Health: Disinformation
(asked on 6th January 2022) - View Source
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking in order to guard against misleading health information being made available online.
Answered by
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government takes the issue of health misinformation and disinformation very seriously. That is why we stood up the Counter Disinformation Unit on 5 March 2020 to bring together cross-Government monitoring and analysis capabilities to provide a comprehensive picture of the extent, scope, and reach of misinformation and disinformation.
The Counter Disinformation Unit works closely with social media platforms to help them identify and take action to remove incorrect claims, in line with the platforms’ terms and conditions, and to ensure the promotion of authoritative sources of information.
The upcoming Online Safety Bill will have robust and proportionate measures to deal with misinformation and disinformation which could cause significant physical or psychological harm to an individual, such as falsehoods about COVID-19.
We have also developed the SHARE checklist which aims to increase audience resilience by educating and empowering those who see, inadvertently share, and are affected by false and misleading information.