Brown Daily Herald: ‘Living archive’ of Black health care workers’ experiences during COVID-19 pandemic launches. “‘The Black Frontline,’ an oral history project chronicling the experiences of Black health care workers from around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, launched in an event hosted by the Department of Africana Studies.”
Johns Hopkins University: Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Data Hub Ends After Three Years. “Johns Hopkins University & Medicine’s Coronavirus Resource Center ceased collecting and reporting COVID-19 data today—three years after the institution embarked on the unprecedented effort of publicly tracking and analyzing an unfolding pandemic in real time.” The end collection date was March 10.
Northwestern Now: Survey: Half of Americans uncertain about ability to identify false political claims. “Only 8% of nearly 25,000 Americans correctly identified all false political claims presented to them as part of a recent national survey. The survey also found that those who believed false vaccine statements were more than twice as likely to believe inaccurate claims about politics when compared with those who could correctly identify false vaccine claims.”
Syracuse University: ‘The Barriers Have Been Removed!’ New Research Explores the Rise of Digital Music-Making in Schools During COVID-19. “New research by David Knapp, assistant professor of music education in the School of Education and College of Visual and Performing Arts, sets out to assess the extent to which creating, arranging and storing digital music online has increased in music education classrooms, especially during and after the coronavirus pandemic that sent learning online in 2020-2021.”
CDC: CDC launches website to help consumers find free COVID-19 testing sites . “Tests offered may include laboratory-based nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs), including polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, and rapid antigen point-of-care (POC) testing. Results are typically provided within 24–48 hours. Testing is available at pharmacies, commercial laboratory sites, community sites, and retail locations.”
Washington State University: COVID-19 conspiracy theories that spread fastest focused on evil, secrecy. “In the early pandemic, conspiracy theories that were shared the most on Twitter highlighted malicious purposes and secretive actions of supposed bad actors behind the crisis, according to an analysis of nearly 400,000 posts.”
Stuff New Zealand: Learning to lie: AI tools adept at creating disinformation. “Artificial intelligence is writing fiction, making images inspired by Van Gogh and fighting wildfires. Now it’s competing in another endeavour once limited to humans – creating propaganda and disinformation.”
Northeastern Global News: Can ‘digital traces’ from internet searches and social media predict outbreaks of COVID-19?. “A team of scientists including Northeastern University machine learning expert Mauricio Santillana says internet users’ ‘digital traces’ can be adopted to alert public health officials to sharp increases in COVID-19 at the county level one to six weeks ahead of a major outbreak.”
AFP: Robert F. Kennedy Jr sues media outlets over misinformation initiative. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr, son of the slain US presidential candidate, and other anti-vaccine activists have filed a lawsuit against several news organizations that have banded together to fight misinformation. The nearly 100-page complaint…accuses the media outlets and social media companies of colluding to censor other online publishers with alternative Covid narratives.”
Global News (Canada): Kraken, Elon Musk and dead Canadian doctors: Disinformation surges 3 years into the pandemic. “The bogus theory – promoted by a small group of Canadian doctors who have spent the pandemic falsely claiming or suggesting that the vaccine kills or harms people – insists, without proof, that the vaccine may have played a role in the death of an ever-growing number of physicians. Global News has spent months investigating the list of doctors and speaking to their families and has found no link of the COVID vaccine to any of their deaths.”
Illinois Department of Public Health: IDPH and DPI launch an online COVID-19 tracker. “The Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) announced today a new website that tracks the levels of COVID-19 in wastewater samples in Chicago and other cities across Illinois. On the new site, visitors can search by city or county for up-to-date figures and trendlines from any one of 75 wastewater treatment plants around Illinois that are voluntarily collecting samples of raw sewage to be screened for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Utah State University: USU COVID-19 Oral History Digital Collection Now Live. “The last time USU faced a pandemic was more than a hundred years ago, in fall 1918. Evidence, especially firsthand accounts, of that period in USU’s history is limited in the archives. The University’s Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives sought to ensure that generations of future historians would be able to understand the institutional effects of COVID-19 on USU by collecting oral histories of USU administrators, faculty, staff and students as they experienced the effects of a global pandemic.”
Ohio State News: Why technology alone can’t solve the digital divide. “For some communities, the digital divide remains even after they have access to computers and fast internet, new research shows. A study of the Bhutanese refugee community in Columbus found that even though more than 95% of the population had access to the internet, very few were using it to connect with local resources and online news. And the study, which was done during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home orders in Ohio, found that nearly three-quarters of respondents never used the internet for telehealth services.”
Poynter: Misinformation is swirling online about COVID-19 vaccines and Damar Hamlin’s collapse. “Hamlin tackled Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins during a Jan. 2 game at Paycor Stadium. As millions watched, Hamlin stood up after the hit and moments later fell to the ground. Social media users seized on the incident and used it to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines contributed to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest.”
Associated Press: China Suspends Social Media Accounts of COVID Policy Critics. “China has suspended or closed the social media accounts of more than 1,000 critics of the government’s policies on the COVID-19 outbreak, as the country moves to further open up. The popular Sina Weibo social media platform said it had addressed 12,854 violations including attacks on experts, scholars and medical workers and issued temporary or permanent bans on 1,120 accounts.”
