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Infodemic
Disorder
Covid-19 Coping Strategies in Europe,
Canada and Mexico
Edited by
Gevisa La Rocca · Marie-Eve Carignan
Giovanni Boccia Artieri
Infodemic Disorder
Gevisa La Rocca
Marie-Eve Carignan
Editors
Infodemic Disorder
Covid-19 Coping Strategies in Europe, Canada
and Mexico
Editors
Gevisa La Rocca Marie-Eve Carignan
Faculty of Human and Social Sciences Department of Communication
Kore University of Enna Université de Sherbrooke
Enna, Italy Sherbrooke, QC, Canada

Department of Communication
Sciences
University of Urbino Carlo Bo
Urbino, Pesaro-Urbino, Italy
ISBN 978-3-031-13697-9 ISBN 978-3-031-13698-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13698-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Contents
1 Covid-19
and the Global Crisis of Information: an
Introduction 1
Marie-Eve Carignan, Gevisa La Rocca, and Giovanni
Boccia Artieri
2 Infodemic
Disorder: Covid-19 and Post-truth 15
3 A
Review of Some Covid-19 Pandemic Numbers in
European Union, Canada, and Mexico 31
Fabio Aiello and Giovanni Boscaino
4 We
Are All Europeans. EU Institutions Facing the
Covid-19 Pandemic and Information Crisis 65
Alessandro Lovari and Marinella Belluati
5 The
Practice of Emergency Gatewatching During the First
Phase of the Pandemic. An Analysis Through the Tweets
in Italian, Spanish, French and German 97
Gevisa La Rocca, Francesca Greco, and Giovanni
Boccia Artieri
v
vi Contents
6 The
Covid-19 Pandemic in Canadian Newspapers: An
Analysis of the Journalistic Articles as Risk and Crisis
Messages133
Olivier Champagne-Poirier, Marie-Eve Carignan, Marc
D. David, Tracey O’Sullivan, and Guillaume Marcotte
7 Disinformation
in the Age of the Covid-19 Pandemic:
How Does Belief in Fake News and Conspiracy Theories
Affect Canadians’ Reactions to the Crisis?161
Marie-Eve Carignan, Olivier Champagne-Poirier, and
Guilhem Aliaga
8 Analysis
of the Mexican Communication Plan to Control
the Covid-19 Epidemic187
Olga Rodríguez-Cruz and Gabriela Rodríguez-Hernández
9 Social
Media Interactions in Mexico About the SARS-
CoV-2 Vaccination Plan219
Olga Rodríguez-Cruz
10 Rethinking
Our Interpretation Processes: Some Evidence253
Gevisa La Rocca, Giovanni Boccia Artieri, and Marie-Eve
Carignan
Index267
Notes on Contributors
Fabio Aiello (PhD in Applied Statistics, University of Palermo), Associate

Professor (Social Statistics—SEC-S/05), Kore University of Enna,
Enna, Italy.
Guilhem Aliaga (MSc Université de Sherbrooke and Catholic University
of Louvain), Research Professional at the UNESCO Chair in the
Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Extremism.
Giovanni Boccia Artieri (PhD), Full Professor in Sociology of
Communication and Digital Media, Dean at the Dept. of Communication
Sciences, Humanities and International Studies, Coordinator of the PhD
program on Humanities, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, IT.
Marinella Belluati Associate professor in Cultural and Communicative
studies, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society, University of
Turin, Italy.
Giovanni Boscaino (PhD in Applied Statistics, University of Palermo),
Lecturer A (Social Statistics—SEC-S/05), University of Palermo,
Palermo, Italy.
Marie-Eve Carignan (PhD University of Montreal and Institut d’Études
Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence), Associate Professor with the
Communication Department at Université de Sherbrooke.
Olivier Champagne-Poirier (PhD University of Quebec in Trois-
Rivières), Assistant Professor with the Communication Department at
Université de Sherbrooke.
vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Marc D. David (MSc University of Montreal), Full Professor with the

Communication Department at Université de Sherbrooke.
Francesca Greco (PhD Sapienza University of Rome & University of
Paris Descartes, USPC), Senior Assistant professor, Department of
Languages and Literatures, communication, Education and Society-
DILL, University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
Gevisa La Rocca (PhD University of Palermo), Associate Professor in
Sociology of Communication and Culture processes, Faculty of Human
and Social Sciences, Kore University of Enna, Enna, Italy.
Alessandro Lovari (PhD), Associate Professor in Cultural and
Communicative Processes, Department of Political and Social Sciences,
University of Cagliari (Italy).
Guillaume Marcotte (MSc Université de Sherbrooke and Catholic
University of Louvain), Research professional at the Université de
Sherbrooke.
Tracey O’Sullivan (PhD Queen’s University), Associate Professor in the
Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, at
the University of Ottawa.
Olga Rodríguez-Cruz (PhD), Research Professor at the Universidad
Autónoma de la Ciudad de México. Attached to the Bachelor of
Comunicación y Cultura; Aggregate Professor at the Degree Course of
Comunicación y Cultura.
Gabriela Rodríguez-Hernández (PhD), Research Professor at the
Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. Aggregate Professor at the
Degree Course of Psicología.
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Weekly trend in the number of new cases of Covid-19 in

Canada36
Fig. 3.2 Weekly percentage variations in the number of new cases of
Covid-19 in Canada 37
Fig. 3.3 Weekly trend in the number of deaths due to Covid-19 in
Canada38
Fig. 3.4 Weekly percentage variations in the number of deaths due to
Fig. 3.5 Weekly trend in the number of ICU admissions due to
Fig. 3.6 Weekly percentage variations in the number of ICU
admissions due to Covid-19 in Canada 41
Fig. 3.7 Weekly trend in the number of new cases of Covid-19 in the
European Union 43
Covid-19, in the European Union 44
Fig. 3.9 Weekly trend in the number of deaths due to Covid-19 in the
European Union 45
Covid-19 in the European Union 46
Fig. 3.11 Weekly trend in the number of new ICU admissions in the
European Union 47
Fig. 3.12 Weekly percentage variations in the number of ICU
admissions due to Covid-19 in the European Union 48
Fig. 3.13 Weekly trend in the number of new cases of Covid-19 in
Mexico50
ix
x List of Figures

Covid-19 in Mexico 51
Fig. 3.15 Weekly trend in the number of deaths due to Covid-19 in
Mexico52
Covid-19 in Mexico 53
Fig. 3.17 Weekly trend in the number of new cases per million people of
Covid-19 in Canada (___), European Union (__o__), and
Mexico (...o...)56
Fig. 3.18 Weekly trend in the number of deaths per million people due
to Covid-19 in Canada (___), European Union (__o__), and
Mexico (..o..)58
Fig. 3.19 Weekly trend in the number of new ICU admissions per
million people in Canada (___), European Union (__o__)59
Fig. 3.20 Weekly Rt index’s trends in Canada, the European Union, and
Mexico61
Fig. 3.21 Boxplot of Rt estimates by area 62
Fig. 4.1 European Communication Ecosystem. Source: Authors’
property74
Fig. 5.1 Symbolic space emerging from the Italian corpus 111
Fig. 5.2 Symbolic space emerging from the Spanish corpus 112
Fig. 5.3 Symbolic space emerging from the French corpus 113
Fig. 5.4 Symbolic space emerging from the German corpus 122
Fig. 5.5 The gatewatching of emergencies. Source: Reworking starting
Bruns’s scheme (Bruns, 2008) 127
Fig. 6.1 Authors of the articles (A total of 455 articles in the corpus
did not mention the author) 148
Fig. 6.2 Use of direct quotations 152
Fig. 6.3 Use of indirect quotations 152
Fig. 7.1 Mean level of belief in the five conspiracy statements 170
Fig. 7.2 Mean level of belief in the six fake news items 171
Fig. 7.3 Distribution of the respondents according to the thresholds 172
Fig. 7.4 Belief in the indices by gender 173
Fig. 7.5 General belief in the indices by age group 174
Fig. 7.6 General belief in the indices by education level 175
Fig. 7.7 General belief in the indices by country of birth 175
Fig. 7.8 Proportion of general belief by news source 178
Fig. 7.9 Average compliance according to overall belief in the indices 179
Fig. 7.10 Vaccine refusal or hesitancy by group 180
Fig. 8.1 Post by López-Gatell. Source: Public domain image taken
from the Undersecretary’s social media profile 195
List of Figures xi
Fig. 8.2 Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador shows his
amulets. Source: Public domain image taken from the website
of the Office of the Mexican President 198
Fig. 8.3 First appearance of Susana with the mask. Source: Public
domain image taken from the SuSana Distancia campaign
(Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell. August 14, 2020) 204
Fig. 8.4 Susana invites you to maintain interpersonal distance. Source:
Public domain image taken from the Ministry of
Communication and Transport (SCTMexico, April 15, 2020c) 205
Fig. 8.5 Susana explains that only one person per family can leave the
house out of necessity. Translation: It is important that only
one person per household goes out to buy groceries or
medicines. Source: Public domain image taken from Mexican
Ministry of Health, December 16, 2020 206
Fig. 8.6 SuSana Distancia—timeline. Source: The graphic design of the
timeline was created by Mariana Padilla Martínez 210
Fig. 8.7 ¡Quédate en casa!—advertising poster. Source: Public domain
image taken from the SuSana Distancia campaign 213
Fig. 9.1 Posts related to episode 2 on Facebook. Source: The table was
developed by the author. Interruptus Radio’s original post:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbi
d=1781809678662117&id=464224880420610&sfnsn=s
cwspwa229
Fig. 9.2 Posts related to episode 2 on Facebook 230
Fig. 9.3 Posts related to episode 4 on Facebook (The information can
be consulted at the following Facebook page: https://m.
facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=292618052219552&i
d=100044140794092&sfnsn=scwspwa. The information can
be consulted at the following Facebook page: https://m.
facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=273015357519841&i
d=100044341360428&sfnsn=scwspwa). Source: The table
was developed by the author using information available at
Lorenzo Meyer’s and Sergio Aguayo’s Facebook walls:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbi
d=292618052219552&id=100044140794092&sfnsn=scws
pwa (Meyer) and https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_
fbid=273015357519841&id=100044341360428&sfnsn=scws
pwa (Aguayo) 231
Fig. 9.4 Type of reply 233
Fig. 9.6 Type of replies 235
xii List of Figures

Fig. 9.11 Type of replies 238
Fig. 9.12 Man’s replies 239
Fig. 9.13 Women’s replies 239
Fig. 9.14 Example of participation 242
Fig. 9.15 Example of participation 242
Fig. 10.1 Nested case study for infodemic disorder 255
Fig. 10.2 The tree of similarity 259
Fig. 10.3 Dendrogram: representation of classes, frequencies (F) of
words and the extent of association to the class (χ2)262
Fig. 10.4 Lexical correspondence analysis built on two factors
(factor 1: 26.27%; factor 2: 22.35%) 263
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Summary statistics of new cases, deaths, ICU admission, by

wave, in Canada 35
wave, in the European Union 42
wave, in Mexico 49
Table 3.4 Some demographics of Canada, the European Union, and
Mexico54
Table 3.5 Summary statistics of new cases, deaths, ICU admission, and
effective reproduction rate, Rt, by wave, for Canada, the
European Union, and Mexico 55
Table 5.1 Timeline of the main events of March 2020 in the four
countries99
Table 5.2 Descriptive characteristics of the dataset from March 4–11,
2020105
Table 5.3 Cluster analysis and correspondence analysis results and
sentiment description for Italian tweets 108
sentiment description for Spanish tweets 109
sentiment description for French tweets 109
sentiment description for German tweets 110
Table 6.1 List of the 19 protagonists or groups identified in the
analyzed articles 140
Table 6.2 The 25 major themes addressed in the articles 141
Table 6.3 Journalistic intentions inherent in coverage of the pandemic 142
xiii
xiv List of Tables
Table 6.4 Discursive strategies used to cover the pandemic 143

Table 6.5 Scope of the sample 145
Table 7.1 Index thresholds 172
Table 7.2 Correlations with news sources 177
Table 7.3 Associations between indices and trust in health experts,
political authorities, and the media 181
Table 8.1 The four objectives of the CSCP 188
Table 8.2 The phases of the pandemic in Mexico 191
Table 8.3 Elaboration of the corpus study, including statements and
SuSana Distancia television spots 193
Table 8.4 Description of some audiovisual commercials of SuSana
Distancia202
Table 8.5 Phrases used to appeal to responsibility 206
Table 8.6 Phrases used in three of the spots to convince people to stay
safe at home 207
Table 8.7 Phrases used in the spots 207
Table 8.8 April spots featuring Stay at home 208
Table 8.9 Spots of May that play with emotional language 208
Table 8.10 May commercials that contain Stay at home 209
Table 8.11 Spots of December that play with emotional language 209
Table 9.1 Stage of vaccination in Mexico 220
Table 9.2 Distribution of participants by gender and social media 232
Table 9.8 Number of political-aggressive replies 241
Table 9.9 Number of political-aggressive replies 244
CHAPTER 1
Covid-19 and the Global Crisis

of Information: an Introduction
Marie-Eve Carignan, Gevisa La Rocca,

and Giovanni Boccia Artieri
As early as January 2020, even before the World Health Organization

(WHO) considered that the severity of the disease allowed it to qualify it
as a pandemic, the organization’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom
Ghebreyesus, declared Covid-19 an international public health emergency
and many countries triggered a state of health emergency (Milasin &
Baert, 2020). The flow of information circulating about this new corona-
virus at the time was particularly important, both on socio-digital
M.-E. Carignan (*)

Department of Communication, Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
e-mail: Marie-Eve.Carignan@USherbrooke.ca
G. La Rocca
Faculty of Human and Social Sciences, Kore University of Enna, Enna, Italy
e-mail: gevisa.larocca@unikore.it
G. Boccia Artieri
Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies,
University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy
e-mail: giovanni.bocciaartieri@uniurb.it
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
G. La Rocca et al. (eds.), Infodemic Disorder,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13698-6_1
2 M.-E. CARIGNAN ET AL.
networks and on the Internet, where traffic was increased by 60% in some
countries (OECD, 2020), as well as in traditional media, to a point where
Lalancette and Lamy (2020) were watching an unprecedented media
eclipse in Canada, as all the news revolved around the pandemic and its
effects. Roy (2021) observed the same phenomenon of media eclipse
occurring in the content published by the Francophonie news media pres-
ent on the Instagram platform. This media overkill of Covid-19 was also
already raising concerns among various researchers noting the challenges
faced by press companies already precarious and economically shaken by
the pandemic as well as information professionals overworked in a context
that sometimes put their own health at stake, while the risks of slippage are
significant when it comes to health-related information (Caron-Bouchard
& Renaud, 2010; Lacroix & Carignan, 2020; Le Cam et al., 2020). On
the other hand, the coming fatigue reactions among part of the public in
the face of this massive coverage, implying a potential lack of interest in
this news, were cause for concern because of their potential consequences
on adherence to the health measures put in place as well as on the percep-
tion, among a fringe of the population, of a disproportionate media cover-
age of the pandemic.
Nevertheless, the fact that this virus is new and therefore unknown,
coupled with the fact that society had not had to deal with a pandemic of
this magnitude for several years,1 raised a need to quickly obtain informa-
tion about it. Research has followed one another at an accelerated pace,
allowing important knowledge about the virus, vaccines and potential
treatment to be developed at an unprecedented speed, but also leading to
certain errors in the methodologies put in place in a sometimes-hasty
manner and in the accelerated revision processes of scientific articles.2
These mistakes may have generated confusion and mistrust among part of
the public.
Plunged into this highly anxiety-provoking situation, despite a media
overkill of the measures put in place, but also in front of the fact that the
1
For the World Health Organization, this health situation is the most serious that has been
announced since 2005, when the Global Alert System for International Public Health
Emergencies was set up.
2
Prestigious journals such as The Lancet or the New England Journal of Medicine have
retracted articles related to Covid-19, whose data were considered dubious. These withdraw-
als can have a significant impact on public confidence in science.
1 COVID-19 AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF INFORMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 3
media expose the current lack of knowledge surrounding the emergence

of the virus and the potential treatments, the public then seeks by all
means to understand what is happening now and anticipate the future.
However, the phenomenon of disinformation already observed during
recent epidemics (Smallman, 2015; Abramowitz et al., 2017) disrupts the
information ecosystem like never before, due to the number, diversity,
scope and impacts of erroneous or misleading news that is conveyed
(Monnier, 2020), not to mention that conspiracy theories already observed
during other epidemiological crises seem to be spreading even faster in the
context of the global pandemic (Reichstadt & Fourquet, 2020). Thus,
several researchers have observed a rise in conspiracy speeches about the
pandemic (de Coninck et al., 2021), that is, discourses that explain events
by the secret and malicious action of a group of individuals (Dentith,
2014). This link between distrust of the authorities and adherence to con-
spiracy theories is documented in several studies (Luhmann, 2006; Renard,
2015). Indeed, people who have a predisposition to reject information
from official sources or experts, including in the context of the global
pandemic, would be more likely to adhere to conspiracy theory (Uscinski
et al., 2020). Getting regular information on social networks is also associ-
ated with “an increased risk of generalized anxiety or major depression”
(Généreux et al., 2020).
The frantic research and production of knowledge and information
about Covid-19 has thus quickly led to a situation that the WHO has
described as an infodemic (contraction of the words information and epi-
demic), a context of overabundance of information, of very variable verac-
ity, concerning a problem of public order and particularly topical, which
hinders its resolution by preventing the general population from finding
information reliable and act accordingly (OQLF, 2020). WHO believes
that this outbreak of disinformation is a second enemy to be combated as
it harms the public’s quest for trusted information and complicates the
conduct of emergency response. “False information spreads faster and
easier than this virus, and it is just as dangerous”, the WHO Director
General said at a conference in Munich (WHO, 2020a). Indeed, in the
context of the pandemic, reliable information regularly rubs shoulders
with disinformation and misinformation, phenomena that we will define
in more detail in the first chapter of this book.
This massive disinformation has sometimes led to an intensification of

discrimination and hate speech against certain cultural communities or
individuals who were wrongly associated with the virus or its spread.
Several researchers are concerned about the consequences of this info-
demic relating to the global pandemic, which can create social panic, a
climate of mistrust towards governments and public institutions, as well as
a destabilization of democratic systems, in addition to harming citizens’
decision-making (Carignan et al., 2022). This distrust of institutions also
leads to distrust of official sources of information, such as media compa-
nies, which many individuals accuse of colluding with the public authori-
ties and of being funded by the latter.
This loss of trust in institutions, coupled with a sense of fear, can influ-
ence the level of public support for the recommendations of public health
authorities, in addition to facilitating adherence to conspiracy theories
(Limaye et al., 2020; Miller, 2020). Especially since the crisis has not been
managed in the same way between countries. The epidemiology and pub-
lic health strategies put in place differ greatly from each other, and even
within countries, while WHO calls for coordinated efforts by the interna-
tional community (WHO, 2020b). In addition to offering a very different
epidemiological picture, these countries have used distinct public health
strategies, including screening, containment and deconfinement and vac-
cination. Similarly, they have used a wide variety of communication strate-
gies to respond to the crisis, which sometimes causes controversy and
confusion among the population, not to mention that not all governments
have reacted in the same way to the crisis. Indeed, several authoritarian
countries have taken advantage of the pandemic to increase media censor-
ship, which has harmed the international management of the pandemic
and has sometimes prevented a fair picture of the evolution of the pan-
demic situation (Reporters without Borders, 2020). Journalists from all
continents have been the target of intimidation, verbal attacks, detentions
ordered by authoritarian regimes or withdrawals of accreditation while
covering pandemic news (Reporters without Borders, 2020).
In addition, some heads of state have downplayed the seriousness of the
virus or the pandemic situation, going so far as to make inaccurate and
sometimes even false statements that may have misled citizens and fueled
information chaos. For example, Donald Trump, former president of the
United States, had suggested that the virus would disappear with the heat
of summer and proposed that research be conducted to verify the effec-
tiveness of disinfectant injections to fight the coronavirus (Biron, 2020; de
Lancer, 2020).3 In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, “has urged Brazilians

to ‘return to normality’ in several occasions, ignoring growing empirical
evidence about the positive effects of social distancing” (Ricard &
Medeiros, 2020) and has been seen as the leader of the “coronavirus-
denial movement” (Friedman, 2020) and promulgated the effectiveness
of treatments such as chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to combat
Covid-19. These examples demonstrate how the public was subjected to
contradictory information and how some populations around the world
may have struggled to access facts rigorously verified by independent
sources during the outbreak of the health crisis, with some politicians
sometimes even reinforcing the conspiracy ideologies adopted by a fringe
of the population.
Therefore, it was appropriate, in the context of this book, to look at
how the different actors, whether governments, public health authorities
or the media, for example, have managed this public health crisis coupled
with a communication crisis. It is also relevant to look at how people have
reacted to it, both on socio-digital platforms and individually, trying to
understand how fake news and conspiracy narratives may have affected
their perception of the situation. The comparative and international per-
spective adopted by this book, which will take a look at Europe, Canada
and Mexico, will allow us to observe the best practices that have been
adopted, the emerging and adaptive communication strategies (Mintzberg,
2007) as well as the mistakes that may have been made in different con-
texts to draw lessons that will undoubtedly be very useful for the manage-
ment of future public health crises. Differences in the way the pandemic
was managed and the level of responsibility of local, regional, provincial or
national actors, in addition to the fact that each of these places experi-
enced similar virus prevalence rates but peaks of infection at distinct times,
make this comparison even more relevant. In this context, this book aims
to connect two dimensions: public communication and research as well as
sharing of information by citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic. To
achieve this, the book is divided into chapters, which aim to analyze the
communication strategies of public institutions and the communication of
citizens.
3
Numerous poisonings related to the ingestion of disinfectant have been reported in the
United States, resulting in the deaths of at least four people (Associated Press, 2020). WHO
has issued public warnings to this effect and added an infographic on the ingestion of disin-
fectant on its myth busters available online.
The aim of this book is to pull off the construction of information pro-
cesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. To achieve this final goal, the book
is divided into a path that proceeds from the general to the particular.
More specifically, in the next chapters, we will approach the situation from
different angles, developing a triangulation of research sources and meth-
ods. AoIR’s ethical guidelines (2019) have been followed in using sources,
data, posts, tweets and other materials from the Internet in this volume.
The second chapter, signed by Giovanni Boccia Artieri, will return to
some of the elements discussed in the introduction and will focus more
specifically to outline the main elements of the public and academic debate
connected to the themes of “fake news,” “misinformation,” “disinforma-
tion,” “media manipulation,” “conspiracy theory,” “coordinated inau-
thentic behavior” and “propaganda” that are all intertwined in digital
platform ecosystems. Reference is made here to the problem that afflicts
the information field and which is defined by three interrelated issues dis-
information, misinformation and propaganda (Born & Edgington, 2017).
The look in this chapter on these informational issues will make it possible
to better master the concepts evoked later throughout this book, in addi-
tion to being at the heart of the infodemic related to the Covid-19
health crisis.
The third chapter of this book, written by Fabio Aiello and Giovanni
Boscaino, focuses on the spread of the coronavirus. As the authors recall,
this pandemic situation has shown that a health crisis that seems very lim-
ited geographically, at least in its early stages, can quickly gain momentum
and spread throughout the globe, especially in this era of globalization,
reminding us that we live in a society of internationalized risks. As we
mentioned at the beginning of the introduction, the spread of the conta-
gion and the actions implemented by local governments to counter it
seems to have been rather heterogeneous. Therefore, it may be useful to
understand how different some of the characteristics of the spread of the
infection have been in different areas of the world. To better understand
the situation, the authors propose a purely objective approach, referring to
the purely quantitative aspect of the contagion, a description of both the
size and the speed of the contagion albeit limited to three different geo-
graphical macro-areas: the States of the European Union, Canada, Mexico.
Their analysis allows us to identify a common trait for these three geo-
graphic contexts so different from each other, in the period under analysis
in this volume. In effect, the three areas were characterized by reasonably
similar virus prevalence rates. Instead, their fluctuations are recognized as
a symptom of the effects of restrictions (imposed or relaxed), the impact

of new virus variants, and individuals’ behavior.
Starting from Chap. 4 and up to Chap. 9, two dimensions are analyzed
for each geographical context in order to outline how information disor-
der has developed and been faced by public institutions and citizens. The
observation period is for all three geographical contexts: the first stage of
the Covid-19 pandemic.
The third and fourth chapters are dedicated to Europe. In the Chap. 4
of this book, Alessandro Lovari and Marinella Belluati investigate how the
European Institutions have faced the Covid-19 pandemic from a commu-
nication point of view, focusing the attention on policies, strategies and
interventions addressed to counteract disinformation and the spread of
problematic messages that could harm citizens and weaken democracy.
Chapter 5 is dedicated to the analysis of the tweets shared in Italian,
French, German and Spanish, during the period preceding the first of the
European lockdowns, between March 4 and 11, 2020, on the social net-
work Twitter. Gevisa La Rocca, Francesca Greco and Giovanni Boccia
Artieri demonstrate how the arrival of the virus in Italy has been under-
stood and discussed in other European Union countries, including France,
Spain and Germany, as well as outside the continent. Italy was the first
country in Europe affected by the virus and the death toll in the country
has been considerable. The situation in that country has had repercussions
on the understanding and management of the crisis around the globe. It
is therefore particularly relevant to understand how this management has
been perceived and treated by citizens. This chapter allows to observe the
feelings experienced, to analyze the reflections carried out in those first
hours and to investigate the discussion topics of those who saw the
Covid-19 spreading in their daily reality. It will also allow us to understand
how, starting from the first Italian cases and the lockdown introduced by
Italy, the other three European countries have begun to prepare for the
impact of the first wave of the pandemic.
Chapters 6 and 7 are dedicated to Canada and also explore the two
dimensions: that of institutions (Chap. 6) and that of citizens (Chap. 7).
In Chap. 6 of this book, Olivier Champagne-Poirier, Marie-Eve Carignan,
Marc D. David, Tracey O’Sullivan and Guillaume Marcotte analyze the
dense media coverage of the pandemic by Canadian dailies. Using an
inductively built coding grid, the authors analyzed 5055 journalistic arti-
cles published by 20 Canadian daily newspaper in the three months fol-
lowing the outbreak of the virus in Canada (January 27 to April 27, 2020);
this approach allowed them to statistically describe qualitative processes in

which numerous protagonists were staged, different facets of social reality
were exposed and journalists positioned themselves as news professionals.
As mentioned earlier in the introduction to this book, the media have a
key role to play in crisis and risk communication, especially during a pan-
demic (David & Carignan, 2017; Hanitzsch & Vos, 2018; Olsen et al.,
2020). This chapter allows a clear view of the role of the Canadian press in
the risk and crisis communication surrounding the pandemic. Referring to
the IDEA model for effective instructional risk and crisis messages (Sellnow
& Sellnow, 2014), this analysis shows in particular that it is apparent that
Canadian newspaper messages have little potential to contribute to the
“Internalization” of the crisis by certain high-risk groups and that they
focus very little on the “Actions” that individuals can take to protect
themselves from pandemic-associated risks. This chapter reminds us of the
relevance of examining journalistic coverage to better understand risk and
crisis communication in the context of a pandemic. They also highlight
the impact of risk and crisis messaging as a central consideration for
research. Chapter 7 of this book, signed by Marie-Eve Carignan, Olivier
Champagne-Poirier and Guilhem Aliaga, also focuses on the situation
related to the pandemic in Canada. Considering the context of massive
disinformation mentioned earlier in the introduction concerning the
Covid-19 pandemic, the purpose of this chapter is to better understand
the level of belief in disinformation and conspiracy theories in the Canadian
context, as well as the factors impacted by this belief. This analysis is based
on data collected in a population-based questionnaire survey conducted to
gain a better understanding of the impact of the pandemic on Canadians.
The survey shows that respondents’ gender, education and country of
birth have little impact on belief in conspiracy theories and fake news asso-
ciated with the Covid-19 pandemic, although some findings are more
salient among certain groups of respondents. Considering the communi-
cation and news habits of the respondents, the authors found out that
those who use governmental and traditional information sources (media,
press) will tend to believe less in conspiracy theories and fake news.
Conversely, individuals who turn to the Internet and social media to get
informed exhibit greater belief in these elements. Finally, trust in public
authorities, especially health experts, appears to be lower among individu-
als who subscribe to conspiracy theories and fake news, which invites
reflection on the impact of mistrust of institutions in crisis management.
This lower trust goes hand in hand with health behaviors, particularly
vaccine hesitancy and non-compliance, which are more present among

individuals who believe in conspiracy theories and fake news.
Chapters 8 and 9 are dedicated to Mexico and follow the same dimen-
sions addressed in the other studies. Mexico had the third place in the
Americas (only below the USA and Brazil) based on the number of infec-
tions and deaths, and it was the first Latin American country to start vac-
cinating its population. Chapter 8 of this book, written by Olga
Rodríguez-Cruz and Gabriela Rodríguez Hernández, takes a look at the
situation in Mexico. This chapter uses discourse analysis to study the state-
ments made by two main players of the Mexican government: President
Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Hugo López-Gatell, the
Undersecretary of Health Prevention and Promotion. This analysis also
discusses the ¡Quédate en casa! audiovisual advertisement campaign and
its main character: the heroine SuSana Distancia. This chapter concludes
that the government’s advertisement campaigns fail to promote the
importance of health care and the community’s joint responsibility among
the community; this is reflected on the number of people infected and
deaths in Mexico and that the Mexican government never had the inten-
tion of promoting the use of masks as an essential measure. Two spots
taught the population how to wear a mask; however, the discourse of both
the Undersecretary and the President was that wearing a mask was not an
essential measure to control infections. As a result of the contradictions
between the messages and the actions of health and government leaders,
the population did not receive clear information about the measures they
should take if they caught the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These contradictions
created ambiguity among the population. In Chap. 9, Olga Rodríguez-
Cruz discusses the implementation of the Federal Government’s
Vaccination Plan in Mexico. The objective of this chapter is to study the
interactions carried out in two social media (WhatsApp and Facebook) in
order to analyze what people think about the way this Plan has been
implemented. A mixed methodology was used to carry out this analysis in
order to gather the data and carry out a numerical visualization with the
aim of obtaining a general appraisal about the study object. Additionally,
digital ethnography was used to observe the type of interaction carried out
in the fora. The data was gathered during three episodes. The first episode
included informants, who were asked to get the opinion of their groups
about a discussion-generating question, which raised doubts about the
vaccination strategy. The second episode consisted of following a person’s
post expressing his opinion about the senior citizens’ first vaccination day.
The aim of the third episode of this analysis was to study the first 150 com-
ments that Internet users made on the walls of two prestigious Mexican
research-professors: Lorenzo Meyer and Sergio Aguayo. The authors
reached the conclusion that, in most cases, people are not interested in
discussing or reflecting about certain public interest issues. They have a
well-defined political stance that does not allow them to interact or
exchange points of view that might contribute to a better informed and
more critical community. They observed, at least in the virtual spaces that
they studied, that silence can be a major part of—among other headings—
the social and political dissatisfaction which the country is going through.
Chapter 10 reconstructs the path developed within the volume by pro-
posing a meta-analysis of the practices of infodemic disorder analyzed in
the pages of the volume. It proposes a reading of the observed phenomena
(from Chaps. 4–9) as sub-units of the macro phenomenon of infodemic
disorder (described in Chap. 2), demonstrating the usefulness of the data
analysis developed in the volume within the third chapter in order to ana-
lyze a social phenomenon such as the emerging one of infodemic disorder.
The work process developed throughout the volume follows the abduc-
tion model and the communicative practices for the two dimensions for
each geographical context (Dimensions = 2, Geographical Contexts = 3;
develop DxGC = 6 subunits) outline six attributable communication prac-
tices to the infodemic disorder.
The developed methodology is recomposed in this last chapter and is
that of the nested case study developed for single units in parallel with dif-
ferent techniques and from dissimilar observation points. To reunite the
communication practices of the infodemic disorder and develop a meta-
analysis on them Gevisa La Rocca, Giovanni Boccia Artieri, Marie-Eve
Carignan apply an automated procedure, capable of reconstructing the
sensemaking developed within the pages of the volume.
By focusing on the communication strategies of governments and pub-
lic health managers and the messages disseminated on social and tradi-
tional media in three countries during the Covid-19 pandemic, this book
provides a better understanding of the best and less good communication
practices adopted to deal with the pandemic and apply health measures
and to benchmark communication processes in the three countries, which
we will do at the conclusion of this book which proposes a first analysis of
information and disinformation processes during the Covid-19 pandemic,
from a comparative and international perspective, at a time when the
international community is still reflecting on the lessons to be learned

from this crisis and continues to prepare for the new waves to come. To
this end, this book can serve as a point of reference for many other subse-
quent studies from different areas and countries concerning communica-
tion strategies, health communication, disinformation and conspiracy
theory as an example. This book will also be very useful for managers and
practitioners who want to improve their communication strategies and
prepare for future crisis management in public health or other sectors.
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CHAPTER 2
Infodemic Disorder: Covid-19

and Post-truth
1 Introduction: “We’re Not Just Fighting

an Epidemic; We’re Fighting an Infodemic”
“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.” With

these words, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
defines, at the Munich Security Conference on February 15, 2020, an
information dimension that is emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic cri-
sis affecting the world. To speak of infodemics is to emphasize the over-
abundance of Covid-19-related information circulating in the media
ecosystem, which has two consequences: on the one hand, the selection of
relevant information is problematic and therefore it is made complex for
the public opinion to find the right answers to its questions—which can
lead to settle for the first information encountered, thus being driven by
selection bias (Prior, 2005); on the other hand, the amount of informa-
tion that is produced, together with its rapid circulation—often through
G. Boccia Artieri (*)

Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies,
University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy
e-mail: giovanni.bocciaartieri@uniurb.it

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13698-6_2
16 G. BOCCIA ARTIERI
social media and private chat channels—makes it more complex to distin-

guish between reliable and unreliable sources, producing the risk of “pol-
lution” of the overall information quality and increasing the risk of coming
across false or misleading information. All the more so in a context such as
that of a pandemic emergency, in which the need for information is associ-
ated with emotional tension and a lack of knowledge on the topic.
Moreover, infodemics is part of a more general context of a crisis of
legitimacy of the institutions, which is accompanied by a crisis of authority
in public communication and the emergence of a condition of informa-
tion disorder (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017). This condition has alerted us
to the risks of media manipulation of citizens’ attitudes, which are accen-
tuated by the increasingly immediate possibilities of organizing and dis-
seminating information content, and which are reinforced and accelerated
by the dynamics of social media and digital spaces.
In this sense, the analysis of infodemics acts as a litmus test of the trans-
formation of the information system and of the role those social platforms
play in the current dissemination of knowledge, as well as of the risks of
pollution of the information environment that are generated by the con-
temporary form of production, circulation and consumption of
information.
In this sense, I will address this issue by dividing my contribution into
three parts. First, a more complete understanding of infodemics requires
exploring the relationship between information and health in our society
and the transformations in this relationship due to the characteristics of
the contemporary media system. It also requires placing the infodemics in
relation to the transformation of public communication, a transformation
due, on the one hand, to the crisis of legitimacy of institutional actors—
and therefore a crisis of trust also in relation to information sources—and,
on the other hand, to the emergence of problems caused by information
disorder. Finally, I will try to analyze how infodemics represent a case that
allows us to highlight the ambivalent issues related to the theme of infor-
mation quality today (quality for whom?) and how it is able to highlight
the deeper implications of a generalized context of erosion of epistemic
authority that connotes an area that we have begun to define as
“post-truth.”
2 INFODEMIC DISORDER: COVID-19 AND POST-TRUTH 17
2 The Relationship Between Information

and Health in the Connected Society
Health constitutes a relevant category in the field of news and contributes

to the construction of knowledge that is essential to ensure a vibrant pub-
lic sphere on the topic (Hodgetts et al., 2008). The construction of this
category involves the professional norms and practices of journalism as
well as the editorial norms of media and the relationship between media
and their audiences. On the one side, journalistic routines tend to focus on
lifestyle and individual responsibility and, on the other, on the social and
political consequences of policy choices that have to do with the civic
dimension of health. The media, for their part, offer frames for interpret-
ing health issues on the agenda by placing them in the public debate,
influencing knowledge, attitudes, and behavior (Walsh & Childers, 2016).
In this sense, the media simultaneously shape and reflect the public dis-
course on health (Malone et al., 2000).
As the health communication literature of the last decade has high-
lighted, digital disruption and the evolution of the increasingly hybrid
(Chadwick, 2013) and convergent (Jenkins, 2006) media ecosystem have
had a significant impact on the way people search for and use health/well-
ness information in the connected society.
As is well known, it is with the advent of Web 2.0 that health informa-
tion sources have become increasingly numerous and diversified (Bradley
et al., 2013). Health, understood as the bio-psycho-social well-being of
the person (according to the 1948 WHO declaration), has undergone a
significant extension with the pervasiveness of the social and participatory
web, becoming a sort of ‘umbrella word,’ as well as a meta-value of con-
temporary society, around which a plurality of sources, actors, and dis-
courses are developed, which come to life and feed off the new digital
communication environments. These are network spaces in which not
only information professionals and mainstream media but also individuals
and non-profit organizations, institutions, and health and social workers,
health centers, pharmaceutical companies, and so on, tend to express their
voices, try to gain visibility and be protagonists in the public sphere.
In this context, the citizen-patient is recognized as an ‘e-patient’
(Ferguson, 2007), as he or she increasingly searches for and generates
information online, shares content, compares experiences and cultivates
relationships, participates and expresses opinions and, in some cases, even
tends to practice ‘self-help’ (Lupton, 2016). Some scholars have
highlighted the opportunities and risks associated with these widespread

practices: on the one hand, it would lead to greater empowerment of citi-
zens (Cohen, 2010) who, having more information at their disposal and
being increasingly skilled in the use of the Internet and social media,
would see their expertise on health issues increase. On the other hand,
citizens run the risk of coming across incorrect scientific information, of
drawing on unreliable sources and may experience difficulties in orienta-
tion and selection in the information overload that this context generates.
According to a survey conducted by Eurisko in 2016, the use of the
Internet for health information is constantly increasing and, above all, the
use of social media by citizens to acquire and share information and expe-
riences related to health and well-being is growing. International research
has also shown that patients tend to consult the web before a medical visit,
with the effect of self-diagnosis, giving rise to the well-known phenome-
non referred to as “Dr. Google” or “Dr. Web” (Lee et al., 2015), whereby
media information is supplemented by care relationships between differ-
ent actors in the health system, often linked to economic and business
logics, which exploit online information search systems and are confronted
with the logic of filtering and visibility of algorithms.
While the mass media used to represent health to their audiences
through top-down frames and models, the Internet and social media have
moved on to a post-representational—that is, constructivist—and bottom-
up view of health, in which different voices intersect in the extremely fluid
communication flows of the web. The construction of the public discourse
on health is therefore affected by the transformations of the media ecosys-
tem and the new forms of representation. The spread of the Internet and
social media and their entry into citizens’ media diets, the intertwining of
digital and legacy media and the proliferation of user-generated content
are all having an impact on the production, circulation, and consumption
of health news. Among the consequences, we can, first of all, observe the
crisis of legacy media, which have increasingly lost audience, an audience
that is less and less ready to pay for news they can find for free online
(Brenan, 2020). Traditional publishers of high-quality health news face
reduced economic and human resources, as well as competing with new
rival sources of information, including social media, blogs, platforms such
as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, or search engines such as Google
towards which audiences, particularly younger ones, turn as an alternative
to newspapers, radio, or television (National Academies of Sciences, 2017).
The speed of the news cycle, with its faster rhythm of production,
reduces the time needed for source verification in the publishing system
and increases the need for consumption of ever new information content,
leading audiences to move easily through the abundance of media chan-
nels. This is associated with the rapid circulation of user-generated content
that can participate in the growth of misinformation and disinformation
phenomena, also through the development of online propaganda strate-
gies (Giglietto et al., 2020), which also involve an issue such as health.
And, more generally, the competitiveness of the news market has made it
necessary—to reach audiences in the attention economy—a transforma-
tion of health news in an emotional key, through the production of com-
pelling narratives capable of engaging users (Maksimainen, 2017), also
with a view to obtaining reactions that can circulate more of those specific
contents. For these reasons, it is necessary to consider the level of public
engagement with health content within an information ecosystem in
which access to information production, circulation, and consumption has
become generalized. The current media ecosystem, in the interrelation-
ship between mainstream media and mass access to the Internet, has
changed the scale of production and consumption of health-related news,
as well as accelerated the speed and level of penetration of consumption of
these contents among audiences.
In this context, moreover, search engines and social media have taken
on the role of information hubs, if not real gatekeepers. The gatekeeping
function, which has to do with filtering and controlling the information
that achieves social visibility and, therefore, on how this reality is struc-
tured (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009), is now confronted with a selective pro-
cess that takes place in a media environment where non-traditional sources,
such as individuals on social media, news portals, or alternative sites, com-
pete for power on the public agenda with institutionalized sources of
information (Fletcher & Park, 2017). These new actors apply selective
logics that are different from those of traditional gatekeeping agents. They
are logics that combine the actions of individuals—in terms of searches,
shares, ratings, tagging, and reactions on content—with algorithm-based
services, such as search engines and news aggregators that redistribute and
channel news online.
This is the socio-technological and cultural context in which infodem-
ics is placed and expands, accompanying a major health issue such as the
pandemic crisis with a pressing information need.
3 Infodemics Between Crisis of Trust

and Information Disorder
In a commentary on SARS entitled “When the Buzz Bites Back,” written

in 2003, the Washington Post journalist David J. Rothkopf coined the
word ‘infodemic’ to describe the condition that afflicts those who are
overwhelmed by so much information that they suffer from media
indigestion.
The institutional definition of infodemics is found in the World Health
Organization’s Situation Report No. 45 of March 5, 2020, which high-
lights the more general risk of information pollution during a health
emergency:
Infodemics are an excessive amount of information about a problem, which

makes it difficult to identify a solution. Infodemics can spread misinforma-
tion, disinformation and rumors during a health emergency. Infodemics can
hamper an effective public health response and create confusion and distrust
among people […]
During emergencies demand for information is high, there are often
many unknowns and people will seek information from sources and indi-
viduals and entities they trust.
The question of trust therefore seems to be central both in relation to the

need to find information and in relation to the credibility of the informa-
tion itself: credible information sources and authentic information content
seem therefore to be central to the process of correct information, so
much so that in the WHO document, trust is seen as a corrective element
of information disorder:
WHO, through EPI-WIN, has identified such trusted sources and engaged
them not only as amplifiers of accurate, timely information, but also as advis-
ers on the kind of information that their constituents need and urgently
want to see.
This infocentric approach (Colombo, 2022) assumes that the quality of

information is sought by people according to a principle of rationality and
that it can produce objective results; it also assumes that the bonds of trust
are always positive in the sharing of reliable contents. On the other hand,
the case of infodemics shows us, first of all, that the quality of information
is also a subjective matter and that it depends on the perception of what is
to be considered reliable in relation to one’s own convictions and emo-

tional sensibilities. It also shows us that the attribution of trust in informa-
tion sources follows criteria of selectivity that today involve non-institutional
actors, anonymous subjects, homophilic content production channels,
and algorithms that personalize search results. Moreover, it shows how the
current media system, which is hybrid (Chadwick, 2013) and convergent
(Jenkins, 2006), creates an information circuit capable of amplifying the
circulation of content faster and with difficulties of centralized control. As
Sylvie Briand, director of Infectious Hazards Management at WHO’s
Health Emergencies Programme and architect of WHO’s strategy to
counter the infodemic risk has argued (Zarocostas, 2020, p. 676):
We know that every outbreak will be accompanied by a kind of tsunami of

information, but also within this information you always have misinforma-
tion, rumors, etc. We know that even in the Middle Ages there was this
phenomenon. But the difference now with social media is that this phenom-
enon is amplified, it goes faster and further, like the viruses that travel with
people and go faster and further.
3.1 Information Quality from Opposing Points of View

Let us start with the subjectivity relating to the perceived quality of the
information. In the evolution of the pandemic crisis, we know how the
Covid-19 also acted as a polarizing factor with regard to the issues that
gradually arose in relation to the behavior to be adopted and the decisions
taken by different countries. From this point of view, we have seen a grow-
ing polarization between pro-vax and anti-vax positions. The anti-vax atti-
tude obviously sees the quality of pro-vax information as qualitatively
negative, while it looks for good information that clarifies the anti-vax
positions. But it is not simply a matter of creating an information land-
scape characterized by two opposing narratives but also of how these nar-
ratives compete in the media and of how specific media environments,
such as social media, support the structuring and spreading of these narra-
tives. If we take, therefore, the vaccination issue, we can observe how the
anti-vaccination information contents are widely shared online. As evi-
denced by a Facebook users’ research across countries, continents, and
languages (Johnson et al., 2020), the anti-scientist attitude—and there-
fore a corresponding diffusion of qualitatively toxic information—despite
being expressed by smaller clusters and representing ideologically
marginal opinions, however, appears to have a central positioning in the

online network of conversations on vaccines. The content analysis of the
clusters highlights how “anti-vaccination clusters offer a wide range of
potentially attractive narratives that blend topics such as safety concerns,
conspiracy theories and alternative health and medicine, and also now the
cause and cure of the Covid-19 virus” (p. 231).
3.2 Information Selection and Infodemics

If instead, we observe the dimension of information selection under the
lens of the infodemic crisis, we see how selectivity must be understood
within the context of information disorder (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017),
characterized by a public communication in which different forms of
informational “pollution”: from false content to incorrect correlations,
from misinformation (the spread of false information, regardless of
whether there is an intent to deceive) to the disinformation (the deliberate
spread of false or misleading information with an intent to deceive). These
forms must then be associated with the possibilities of media manipula-
tion, coordinated inauthentic behavior, and propaganda (Freelon & Wells,
2020) that various research are beginning to explore showing how there
is a significant impact of these forms within digital platforms (Giglietto
et al., 2020). A sample analysis of Covid-19 misinformation contents by
the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (Brennen et al., 2020),
highlights how 88% of the misinformation contents appeared on social
media platforms. Alongside the scientific data, the responsibility of social
platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, in the circulation of
potentially false and ideologically oriented information content capable of
influencing public debate, is also emerging in public opinion in an increas-
ingly significant way. Even individual and group messaging systems, such
as Telegram, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger, are often vehicles for
content that are beyond the control of third parties or public opinion and
therefore lend themselves very well to spreading unverified news. While
some of these online contents are visible and searchable—therefore also
subject to regulatory policies by platforms or third parties, such as fact
checkers—others remain “below the radar,” that is, invisible and closed in
private chats or groups, with greater difficulty of control and management
(Boccia Artieri et al., 2021). According to the OECD (2020) policy brief
“Combatting Covid-19 disinformation on online platforms,” the true
extent of disinformation is difficult to estimate, and it is also because
research suggests that people are more likely to share misinformation than
they think.
Two concomitant processes act in the selectivity processes of this mis-
leading information: on the one hand, the selective biases produced by
polarization, on the other, the action of the algorithms.
On the first side, we find the effects produced by confirmation bias, that
is, by that attitude, typical of human nature, which leads us to confirm a
hypothesis through favorable evidence rather than trying to take into con-
sideration contrary evidence. Following the interpretation of those media
scholars who argue that those who select the news do so because they
already have an opinion on it (Arceneaux & Johnson, 2013), we can say
that social platforms, rather than generate polarization, reflect it. Therefore,
it is not a question of some conversion of one’s point of view but, rather,
of a confirmation actively sought by individuals, currently referred to as
confirmation bias. This interpretation, which refers both to studies on
selectivity (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008) and to those who consider the audi-
ence as an active subject in communication processes, has the merit of
bringing the phenomenon of polarization back into a much broader con-
text than the communicative one, giving up the technological shortcut
explanation (“it’s the responsibility of the media”) too often used in the
study of this complex phenomena.
On the second side, we can observe how information recommendation
systems based on big data and algorithms are today a fundamental ele-
ment of selective orientation through which most users browse, select,
and consume information online (Beam, 2014). While algorithms facili-
tate selective processes by allowing information to be filtered, the way they
shape the nature and type of information encountered can have a prob-
lematic impact on users (Zuiderveen Borghesius et al., 2016). From this
point of view, analyzing the Covid-19 infodemics represents an opportu-
nity to observe the ways in which the dissemination of information con-
tent shapes digital network structures and how visibility algorithms can
also affect them. A study at the University of Warwick in England and at
Indiana University Bloomington’s Observatory on Social Media (Menczer
& Hills, 2020) shows how even when you want to share or find high-
quality information, the inability to view all the news in social media feeds
inevitably leads to sharing things that are partially or completely false. In
practice, the ability of social media algorithms to make some content viral
leads to confusing virality (hence the successful exposure of a content)
with quality. This cognitive pollution of the selectivity of news is today
affected by the possible manipulations by the action of bots that are orga-
nized to disseminate specific content; in this sense, the proliferation of
Covid-19 misinformation by bots, coupled with human susceptibility to
believing and sharing misinformation, may well impact the course of the
pandemic. (Himelein-Wachowiak et al., 2021).
But on the other hand, the action of algorithms is modeled and takes
shape in a social and cultural context characterized by a polarization of
points of view due to ideological affiliations. A global scale analysis on
Twitter (Sacco et al., 2021) highlighted how political polarization signifi-
cantly affects attitudes related to the pandemic and how conversations on
the subject within different cluster-communities are shaped by a small
number of actors who generate most of the content and are responsible
for most of the related news sources that have circulated. Furthermore,
the study shows how the incidence of fake news in some of the commu-
nity’s conversations is so high that disinformation becomes a key epistemic
trait of the community.
In this sense, the studies on the online infodemics push us to reflect
more deeply on the nature of the so-called fake news. And invite us to
avoid interpreting disinformation through a mediacentric vision, certainly
taking into consideration the media affordances (such as algorithms) but
pushing us to ask ourselves which social and community functions may
have misinformation and disinformation, starting from the deepest atti-
tudes of a political, cultural, and emotional nature that we have in front of
the news. And pushing us to ask ourselves how infodemics is a constitutive
dimension of that phenomenon that we have come to know as ‘post-truth’.
4 Infodemics and Post-Truth

On the cultural level, the public debate and research have defined the
peculiar context for the development of information contents and post-
factual and post-reality social orientations as a context of post-truth
(Maddalena & Gili, 2020). It is a condition of political and civil culture
that sees the emergence of appeals and communicative clashes largely
based on the emotional dimension, poorly connected to the analysis of the
facts and concrete evidence, in such a way that any attempt to disprove the
affirmations based on data analysis or on fact-checking practices is system-
atically ignored. In this sense, the pandemic experience revealed the gen-
eral shift towards a post-truth disposition in contemporary social life
(Shelton, 2020).
The fact that misinformation and disinformation news on Covid-19

become a relevant topic to be dealt with publicly, and on which to focus
attention, highlights a specific problem: that with post-truth we are facing
a cultural clash. As Cory Doctorow (2017) explains, “we’re not living
through a crisis about what is true, we’re living through a crisis about how
we know whether something is true. We’re not disagreeing about facts,
we’re disagreeing about epistemology.”
Post-truth is the declination of a cultural context different from that
which characterizes the traditional forms of contestation and protest as
well as that in which a systematic falsification of reality is carried out. And
this is because, on the one hand, the principle of truth is relegated to a
secondary position with respect to the emotional dimension and, on the
other, because truth becomes a subject of a deeper cultural clash between
elites, communities, and different worldviews. In this sense, even the
propagation of a ‘fake news’ has not so much to do with the reality prin-
ciple as with support for a different belonging; that is, it can serve as an
example of one’s own positions. A post on Facebook that not only repre-
sents one’s own positions but presents them in a clear and unequivocal
way—for example, a meme denouncing the risks of the vaccine—does not
require verification and even if there is an awareness of its falsity, it does
not matter: its sharing has an expressive function with respect, for exam-
ple, to the anger one feels for a specific event, whether it is having to wear
masks, getting vaccinated, or having a green pass to enter a restaurant.
Sharing content can therefore represent an act of adherence to a world-
view or to a political or social group, it constitutes an affirmation of iden-
tity in public. These are behaviors useful to mark differences with respect
to other social groups, which are based on a partisan attitude that one can
have towards the truth itself—as when the subjective perception of the
presence of immigrants by the population does not correspond to the
official statistics of a country.
Post-truth therefore has to do with a generalized crisis of confidence in
politics as well as in the media, in intermediate social bodies as well as in
intellectual elites. The Internet becomes, in this context, a useful expres-
sive tool to destabilize the communicative structures and worldviews of
others, in a continuous ambivalence between unity and conflict, between
rationality and affectivity (Phillips & Milner, 2017). The emotional side—
with references to direct experience that connotes much of the content of
politics in the post-truth era—is not in contradiction with a rational
dimension: affectivity and rationality should not be thought of as
opposing poles or binary alternatives, but in their entanglement and refer-

ral to each other. People rationally lend their voices (by producing and
sharing content online) to affectively tune in to other people (Papacharissi,
2015), and their participation produces an emotional experience capable
of reflecting on their thinking. The antagonistic discourse is amplified in a
cacophony of voices, not always clearly ascribable to a clear and defined
position, which contributes to raising the tension of public discourse, to
propagating a specific sentiment, through ironic or vulgar modes, manip-
ulating original contents by giving them the form of fakes, constructing
hoaxes, through Facebook pages with a satirical appearance, and so on.
The affordances of platforms—that is, the technical characteristics together
with the forms of interpretation and use—their policies, and the impulsive
behavior of users allow the propagation and visibility of specific contents
that function as markers of their taste and become part of the online
self-narrative.
5 Conclusions
In this chapter, I have used the theme of infodemics, as a crisis due to the
overabundance of information and the difficulty of selecting quality infor-
mation content, as a territory for exploring deeper dynamics that have to
do (a) with the relationship between information and health; (b) with the
transformation of knowledge modalities in the intertwining of the social
system and a media ecosystem that sees social platforms as increasingly
central; and (c) with the problematic consequences that the information
disorder present in pandemic information can create.
In this sense, I have highlighted how the use of the Internet for infor-
mation on health issues has grown, and how social media in particular are
now central to people when it comes to both selecting information on
health and sharing their experiences on the topic. The information circuits
between mainstream and non-mainstream media have also changed,
reconfiguring the media ecosystem which sees a generalized crisis of trust
in legacy media and their editorial systems, an acceleration of news cycles
and an increasingly central gatekeeper function on the part of social
platforms.
The generalized crisis of trust also affects the legitimacy of institutional
actors, including information sources, and feeds a state of infodemic
information disorder that undermines the quality of information itself
through the production, circulation, and consumption of misinformation
and disinformation. But I have also highlighted how ‘infodemic disorder’

is a breeding ground for an epistemological struggle that has deeper causes
than the skirmishes we see represented in the media, for example, between
pro- and anti-vax. Certainly, the infodemics is a context in which the risk
of manipulation is high and in which the mechanisms linked to the visibil-
ity algorithms of social media can make the virality of a content be mis-
taken for its quality. But, as I have argued, at a deeper level, the existence
and circulation of these contents is an indicator of a cultural clash over
different worldviews and has to do with deeper reasons than the contin-
gent ones surrounding the pandemic. This is a context that I have recon-
structed by appealing to the concept of post-truth, which refers to an
erosion of epistemic authority and an epistemological conflict between
‘truths’ that are carriers of different worldviews.
The growth of difference in values and attitudes—think of that between
globalists and sovereignists—and the worsening of social conflicts, pro-
duce cultural universes that are not only distinct but that conflict with
each other. And the existence of these cultural universes is a challenge to
the validity and legitimacy of others. The social reasons for this conflict are
well explained by Robert K. Merton when he states that: “The coexistence
of these conflicting perspectives and interpretations within the same soci-
ety leads to an active and reciprocal distrust between groups. Within a
context of distrust, one no longer inquiry into the content of beliefs and
assertions to determine whether they are valid or not, one no longer con-
fronts the assertions with relevant evidence, but introduces an entirely
new question: how does it happen that these views are maintained?”
(Merton, 1996, p. 205).
Despite the amount of data and information, our experience and
response to the pandemic is therefore also very much shaped by a ten-
dency to put ‘truth’ on the back burner. Obviously, the production and
interpretation of information is a fundamentally (inter)subjective and
power-laden process, shaped by many different social, cultural, political,
and economic considerations. But the pandemic was an event that showed
how, in our society, the polarization between points of view has deeper
roots, pointing to an epistemological clash that will be an underlying ten-
sion in our social living. The cultural and technological conditions of post-
truth, which the Covid-19 infodemic has made even more evident, are
thus rooted in deep social and communicative transformations whose sur-
face we have only just begun to explore. And which move at the margins
of public discourse in the media, only to explode, unpredictably, onto the
scene on certain occasions, such as that of a pandemic.
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CHAPTER 3
A Review of Some Covid-19 Pandemic

Numbers in European Union, Canada,
and Mexico
Fabio Aiello and Giovanni Boscaino
1 Introduction
Coronavirus disease, more simply named as Covid-19, is an infectious dis-
ease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The first official report of the pres-
ence of SARS-CoV-2 infection was made by the Chinese health authorities
on December 31, 2019, to notify the existence of an outbreak of pneumo-
nia cases of unknown etiology, in Wuhan city (Hubei Province, China).
On January 9, 2020, the China CDC (Centre for Disease Control and
Prevention) disclosed that it had identified the etiological cause of the
outbreak in a new coronavirus, initially named 2019-nCoV, which, on
F. Aiello (*)
Kore University of Enna, Enna, Italy
e-mail: fabio.aiello@unikore.it
G. Boscaino
University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy
e-mail: giovanni.boscaino@unipa.it

Switzerland AG 2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13698-6_3
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Title: Don Sebastian

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SEBASTIAN ***
DON SEBASTIAN;
OR,
THE HOUSE OF BRAGANZA.
J. M‘CREERY,Printer,
Black-Horse-Court, Fleet-Street, London.
DON SEBASTIAN;
OR,

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE.
IN FOUR VOLUMES.
BY MISS ANNA MARIA PORTER.

AUTHOR OF THE HUNGARIAN BROTHERS.
Take Physic, Pomp!

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
So shalt thou shake the superflux to them,
And shew the Heavens more just.
King Lear.
VOL. IV.
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, AND ORME,

PATERNOSTER ROW.
———
1809.
CHAP. I., CHAP. II., CHAP. III., CHAP. IV., CHAP. V.,
CHAP. VI., CHAP. VII., THE CONCLUSION.
DON SEBASTIAN;
OR,

CHAP. I.
After serious reflection Sebastian came to the determination of
sacrificing his domestic comforts to the ultimate good of his people and his
child: the conflict was over with himself, but how was he to conquer the
heart of Kara Aziek? of that tender mother, who “chid the winds of
Heaven,” if they blew too roughly on the face of her darling?—that tender
mother and faithful wife, who saw so much of virtue and happiness around
her dwelling at Cachoeira, that she knew not where the world could shew a
station more productive of either.
Dreading the excess of her grief, yet arming himself to encounter it,
Sebastian quitted his solitude, and went forth to seek her.
He found her with Blanche, just returning from their village church,
where they had been witnessing the marriage of an Indian girl with one of
the most enlightened and amiable of her tribe. The happy scene from which
they were come, had lighted up the countenances of each: Blanche was yet
too young for complete sympathy with the blushing Izamba, but her heart
sympathized with happiness of any sort; and the tear of benevolent pleasure
which stood on the cheek of her mother, called a shower over hers.
Gently walking under a long line of cedars shading the Cachoeira,
Sebastian descried them afar off.—The full and perfectly-formed figure of
Kara Aziek, her slow soft step, the gentle dignity which distinguished her,
were contrasted by the slight and budding graces of Blanche’s more airy
form. Her step was quick, bounding, and uncertain as the young Gazelle’s;
her looks were timid, not majestic; and like spring preceding summer, she
sportively advanced, admiring every object she had seen and admired a
thousand times before.
Sebastian scarcely descried her ere she was at his side: by an irresistible
impulse he took her in his arms, and holding her to his heart, suffered the
tears he could no longer restrain, to fall over her face.
It was the first time that Blanche had ever felt her father’s tears; she
looked up, and the bright roses of health and delight faded from her cheek.
“Be not alarmed, my child!” he whispered in a faltering voice, as he let
her go again, “I will rejoin your mother soon—speak not to her of this
weakness—I must explain it myself.”
Having spoken, he turned away, and hurrying towards a sugar-mill,
which he entered, as if intent on business, left Blanche to wait for her
mother, who seeing nothing extraordinary in this conduct of her husband,
entered her own habitation.
It was long ere Sebastian sufficiently recovered himself to join Kara
Aziek; the smile with which he dressed his pale countenance could not
conceal from her the unusual agitation of his heart: she fearfully inquired its
cause, and was answered by a cautious explanation of De Castro’s situation
and engagements.
Kara Aziek listened to him in profound silence, which she did not break
till some moments after he had concluded; she then turned on him her
expressive eyes; no tears were there, but they were full of that maternal
anguish she felt called upon to control.
She looked tenderly at him, as if she believed him unable to avert the
calamity with which she was threatened, and as if she considered him
equally with herself, an object of compassion. “I submit:” she said at length,
turning her eyes from her husband and fixing them on Heaven; “There are
periods in which I dare not yield to my feelings. That God who has blessed
us with our Blanche, calls her now to become an instrument for her father’s
restoration: I may not detain her.”—
At the last words, Kara Aziek closed her eyes as if she would have shut
from her husband’s sight the anguish of her soul: a general trembling seized
her, and unable to relieve herself by tears, she made an effort to smile, and
pressing his hand, leaned her face upon his shoulder.
Sebastian gently supported her. This unresisting acquiescence, this
uncomplaining grief, affected him far more than the most violent despair: in
proportion as his Aziek appeared more worthy of happiness, her different
destiny seemed more cruel.
“Dearest and best of women!” he exclaimed, “is it to day that I am to
receive the strongest proof of that love which has been the angel of my life?
—You know my heart, and you spare me the misery of contending with
tenderness for you, and duty to Portugal: you weep not, you complain not!
—O my Aziek, am I then indeed, dearer to thee than the child to whom thou
gavest birth?—I expected lamentation, remonstrance, shall I confess it?—
sorrowful reproaches—I find gentleness and heroism; I find that I am still
the first in that precious heart.”—
Transported out of himself by such a conviction, Sebastian folded his
arms around his wife, whose countenance suddenly glowing with vivid
emotion, was now bathed in tears. Instantaneously melted by this burst of
affection, she wept profusely, but her tears had no bitterness in them; she
forgot at that moment the impending evil she had been contemplating.
By degrees this rapture subsided, and the separation from her daughter
returned in all its force. “I will try to merit these kind praises:” she said
faintly, “but my heart may not always have such strength: pardon me
therefore Sebastian, if some moments of weakness should make me the
selfish creature you feared to find me. Remember that in this discourse I
have spoken my real sentiments, and do not attend to the temporary ravings
of a mother, who cannot always hear the voices of Reason and Religion;
who cannot always obey their commands. In my soul I am convinced we
ought to make this sacrifice; as such, it shall be completed.”
Again the tears of Kara Aziek ceased to flow, and her features resumed
their former paleness. Sebastian still looked at her with a mixture of anguish
and delight. His affection was eloquent, and repeated tributes to the
fortitude he admired, contributed to support and to console Kara Aziek.
One important matter yet remained to be discussed; should they or
should they not suffer Blanche to depart without knowing the story of her
birth?
Many arguments in favor of each line of conduct presented themselves
during this interesting discussion; but those had the most weight, which
dictated explanation.
Blanche was of an age and a character to feel the value of such a
confidence: the knowledge of her parents misfortunes would surely endear
them to her heart; and when widely separated, that anxiety which must
result from her acquaintance with their critical situation, would form still a
link of union. Their thoughts, their wishes, their solicitudes, would yet
remain the same, though their persons might be divided; it would be
impossible for Blanche not to remember and to love her parents, when her
dearest interests were inseparably interwoven with their images.
In addition to this consideration, Sebastian urged one equally important:
Blanche would sooner attain the qualities requisite for her future guidance
through life, by this early call upon them. Discretion, courage, attentive
observation of persons and events, careful calculation of actions, and their
consequences, would be the natural fruit of thus giving her a necessity for
all these properties.
With the prospect of one day filling a station of responsibility, seeing in
the example of her father the awful vicissitudes to which even monarchy is
exposed, and feeling, in her own person, the dependance of man on man,
she would avoid the risk of becoming intoxicated with a distinction which
presented itself under a shape so forbidding.
Her imagination, chastized by experience, and her heart disciplined by
early care, would mature, fix, and ennoble her character: if Providence
should call her to a throne, that education would enable her to fill it with
honour; if destined to pass her life in obscurity, the memory of her parents
lot, would teach her the emptiness of the world, and the rarer treasures of
that benevolence which makes joy to itself in every station.
If blind to the advantages of candour, Sebastian should permit Blanche
to depart in ignorance of her real condition, he reflected, that she must go
with either a sentiment of curiosity about the concealed motives of her
parents, or with a sentiment of disappointment at their seemingly-lukewarm
affection: continual deception must be practised on her; and bearing away
with her no quickening principle of anxiety, her filial love would soon
languish.
The remembrance of her happy home, would, from its very happiness,
only serve to excuse her to herself for ceasing to feel an animated interest in
its inhabitants; and delivering up her young mind to the charms and
novelties of a gay life, she would perhaps lose much of her goodness and all
her simplicity.
These reflections decided Sebastian, for Kara Aziek had decided at first,
from the mere impulse of feeling.
Having left his Aziek seeking additional strength at that sacred source
whence human virtue is derived, he sought Gaspar, and imparted to him the
resolution to which he had brought himself: Gaspar’s emotion was purely
joyful; he neither dreaded dangers nor difficulties, oceans, nor dungeons,
when the prospect of being useful to his King lay before him.
His sanguine nature made him certain that he should not be long
separated from Sebastian: the destruction of Spanish tyranny, and the
restoration of Portugal, were events that he concluded must follow the
interference of England; he was but leading his sweet young mistress to a
triumph, not to a struggle; he was but going to make the path broad and
open which led back to the throne of her ancestors.
“We part, Sire! it is true;” he said, “yet what is our parting?—we shall
meet again, and meet in happiness. I feel that Providence has now set a
period to your trials: this is the epoch destined for the recovery of your
former possessions.—We shall reach England—England will raise her
powerful arm, and as if by magic, the whole mass of foreign tyranny will
crumble to dust. My honoured young mistress will then be given to the
Portuguese as a pledge that their beloved sovereign yet lives, and will
condescend to reign over them: you will arrive, Sire, to find in your own
kingdom, power, adoration, and happiness!”
“Not adoration Gaspar,” said Sebastian, smiling kindly, “not adoration,
that is an impious tribute to kings, which, thank God, I never required, nay,
which I abhorred, even in my proudest day.—If I may regain the love of my
people, by convincing them that a parental tenderness for them glows in this
time-tried heart, I shall indeed rejoice that the meridian hours of my life are
not to pass away at Cachoeira. Marvellous destiny! (he added after a
thoughtful pause) shall I ever again find myself the ruler of a mighty nation
—the arbiter of their fates—the earthly God to punish and to reward?—
When I look back to the period in which I was this powerful creature, it
seems to me a long-past dream; suffering and seclusion, the only realities!”
“Not so, Sire!” gravely observed Gaspar, “you are a sovereign and a God
at Cachoeira; you are the happiest of husbands and of fathers,—and do you
say that there are no realities but suffering and seclusion?”
Sebastian fixed his eyes on him, with a look of generous approval,
“Ever, my friend!” he exclaimed; “ever watchful over my character as much
as my interest! I spoke, Gaspar, in a way too familiar with me: I spoke from
the impression of one recollection only; I remembered therefore my losses,
and forgot my possessions. Be satisfied, my soul is fully sensible of the rare
blessings I enjoy. Had I not lost my liberty and crown, I should never have
been the happy father and husband, never have opened my eyes on the light
of pure Christianity: this thought makes me consider my misfortunes as
benefits.”
Gaspar expressed his satisfaction at so ingenuous a confession of error,
and proceeded to name the time and preparations that would be required,
ere he could commence his voyage.
He knew that merchant-ships were then in the bay of St. Salvador, bound
for St. Lucar: in one of these, it was agreed he should procure a passage for
himself and his young charge, with whom he might easily proceed from St.
Lucar to Messina.
Nothing was more common than for the children of Brazilian settlers to
be sent to Europe for their education or health, and one of these motives
would certainly be attributed to Blanche’s separation from her parents,
should any persons think such an event of sufficient consequence to employ
their thoughts.
Charged with securing the cabin of the merchant-ship, and with
providing all things requisite for a tedious voyage, Gaspar hastened to St.
Salvador, leaving sadness in that house, which until now, never knew more
than the shadow of passing clouds.
The interview with his daughter was a trying hour to Sebastian: Kara
Aziek declined being present: her heart dreaded itself; and the nearer drew
the moment in which she was to make the sacrifice demanded, the more her
fears and her agitation increased.
“If I should fail at last!” she constantly repeated to herself, while striving
to strengthen her resolution by the recollection of Sebastian’s
commendations; “if I should disappoint his trust in my promise of
submission! ah God! pity me, succour me, support my feeble spirit, and
give me that added confidence in thy mercy, that added tenderness for his
feelings, which may successfully wrestle against the despair of a mother.”
Impressed with a sense of her own weakness, Kara Aziek fled from
every scene which could enervate her still further, courageous from that
very tenderness of character, with which her courage had to struggle, she
refused to herself the luxury of indulging her grief, and of participating in
that affecting interview which must increase it.
While she surrounded herself by various occupations, forcibly wresting
her mind towards the interest of others, Sebastian was unfolding to their
daughter the wonderful story of his youth.
Her amazement and sympathy may be imagined; they were in proportion
to the sensibility of her character: but Sebastian looked beyond these, and as
he slowly related the events of his life, and pointed out the lessons to be
learned from them, he watched their effect on her who might hereafter need
such beacons to guide her in the same course.
A serious joy warmed his heart, when he beheld the impression made by
the knowledge of her birth: looks of trouble and apprehension were
instantly diffused over her features: she was not ambitious therefore: to
inspire her with zeal for her own rights, it would be requisite to teach her
the benevolent purposes to which they might be directed.
No parts of her father’s narrative so absorbed the attention of Blanche, as
those which related to her mother. While Sebastian detailed the variety of
Kara Aziek’s destiny, and the transitions from pain to pleasure which they
had had mutually endured, the eyes of Blanche alternately shone with the
brightness of joy, or fell to the ground blinded with tears. It was evident,
that from the moment Kara Aziek appeared upon the scene, her affectionate
child saw in her love the best blessing of life, and ceasing to think of her
father’s loftier anxieties, was solely interested in reaching the moment
which gave her parents to each other.
Once, and only once, did her agitated heart burst through the restraint
which delicate timidity, and filial respect had imposed: it was at the
description of Sebastian’s return to Portugal, at the reception of Donna
Gonsalva, and the conversation of the two noblemen at the house of Lopez
Vernara.
Powerfully moved by these incidents, she suddenly threw herself on the
bosom of her father, exclaiming, in a voice broken by sobs, “Ah send me
not to such a dreadful world! let me not live with people who have thus
outraged my dearest father!”
Much affected by a sensibility as just as it was exquisite, Sebastian
strained her to his breast, and lifting up the scattered ringlets from her
cheek, he kissed it fondly. That roseate cheek, those eyes now closed with
grief, but lovely still from the long lashes which fringed them, the soft arms
that twined around his neck, and the beautiful tresses which fell dishevelled
over them, all these were so like his Aziek’s, that he repeated his caresses,
and abandoned to a moment of weakness, whispered, “Should I not risk all
things to go with my child?”
At this unexpected dawn of hope, Blanche raised her face, the sunshine
of happy youth was on it. “O my father;” she cried, “let us go together!—
my mother, my dear mother too—we cannot live without her.”
Sebastian had now recovered himself, and sorrowing to destroy the
illusion his own words had raised, he proceeded in a calmer tone, to explain
to her the weighty reasons which rendered it necessary for him to trust the
judgment of De Castro, and to act by his suggestion: he alone could decide
on the prudence of measures, which must be influenced by the conduct of
those potentates amongst whom he was acting.
Blanche had been early taught to yield to the voice of reason: the
moment she was convinced that what she wished was hostile to her better
interests, or blameable in itself, she ceased to form a wish on the subject.
She submitted to the commands of duty, as to the irreversible decrees of
Heaven.
This valuable habit of moral obedience, now enabled her to acquiesce in
the dreary prospect of separating from her parents, and committing herself
to a world, of which the history had made her afraid. She wept bitterly; but
she frequently repeated, that she saw her father could not in justice to
himself and his country, and in gratitude to those friends who were now
risking their lives for his sake by secret correspondence with the enemies of
Philip, do otherwise than grant them some rallying point like herself.
Sebastian contemplated her as she sat struggling against her grief,
kissing his hands and looking at him with humid smiles: Sebastian
contemplated her with many an admiring thought. He contrasted her
character and conduct with what his own had been at a much more forward
period of youth: at that period the whole globe was scarce large enough for
his tempestuous passions to rage in. Shame and compunction were on his
brow. “Blanche,” he exclaimed, “if the certainty that you possess the fullest
love, the most perfect approbation of your father, can give comfort to your
heart, be assured that you do possess them—never my child, never were
you half so dear or so estimable to me, as at this moment.”
Blanche started from her seat, and threw herself before him; Sebastian
bent towards her, and holding her against his breast in the lovely attitude in
which she had placed herself, he resumed his discourse. “Cultivate this self-
government which ennobles you thus in a parent’s eyes!—O my daughter,
self-government is dignity, is happiness, is dominion!—’tis the secret of
disarming adversity of its sting—’tis the virtue which comprehends all
others—’tis that which will entitle you to a crown in Heaven!—Had I been
like thee, my child, at this instant I should have nothing to reproach myself
with; I should have been dwelling in the house of my fathers, and I should
not have had to send my innocent Blanche into a faithless world in search
of that possession which my folly threw away.”
He stopt, and several deep sighs followed his words. Blanche kissed his
hand with repressed ardour; her timid voice trembled as she spoke. “You
have profited by your chastisements, dearest father, or how should I have
become the character you praise?—ah me! shall I always remain so? your
virtues have sprung up out of your trials; and mine perhaps may die under
them.”
Struck with the justice of this observation, and charmed with the salutary
humility which it proved, her gratified father pursued the theme she had
begun, and discoursing on principles and passions, on trials and
temptations, forgot the lapse of time.
Kara Aziek’s voice near the windows of the apartment in which they sat,
roused him to recollection, and taking Blanche by the hand, he went forth to
join her mother.
By the same impulse, Kara Aziek and her daughter pressed each other in
their arms without speaking; Sebastian approached, and drew them towards
him! he too was silent: after some moments of extreme emotion, they
recovered themselves, and rose from this sad embrace. The faces of Kara
Aziek and Blanche were bathed in tears, that of Sebastian was pale, but
more composed.
As if by tacit agreement, no one ventured to speak of the only subject
that engrossed their thoughts: their conversation was serious, and
interrupted by long pauses, but it was evidently connected with their most
interesting reflections.
Not till she was alone with her daughter, a few days previous to her
departure, had Kara Aziek courage to name the trial they were about to
encounter: at this instant fortitude forsook her, and the weeping Blanche
beheld for the first time, her gentle and hitherto patient mother, given up to
an agony of despair.
Periods like these, are not those in which human comfortings avail: the
soul must seek and find its comforter in itself. It must be habituated to
believe that all the decrees of Heaven are wise and good; then will sorrow
gradually subside, and a consolation past utterance will succeed to
distraction.
Experience had taught this most precious lesson to Kara Aziek; for often
had she had occasion to feel in her own person, and through that of her
husband, that
“We, ignorant of ourselves,

Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good: so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.”
The silent caresses and touching tears of her daughter, contributed to

console, rather than to afflict her: so sweet, so amiable, so excellent a
creature, was she not destined to ornament and to bless mankind?—The
heart of a fond mother answered in the affirmative; and like the sick person
who courageously bears the crisis of a disorder when the paroxysm is
expected to work his cure, she roused herself to support a parting which she
hoped would lead to permanent re-union.
Though flattering herself that many months would not elapse ere the
path should be open for Sebastian’s return to Portugal, she exhorted
Blanche, as if their separation were to endure for years: her admonitions
were few and impressive; she had nothing new to teach her daughter, but
what she had been hitherto teaching her every day by example rather than
precept, she now summed up, in easily-remembered maxims.
This discourse with her mother was never forgotten by Blanche.
Gaspar had provided the accommodations requisite for his young
mistress; all their arrangements were completed, and the day was fixed for
the sailing of the vessel which was to convey them to Europe. Sebastian
confided to his friend a packet for Don Emanuel De Castro, signifying the
extent to which he would engage himself with any foreign power willing to
assist him: this packet contained also a letter to Queen Elizabeth, which
Blanche was to deliver at their first meeting.
Sebastian had written with the dignity of a King, and the tenderness of a
father: by the warmth of his paternal expressions, he sought to make her
sensible that she could not hope to injure or distress his child with impunity.
He expressed himself strongly, yet with such courtly address, that although
Elizabeth must feel his meaning, and see his doubts, she could not openly
reply to them.
The hour of separation drew near; the ship was to sail on the morrow.
Having resolved to let no other objects share her heart with her parents,
at that moment in which she alone would occupy theirs, Blanche took leave
of the Indians on the preceding evening: their uncontrolled lamentations
affected her powerfully; and it was not till the night was far advanced, that
she recovered from the mournful impression.
Day-break awoke her: when she first opened her eyes at the rustling of
the breeze among the tall tops of a grove of Magnolias, when she saw their
beautiful foliage, and heard the birds singing from their branches, she felt a
sudden shock; for this was the last time in which she should see these trees,
or feel this air!
She was going far away! she was going from her parents! at this
conviction a death-like sickness oppressed her very heart; she sunk back on
her pillow, and believing the effort impossible, resigned herself to an excess
of despair. The tears which she shed in floods, gradually relieved her
feelings, and left them more obedient to her will: she repeated to herself the
injunctions and arguments of her parents, she strove to fix a short period for
the continuance of their separation, and having recourse to devotion, was
enabled to quit her chamber with a tolerably serene countenance.
It was yet early day; no one else was stirring, and Blanche rose thus
soon, that she might take a parting look at the recent grave of Barémel.
This playmate and guardian of her infant days, had died of old age, and
was buried by Sebastian himself under a cluster of Palmito’s in his garden.
No stone, with indecent resemblance to the monument of departed man,
marked the place where he laid; but a circle of plaited reeds enclosed the
little mound, and Blanche often stole there, to cover the bed of her favorite
with flowers.
She now moved lightly and timidly towards it, half-ashamed of a
sensibility it was amiable to feel. O lovely season of youth! how sweet art
thou to behold, with thy attendant graces of modesty, susceptibility, and
self-distrust!
The colours of the blooming flowers through which she passed painted
the soft complexion of Blanche; hers was the complexion that announced a
tender and intelligent heart, for it varied with every thought and every
feeling; it was now flushed with strong emotion.
She approached Barémel’s grave, and was going to throw herself upon it
with a violence of sorrow pardonable at her early age, when she was
checked by the apprehension of its being criminal.—“Yet he was so loving,
and faithful!” she exclaimed, tears trembling in her eyes, “I think it cannot
be wrong to remember him with affection.” Her innocent heart decided in
the affirmative, and sitting down near the grassy heap, she strewed it with
blossoms, and gave loose to her tears.
Her mind was quickly thronged with long-past images: different epochs
of holidays and festivals in which Barémel had constantly performed some
amusing part; passed in review before her. She remembered his joyful bark,
his supplicating whine, his watchful and loving looks, his unwearied
attendance of her from infancy to youth, over all the romantic region that
surrounded Cachoeira. “Poor Barémel! I can never see thee again!” she
said, sighing: that apostrophe conveyed to her heart a salutary exhortation
to take comfort on a far dearer subject.
She was indeed going to quit her parents, but not for ever; they were yet
in the flower of their lives, and Providence therefore permitted her to
anticipate their future re-union. Blanche was of a grateful disposition; she
loved to be happy, and far from partaking in the nature of those wretchedly
tempered spirits who seem to feast on discontent, and refuse to be
comforted; she opened her soul to admit the smallest particle of
consolation.
Her reflections now assumed a more serious cast, (for they were
employed in enumerating the mercies she yet possessed, and those she
might anticipate without presumption,) but they were no longer afflicting:
anxious to seize this moment of resignation for appearing before her
parents, she got up, and giving a long look of regret to the resting-place of
her early companion, turned homeward.
Sebastian was advancing in search of her: “I have only been to look at
poor Barémel’s grave,” she said blushing, “since you have told me all that I
owe to him, his memory has become almost sacred to me, he saved my dear
father’s life.”
Blanche added the last sentence with trepidation which shewed she was
eager to give an honorable excuse for what might have been deemed a
weakness. Sebastian pressed her hand as he led her forward: “like thy
mother in all things!” he observed, “ever diffident of thy best and most
engaging actions!”
They proceeded in silence to the apartment of Kara Aziek: she had yet
many things to say, or to repeat, and she was now gathering fortitude to
pronounce them calmly. Blanche sat down between her parents: each held
one of her hands, and frequently pressed it; but as yet, none of them spoke:
their eyes were fixed on the ground.
Why is it that the dearest connexions, when about to lose sight of each
other, avoid looking on the countenance they love, and which they will so
soon long to behold again? is it that the soul instinctively prepares for its
calamity, and tries to soften the pang by gradual abandonment of its
enjoyments? or is it that grief would be uncontrollable if those delightful
feelings were indulged which we are conscious must end with the removal
of the person beloved?
Whatever be the motive, its effect was seen in the family at Cachoeira:
they remained silent and immovable, drawing by stealth long and
interrupted sighs. They were summoning resolution to speak of parting.
At this moment Gaspar hastily entered; every eye was raised towards
him: “The ship sails an hour earlier than we expected, a messenger has just
come from St. Salvador to say so, we have not an instant to lose.”
Kara Aziek uttered a loud shriek, and clasped her daughter in her arms;
they had started up at Gaspar’s first words, and now remained clinging to
each other. Tears, sobs, broken exclamations, embraces repeated again and
again, were the witnesses of their sorrow.
Gaspar called on them to remember the fatal consequence of delay:
almost subdued himself, he yet had courage to appear barbarous, that he
might shorten the pangs of others.
Blanche heard him not: she flung herself alternately from the arms of
one parent to those of the other, and as she deluged their bosoms with her
tears, she called on them to assure her that their separation should not be
eternal.
Cold damps stood on the brow of Sebastian, for the pains of death were
in his heart, but his eyes were tearless. Kara Aziek was like one frantic; her
softness had given place to a wild and resisting despair: she clung to her
child, and no remonstrances had power to loosen her grasp!
Sebastian trembled for her reason, and that fear gave him strength to
accomplish what he knew to be indispensible. He advanced towards his
wife, forcibly, yet tenderly, unlocked her hands as they met round the waist
of Blanche, and hastily pushing his daughter towards Gaspar, exclaimed,
“Go, go my child! if you would not kill your mother. I have, I have blessed
you—I bless you again.”
Gaspar had seized the arm of Blanche, while his agitated master was
trying to detain Kara Aziek; he now led the former towards the door, and
lifting her up, ran with her from the house to the caloche which was to carry
them to St. Salvador.
On reaching the carriage, he found that she had fainted; less alarmed at
this natural effect of sorrow, than he would have been grieved by her
lamentations, he got into the vehicle, and supporting her against his
shoulder, proceeded to bathe her temples with a pungent essence he usually
wore about him.
His exertion succeeded, Blanche revived: she looked round, and seeing
herself on the road, she knew that all hope of present change was desperate:
her eyes closed again, but it was only to weep with less obviousness, and to
preserve their last look of her parents.

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Infodemic Disorder: Covid-19 Coping

Strategies in Europe, Canada and

Giovanni Boccia Artieri

ISBN 978-3-031-13697-9 ISBN 978-3-031-13698-6 (eBook)

Fabio Aiello (PhD in Applied Statistics, University of Palermo), Associate

Marc D. David (MSc University of Montreal), Full Professor with the

Fig. 3.1 Weekly trend in the number of new cases of Covid-19 in

Fig. 3.14 Weekly percentage variations in the number of new cases of

Fig. 9.8 Type of reply 235

Table 3.1 Summary statistics of new cases, deaths, ICU admission, by

Table 6.4 Discursive strategies used to cover the pandemic 143

Covid-19 and the Global Crisis

Marie-Eve Carignan, Gevisa La Rocca,

As early as January 2020, even before the World Health Organization

M.-E. Carignan (*)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

media expose the current lack of knowledge surrounding the emergence

This massive disinformation has sometimes led to an intensification of

Lancer, 2020).3 In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro, “has urged Brazilians

a symptom of the effects of restrictions (imposed or relaxed), the impact

this approach allowed them to statistically describe qualitative processes in

vaccine hesitancy and non-compliance, which are more present among

international community is still reflecting on the lessons to be learned

Luhmann, N. (2006). La Confiance. Un mécanisme de réduction de la complexité

Smallman, S. C. (2015). Whom do you trust? Doubt and conspiracy theories in

Infodemic Disorder: Covid-19

Giovanni Boccia Artieri

1 Introduction: “We’re Not Just Fighting

“We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.” With

G. Boccia Artieri (*)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

social media and private chat channels—makes it more complex to distin-

2 The Relationship Between Information

Health constitutes a relevant category in the field of news and contributes

highlighted the opportunities and risks associated with these widespread

3 Infodemics Between Crisis of Trust

In a commentary on SARS entitled “When the Buzz Bites Back,” written

Infodemics are an excessive amount of information about a problem, which

The question of trust therefore seems to be central both in relation to the

This infocentric approach (Colombo, 2022) assumes that the quality of

to be considered reliable in relation to one’s own convictions and emo-

We know that every outbreak will be accompanied by a kind of tsunami of

3.1 Information Quality from Opposing Points of View

marginal opinions, however, appears to have a central positioning in the

3.2 Information Selection and Infodemics

4 Infodemics and Post-Truth

The fact that misinformation and disinformation news on Covid-19

opposing poles or binary alternatives, but in their entanglement and refer-

and disinformation. But I have also highlighted how ‘infodemic disorder’

A Review of Some Covid-19 Pandemic

Fabio Aiello and Giovanni Boscaino

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 31

Title: Don Sebastian

Author: Anna Maria Porter

Release date: December 6, 2023 [eBook #72343]

Original publication: London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme,

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DON

THE HOUSE OF BRAGANZA.

THE HOUSE OF BRAGANZA.

BY MISS ANNA MARIA PORTER.

Take Physic, Pomp!

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Fig. 9.8 Type of reply 235

Table 6.4 Discursive strategies used to cover the pandemic 143