Principal Findings
We found misinformation circulating through South Asian networks is largely aimed at providing alternative explanations for the etiology and spread as well as alternative treatment and prevention methods for COVID-19.
The South Asian diaspora comprises the largest diaspora population in the world [16], with high social media use, and transnational communication via messaging means that misinformation can have global reach almost instantaneously. Our analysis adds to the literature by providing a window into the nature of these closed group conversations. A prior narrative review of misinformation across Asian American communities [17] and a study of Twitter misinformation in Hindi [18] both highlighted religious-based content, including Islamophobic messaging, as the major thematic finding for South Asians. We instead found a focus on understanding, preventing, and treating the spread of the virus using alternative or Ayurvedic methods. Our study is the first to our knowledge to assess this topic within the broader global South Asian diaspora.
COVID-19 misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation have persisted due to a perfect storm of evolving uncertainty of the disease, malintent of actors pushing political or business interests, and the well-meaning intentions of community members who may have low health or media literacy [19]. The South Asian community has experienced a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 with less media attention, particularly extensive collective trauma after the 2021 Delta variant surge, which may have killed more than 3 million people [20]. South Asian audiences may thus be particularly receptive to promoting messages that provide a sense of clarity, trustworthiness, and personal control in an uncertain time.
Misinformation circulates more readily among homogenous groups or “echo chambers” [21], and misinformation with culturally specific language to promote “in-group identity” may receive higher engagement [22,23]. Messages broadcasting cultural pride may therefore be more readily amplified within relatively insular groups of South Asian users. Messages included “name checks” and logos of reputable organizations or individuals, enhancing trust [24]. Factual information was blended with false statements, mimicking credibility. Lastly, participants were often exhorted to share messages with others, encouraging the spread of misinformation under the well-meaning intention of promoting community safety.
The closed, trusted groups in WhatsApp and similar platforms, such as Viper, Weibo, and Signal, may actually foment misinformation [25,26]. WhatsApp currently puts the burden on individual users to stop its spread [27]. In epidemiological modeling, limits on the number of message forwards slows the spread of misinformation but does not ultimately stop the spread of viral content [28]. Clear countermessaging to identify and correct misinformation can be effective [29]. when promoted across a multitude of platforms; however, more research is needed to identify how to best countermessage COVID-19–related misinformation without causing unintended backfire [30,31]. Social media corporations must do more to monitor, detect, and possibly delete or flag dangerous misinformation. Fact-checking organizations can also perform this role and circulate countermessaging [32,33]. South Asian–specific, culturally literate public health experts and community organizations should collaborate with Fact-checking organizations to create and disseminate countermessaging.
Given the complexity of misinformation, multiple counteracting strategies beyond countermessaging will be needed. This will include the use of machine learning to flag or identify misinformation more easily, policy changes to increase legal accountability for harmful misinformation, and heightened scrutiny and investigation of organizations and web-based influencers who are frequent sources or spreaders of misinformation [30].
These web-based myths can have very real consequences. The spread of culturally specific misinformation may lead to unsafe health behaviors [34] and contribute to preventable burdens of COVID-19 among South Asian communities [35,36]. Given the vast diversity of ethnic groups included by the term “Asian,” more funding and research to promote disaggregated data collection and analysis (eg, for specific East Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and other groups) [37] is greatly needed to understand and hopefully counteract culturally specific misinformation regarding COVID-19 and future pandemics.
Strengths and Limitations
Study strengths include a transnational sample and focus on a social media platform not publicly visible for analysis. We were, however, unable to collect demographic information about original message senders or the recipients who forwarded the messages. We relied on participants to self-identify as members of the South Asian diaspora; participants may have had varying definitions of this identity. Our focus on English-language messages likely limited the content of the final sample, given the linguistic diversity of the South Asian diaspora. Our study focused on adult participants who could give informed consent; therefore, our analytic sample may not be generalizable for COVID-19 misinformation disseminated among children and adolescents. We could not gauge whether specific messages were shared with intent to harm, as with disinformation or malinformation, for purposes of “collective fact-checking” [38], or shared because they were genuinely believed. As our data collection relied on users identifying potential misinformation, our team may have not received the misinformation that users viewed in their WhatsApp feed but believed to be true. A potential limitation of our methods is that although the individual participant consented to share anonymous content from their WhatsApp, there were no means to obtain permission for analysis from the original poster or others who had forwarded the message. We ensured both the individual participant and any other WhatsApp users had zero identifiable information collected. Moreover, WhatsApp does not have any way to identify original posters, nor prior forwarders, of a specific message. Although our ethical approach was to maximize public health benefit and avoid any individual harm, interdisciplinary gold standards for social media research are still needed [39]. Given that messages were sent on a voluntary basis from individuals who chose to participate, this research cannot be viewed as a systematic analysis of misinformation shared across the South Asian diaspora on private messaging platforms. The sample should be considered hypothesis generating; larger samples may provide greater insights into messaging among the global South Asian diaspora.