social media companies, and I’ll be pressing them this week for further action to stem the spread of falsehoods and rumours which could cost lives.”

The issue of fake news and disinformation has become acute in the past two weeks as the Government has introduced a lockdown. Everyone seems to have discovered a friend in the army, Government or health service with insider information.

Up to 70 incidents a week, often false narratives containing multiple misleading claims, are being identified and resolved.

The Rapid Response Unit is one of the teams feeding into the wider Counter Disinformation Cell led by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), made up of experts from across Government and in the tech sector.

The Cell is engaging with social media platforms and with disinformation specialists from civil society and academia, to establish a comprehensive overview of the extent, scope and impact of disinformation related to coronavirus.

How to spot fake news

To help the public spot false information the government is running the SHARE checklist and Don’t Feed The Beast campaign here. This gives the public five easy steps to follow to identify whether information may be misleading:

• Source - make sure information comes from a trusted source

• Headline - always read beyond the headline

• Analyse - check the facts

• Retouched - does the image or video look as though it has been doctored?

• Error - look out for bad grammar and spelling

Online harms and disinformation inquiry

DCMS has also announced a committee to investigate online harms and disinformation.

DCMS called on members of the public to flag up examples of disinformation and misinformation on social media about COVID-19. It will hold hearings with social media companies to focus on what is being done to tackle deliberate attempts to present false narratives about COVID-19.

Examples sent in by members of the public will be considered as evidence to be presented to the Government and to social media companies.