Endangering the endangered: impact of fake Covid-19 social media communications in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The human species is in great danger of extinction due to the novel coronavirus that was first detected in China around December 2019. By March 2021, the world had witnessed over 116million cases, of which 36,223 are Zimbabwean. The disease that the coronavirus stimulates is quite fatal and has seen 2.57million lives succumbing to it, of which 1483 are Zimbabwean, by the same date. No cure has been discovered for it yet, though scientific researchers have already discovered several vaccines with varying efficacies. Employing a socio-pragmatic approach, the chapter explores the impact of fake covid-19 social media communications on efforts to minimize infections and fatalities in Zimbabwe, an already endangered country. It accomplishes this by qualitatively analyzing purposively sampled fake communications in circulation on social media as well as some of the utterances and behaviors people make in response to them. The chapter demonstrates the negative impact of the communications on international mitigating efforts and emphasizes the need for the government, media practitioners and social workers to always be watchful for such misleading communications and in every case to quickly counter their impact by availing correct information to the people.