Today, Facebook has launched a public education campaign to help people in Samoa learn how to identify and combat health
misinformation.
The campaign, which will run for five weeks in Samoa includes graphics and videos that will run in English and Samoan,
and aims to support local users with three key behaviours:
Awareness - Be informed that misinformation exists
Investigation - Find out more to confirm if the information is indeed false
Action - Visit the local health authority to get accurate information
Mia Garlick, Director of Public Policy for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islands said, “One of our commitments is
to connect people to reliable information, and give people the tools to make informed decisions about the information
they see on Facebook. For this campaign, we are focusing our efforts further to target COVID-19 and vaccine related
misinformation, ensuring that Samoan’s are able to scrutinise what they are seeing against official public health
resources.”
“We will continue to work with health experts including the World Health Organization, and local partners, to make sure
that we have the right policies in place to reduce the spread of harmful COVID-19 misinformation on our platform.”
Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has worked closely with the World Health Organization to direct people to
authoritative COVID-19 information, and to do more to identify and take action to remove incorrect claims about the
virus.