While the COVID-19 pandemic continues its global devastation, numerous accompanying challenges emerge. One important challenge is to efficiently and effectively use recently gathered data and find computational tools to combat the COVID-19 infodemic. An infodemic is an overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – occurring during an epidemic. Rampant conspiracy theories, disinformation, misinformation, and various types of scams can spread fast by taking advantage of human gullibility, fear, and ignorance. Therefore, there is a pressing need to manage the infodemic to help people find trustworthy information and reliable guidance during this global public health crisis. AI for Good holds a lot of potential for solving societal problems including combating the infodemic, while challenges remain. It is important to integrate theories from different disciplines to help with the COVID-19 crisis.
In this special issue, we provide an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and practitioners to combat the COVID-19 infodemic. We expect novel research to study the understanding, detection, mitigation, and measurement of the COVID-19 infodemic and potential future outbreaks. To facilitate further research in COVID-19 infodemic, this special issue welcomes interdisciplinary research articles, new open access datasets, repositories, and benchmarks, broadening research on crisis informatics and its development.
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