A talk aimed at cybersecurity, OSINT and strategic communications professionals, discussing the context of working on health information and information environment for health - and where the bridges between the cybersecurity, disinformation response and health system are.

1. 9 May 2024
disinformation,
public health and
information
ecosystems
Tina D Purnat
Introduction to
Discussion with MSc students in Cybersecurity
@ Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology,
Warsaw University of Technology
This presentation © 2024 by Tina D Purnat is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
4.0 International

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Thanks for your interest in this topic. I developed this deck to support public health efforts and have made it available for others to
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4. Protecting
public health
relies on people
behaving in a
certain way
Some examples:

5. Individual
health
decisions have
population
level impacts
Some examples:

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7. Left unaddressed, these can contribute to erosion of trust health guidance, health interventions, health workers and health
systems, reduce risk perception, discourage healthy behaviors and contribute to vaccine hesitancy. This can be prevented.

8. Issuing confusing guidance that is not
appropriate for specific populations, such as
people who are immunocompromised or
pregnant.

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10. Public health
principles of
risk
assessment
and protecting
the most
vulnerable
Some examples:

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15. Health topic areas that are represented in health misinformation research

18. when public health concerns expressed by individuals are hijacked by values-based meta
narratives that are intentionally spread to achieve an agenda and do harm to systems.
Questions, concerns,information voids Misinformaton Disinformation

19. Profit Profit and
influence/power over a
health agenda
Sowing wider distrust
for political influence,
health is hijacked
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Motivationsforspreadinghealth
disinformation

25. https://www.vox.com/recode/22351108/dark-patterns-ui-web-design-privacy

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)

27. Be careful in partnerships built in the
health space because health
authorities are expected to be
apolitical to be able to achieve their
mission.
Precision response to disinformation
needs to be coupled with mitigation
of secondary effects that manifest
overtime.
We need to involve health professionals
when developing regulations and
measures on disinformation. Inevitably,
there will be health topics involved and
the decisions on this are made without
health professionals, patient advocates
(in addition to consumer advocates and
the public).
Greater coherence in follow-up
needed in health sector’s response
to disinformation’s secondary
effects on health, trust and
sservices.
Carefulparntershipand
clearroles acrosssectors
areneeded
Disinformation
mitigation vs longerterm
health effects
Greater understanding of
parntership in needed
across sectors
Better and more
coherentfollow up are
needed

29. Thankyouvery
much!
tinapurnat.com
Resources for
infodemic managers