Feb. 08. 2020

It’s no coincidence that internet phenomena share a vocabulary with certain diseases. As fast as a viral pathogen can spread in a world connected by air travel, bad information can move even faster.

Half of the top 10 most shared English-language links about coronavirus on Facebook from the month of January were hyperbolic, fear-mongering and at times blatantly misleading articles from actual news outlets, according to a review of data from CrowdTangle.

Among the blatantly misleading is an article by the Daily Mail suggesting that the coronavirus outbreak was caused by Chinese people eating “bat soup” that was shared more than 96.000 times on Facebook.

The “bat soup” canard is a classic example of disinformation – and a potent one. Like much of the most persuasive disinformation, the story involves elements of truth taken out of context and repackaged in a way that seems true because it affirms a particular worldview.

In this case, actual footage of a Chinese woman eating a bat in soup was ripped out of its actual context and spuriously linked to the fact that some coronaviruses originate form bats, in order to create a narrative that appealed to a western audience’s racist fascination with Chinese appetites.

Unsurprisingly, articles debunking the story have not traveled nearly as far on social media as the original versions did, according to CrowdTangle data. And while the damage that is story did will likely never be measured, it will undoubtedly be felt by people of Asian descent around the world, whether they are kids being picked on at lunchtime or adults treated with disrespect while doing their jobs. The viral infection won’t kill us, but it will weaken us.