Mal Fletcher comments on the new study that has found that the truth takes six times longer than fake news to be seen by 1,500 people on Twitter.

In recent decades, there have been numerous stories about how false rumours have impacted negatively on public responses to health crises. Today, social media offer amazing opportunities for the rapid and unfiltered spread of such dangerous rumours.

Recently, Wired magazine featured an important article on the future of the internet. It reminded us that one of the great geopolitical risks of our time is, "a massive disease outbreak as a consequence of false information driving panic and refusal of the very interventions that could contain or prevent the spread of disease. "

In 2017, anti-vaccination campaigns on social media in South India led to widespread public refusals of the measles-rubella vaccine. In Nigeria, rumours that eating salt and bitter melon could prevent the Ebola virus lead to the further spread of the disease.

Even before the advent of social media, this type of health-related rumour-mongering was a problem. Twenty years ago many British people refused the MMR vaccine on the basis of now-debunked autism rumours.

Social media have simply sped up the transmission of this type of rumour and vastly increased its geographical reach. In some cases, social media have added weight to spurious claims by virtue of the number of people re-tweeting fake news messages.

Governments need to be much more intentional and committed when it comes to holding the owners of social platforms to account for the content they host. New media companies are the publishers and news producers of our time. They must accept the concomitant social responsibility.

Relying on these companies alone, though, will not bring the change we need. Those of us who find social media invaluable as means for adding value or promoting the common good, must step up to the plate.

Faced with a deluge of claim and counterclaim on almost every issue, we need to listen to and read messages about our health with a healthy level of scepticism, even when it comes to "factual" messages sent by friends. We need to do so without giving in to destructive cynicism.

We must call out those who spread falsehoods in the same way we might confront those who bully others online.

Hopefully, we will see a time when social media speaks more to our better angels than it does to our lowest urges.