Editor’s note: Covid-19 has exposed fractures in the social and linguistic fabric in many contexts internationally, as we have been documenting in our series of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis since February. In our latest contribution, Mohamed Taiebine shares a perspective from Morocco and examines the social and cognitive conditions under which misinformation flourishes.
The special issue of Multilingua devoted to “Linguistic Diversity in a time of crisis”, which originally motivated the call for contributions to this series, has now been published and all the papers are available for free access.
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Covid-related misinformation in Morocco
African sayings related to crocodiles – the author at the Agadir Crocodile Park
The Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis has just published a report entitled “Moroccans and Quarantine: General satisfaction and cautious optimism”. The findings show considerable negative psychological effects of the pandemic despite the fact that most Moroccans are satisfied with the government’s measures to keep the epidemic under control. One of the reasons for this discrepancy may be information overload.
Since the beginning of the lockdown in Morocco on March 20, 2020, information and misinformation have abounded, and it has not been easy to distinguish between these two.
The closure of schools, cafes, hammams, restaurants, and mosques, together with the ban on mass gatherings, inter-city travel, parties and family celebrations have helped to keep the spread of the virus under control. But they have also been controversial and deprived people of functioning normally in a society.
Moroccans’ sources of information – and misinformation – have been social media, national and international TV channels, the internet, and communications from a range of social actors and groupings.
Social media, in particular, provide the ideal platform for the dissemination of misinformation.
The mimesis power of disinformation
The Covid-19 infodemic can be approached as a synthesis of concepts: a static signified (COVID-19) and a dynamic signifier (misinformation) are transformed in local, regional and global contexts.
Globalization has promised Moroccans – as many others around the world – wealth and prosperity together with equality and respect. Unfortunately, these have turned out to be chimeras. How is anyone to know that the measures taken to curb the spread of COVID-19 are not another such chimera?
Misinformation is like a carcinogenic cell that duplicates irrational and implausible facts, and then transforms them into a growth of seemingly trustworthy and verified information via social media. Misinformation is fueled by a melange of a bit of reality and a lot of chimeras.
It is in the nucleus where the misinformation is duplicated, echoed and confabulated into a form of neo-information or malignant misinformation that mimics the style, the content, and the source of credible information. Once the target audience has become trapped, the reptilian and emotional brain does not have the time or capacity to think critically due to cognitive overload. Thus, misinformation proliferates because the human brain is prone to cognitive bias and dissonance.
Lack of timely high-quality information is the perfect niche for misinformation to get a foot in the door and from there to create a web of lies and half-truths for the anguished and traumatized of this world for whom the pandemic is yet another disaster that incomprehensibly befalls them from afar.
The crocodile giggles while we paddle with the stream, as the proverb says.
Language challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic
Visit here for the full Language on the Move coverage of language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis. The special issue of Multilingua of 12 peer-reviewed research papers about “Linguistic diversity in a time of crisis” is available here.
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Hi Mohamed!
My name is Banie. It is interesting to read your post, which offers me a brief overview of what is going on there in Morocco. And I really like your word choice when writing the sentence of “Misinformation is fueled by a melange of a bit of reality and a lot of chimeras”, which is so meaningful. Given the current situation with the virus, lockdown, and nearly everything going online in my country, Vietnam, misinformation has been spread more easily and rapidly due to people’s reliance on the Internet and social media. However, the Vietnamese goverment has been taking measures to ensure that every citizen obtain accurate information. Some of the measures are advising people to make use of offical information sources like national TV channels, the government’s website, printed newspapers or punishing severely those who spread misinformation with fines or several-month imprisonment.
Hi Banie!
Many thanks for your kind comment. I really appreciate it! Indeed, Misinformation is this “reptilian part of the information”, it expands beyond rational thinking and geographical borders! The burning issue is how to deal with it when media as the Fourth soft power is a tool for the spread of both information and misinformation?
Thank you again for sharing with us your insights on the situation in Vietnam and how you are coping with it. Unlike your country, Morocco’s authorities are creating trustworthy channels of right and official information since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s the right of every citizen to be responsible of its degree of responsiveness to any kind of information but it shouldn’t’ be a vector to disseminate unverified facts which could lead to lawsuits. A rational, cautious and responsible monitoring of self-awareness of the facts around us may help to scrutinize what we should follow and know. This way, we can take control over fake news!