People rebutting and "mythbusting" online mis-information around Covid-19 may be inadvertently spreading it further, a science advocate warns.
Speaking this morning to TVNZ 1's Breakfast, Dr Jess Berentson-Shaw said many will be tempted to speak out when they see statements or theories online from people which are wrong.
"When we mythbust, what we end up doing is repeating the untrue information, and in the age of social media when things move so rapidly, what you actually can be doing is laundering this information," Ms Berentson-Shaw said.
"Repeating it is not particularly useful because you haven't got to the heart of why people are believing and spreading that information.
"What we need to do is take a step back and understand why people believe misinformation - misinformation about where Covid-19 came from might be based on ideas of xenophobia or racism, misinformation about cures might be based in fear and anxiety," she said.
Some people were sharing information with good intentions due to anxiety and the desire to find a cure or vaccine for Covid-19, she said.
Ms Berentson-Shaw said the focus should be on health experts reaching out to people who are trusted in communities and asking them to share correct information.
"We hear info from the people we trust and we believe it," she said.
"The first thing is understanding who people trust - and messengers are really important here, so for some people, they definitely trust scientists or official government information.
"But there will be people who don't trust the government and there will be people who don't trust scientists, so we need to have messengers who those people trust telling us the good information.
"There's a lot of work to do to reach out to those people and say, hey, this is the good information, we need you to spread it within your communities."
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