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Paper short abstract:

Infodemic defines a storm of information, overwhelming – just like the COVID-19 virus – healthcare structures and their fragmented organisation. Looking at the Italian primary care, the paper articulates the unfolding of the infodemic crisis as a motor of long-term healthcare system transformation.

Paper long abstract:

Infodemic, as too much information including false or misleading information, has been widely documented by journalists and commentators. Yet, infodemic long-term effects over health care organisations remain understudied. In places like Italy, the COVID-19 infodemic prospered over the massive introduction of telemedicine, that expanded exponentially in the face of lockdowns and other drastic measures of social distancing.

During my fieldwork in 2021-2022, many General Practitioners (GPs) told me they bought new phones for work. They opened new WhatsApp, Face-Book and Instagram profiles. Social platforms have become a primary source of contact with patients and discussion with colleagues. GPs created new emails accounts and hired communication professionals to filter phone calls. But the ever-increasing number of requests for care still created an overburden of calls, emails and text messages. Such a tempest of information, whose management is widely improvised, ended up creating a backlash of mistrust. GPs are accused by multiple parties of having failed their gatekeeping role while practicing care by distance during the first and second wave of the COVID-19, with disastrous repercussion for patients’ health and hospital overcrowding rates.

This paper explores the infodemic in the Italian primary care, asking: how do technologies of communication create, inflate or delimit opportunities for infodemic to emerge in healthcare? And how does mistrust, generated by the infodemic, changes the possibility for trustworthy, equal relationships of care by distance? Addressing such questions, the paper illustrates the unfolding of the infodemic crisis as a motor of long-term healthcare system transformation.