A Social Listening Tool to Mitigate the Global Health Infodemic: A Case Study of ‘EARS’ in the South African Context

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a tsunami of information posted on social media about the virus, safety precautions, and treatment options. Social media users are overwhelmed by the amount of information about the pandemic and often find it difficult to distinguish between what is useful or harmful information. This phenomenon is known as a ‘health infodemic’. To mitigate the effects of the health infodemic, the World Health Organisation launched the Early Artificial Intelligence-supported Response and Social Listening (EARS) tool to track information about COVID-19. EARS is classified as a social listening tool that has the capability of tracking information about the pandemic on social media. The objective of the paper is to investigate how social listening tools, such as EARS, can contribute to global health during an infodemic. The study used South Africa as the context of the study to discuss the EARS tool. Data available about the tool and on the tool is presented in this study to illustrate the importance of social listening tools. This study found that the EARS tool is important for understanding information and tracking user-generated content on social media concerning COVID-19. In this regard, this makes it easier to identify and manage infodemics that are misleading and harmful to social media users.