Press conference WHO on digital platform during Covid-19

Good morning colleagues from from Geneva Press Corps.

Welcome to this special press briefing where we will talk about digital companies and social media platforms and how WHO work with them.

We really apologise for this delay first because the invitation has been sent through our colleagues in Eunice and we are just looking how we will best manage the questions.

But we can, yeah, you need to raise hand please if you have a question afterward.

And then Chris is here with me and we will try to, to to go through that.

So as we have announced today, we have two guests.

We have Andy Pattison, he's a manager for Digital Solutions in our Department of Communications.

And we have Alexandra Kuzmanovic who is a social media manager.

So today you have three persons from Department of Communications at, at WHO we had Paul Molinaro on Tuesday.

And as per your request, we will try to have these thematic briefings outside regular briefing, but you know, bear with us because it's not always easy to, to secure the, the, the speakers.

So I'll give a floor immediately to to Andy Patterson, who will tell us more about our work with the digital companies and then Alexandra will will follow on that.

[Other language spoken]

So as Tarek says, my name is Andy Patterson.

I'm the manager of Digital Solutions in the Department of Communications here at WHWHOHQ.

I see my job as to empower people to make good health decisions.

And the way we do that is to get more good health messages into more lives through as many channels as possible.

And today I want to just tell you a little bit how we do that.

But before I start, I just want to emphasise one reason why this is so.

This work is so important.

And one of the things that we're battling every day, as you know, is misinformation.

What I'm going to quote from now, some numbers is from an MIT study.

It's the largest study that was done on social media and digital platforms about 15-18 months ago.

So they've researched that falsehoods are 70% more likely to be shared than accurate news and that false stories reach people 6 times quicker than a true story does.

This is quite worrying statistics.

So what we're saying here is false stories outperform the truth on every single subject, whether it's business or terrorism or war, technology or even entertainment.

And sadly, in our case, this also means health and really importantly, science.

It just seems that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax in rumour.

And that's really sad.

Falsehoods will travel faster, further and deeper than the truth.

So coming back to what we do, to who, I'd like you to just think back before lockdown, before we were all in our homes and think about your journey to work.

And for 95% of people, that never changes.

It's always the same.

I, for example, I get on my motorbike, I drive along the same road and I arrive at work and I park it in almost the same place every time and I get to the office almost at the same time as I leave.

Obviously, depending on traffic that can be slower or faster.

Well, the same is true for people's digital journeys any given day.

So on our mobile phone we have 30 apps, but actually we only use four of them.

That's what that's what research has shown us.

The rest we use as space traders.

We take one and we put it on and we remove it 10 days, 10 days later because we need space for something else.

I do that with yoga apps all the time.

I say I'm going to get fit, I'm going to get into a good mental health space and I'm going to use more yoga.

But of course after 10 days I trade it off and I go back to my 4 apps that I'm used to.

So rather than trying to change someone's behaviour, what we're trying to do is to get into people's digital journeys.

So how do I get into those 4 apps that everybody uses every day, even though they're completely different?

So the way that we do this, the way I've sort of broken down my body of work is into 3 pillars.

The first pillar is to fight misinformation and falsehoods.

So we that's a really big issue for us.

The second pillar is to promote science based messages.

So how do we get those good messages into people's lives?

And the third pillar is the tools, the applications and channels that we use to do that and that we build.

So for COVID-19, this process started for me in February when I convened a round table for the tech industry in California, in Silicon Valley, California.

Around the table that days were 35 companies including Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, the Big 5, as well as other huge companies like Salesforce, Twitter, Dropbox, Uber, Reddit, as I said, about 35 companies and I pitched to them that COVID-19 was going to be a very big problem.

And I challenged them to start thinking and start working to helping WHO and their local ministries of health get good messages out to people and as quickly and as safely as possible.

So if we break down these three pillars, I'll tell you a little about the the first pillar, which is fighting misinformation and falsehoods.

And of course, we work a lot with social media channels.

And my colleague Alex will talk about that in a few seconds and talk about our work with Facebook.

So I'll just tell you about some of the work that we do in that space.

For example, on YouTube, I'll use the YouTube examples.

It's a, it's a really important channel that we've we've managed to work with.

So we work with YouTube on many different levels.

I'll give you some examples of that.

We try to remove poor information and misinformation.

So if, if there is information out there which is clearly wrong, especially content that is harmful to people and to humans, we will try and remove that as quickly as possible with them.

So we work with them every day.

We have, we have a channel now that we communicate on a group of us on each side that says, OK, this is harmful information.

This has to be removed because it doesn't follow these 3 or 4 guidances.

We, so we remove the really bad things that's harmful to people.

We reduce the myths and rumours.

So we work with them to say that, you know, they look at this process and they say, hey, there's this new myth that's coming out that, you know, XYZ is happening in XYZ country, ABC country.

And they give us insights on new trends and new, new and trending rumours.

So they say, hey, these are 5 new rumours and these are the ones which are getting the most traffic at the moment.

This is what people are searching for.

This is what people are watching.

And we look at those rumours and we say, well, OK, those three are harmless.

Those three are are quite dangerous, so we better try and debunk them.

And then we spend time with the epidemiologists debunking those rumours.

And most recently was the 5G rumour which has been circulating on social media and we've debunked that.

And so there's absolutely no science behind it.

Of course, it takes us a little time because we have to have a scientific process and we have to go through a scientific, scientific rigour to get to that conclusion.

And then we raise good quality information.

So not only WH OS information, but also the ministries of health information.

And so if in one country, one Ministry of Health is doing extremely well, let's put out a really good pertinent video.

We flag it to to YouTube and we say, hey, this is a really good video.

If we could promote it in that country, it would be really helpful to the populations in that country.

Finally, we also work with the policy team, with YouTube also, of course, we work with the policy teams in all companies, but in this specific case with YouTube.

So we suggest improvements to their policy and we say, listen, this policy here at the moment is a little bit weak.

This one needs tightening up.

How can we do that?

That's a slow burner, but it works.

So to recap, for YouTube, we remove misinformation, we reduce myths and rumours, we raise good quality content and we work with policy teams.

That's kind of an example that we try to replicate on other channels and in other companies.

The second pillar which is about promoting science based messages and facts about the virus and treatment.

Again, we work with many partners, but one of the biggest relationships we have is with Google search.

As you know, outside of China, 80% of all traffic is through Google and Google search.

And so very early on we talked to them about how do we promote this content that if somebody's looking for coronavirus or COVID-19 or any of, you know, 30 or 80 different related topics, they would get good quality information and not myths and not rumours and not falsehoods.

And what we started to do is they, they had a product called SOS Alerts.

And generally what we try to do is to look at their business model and their products and our business needs, if you want a better word and combine them together.

[Other language spoken]

And that sweet spot's where we try to work where they overlap.

So over time, we then drag them into just catering for our needs because obviously that but to start the relationship, we always work in that sweet spot.

So they have this product called SOS Alert, which is which they've put up in for populations when there's been a Level 3 emergency in the country, like an earthquake or a flood.

And in this case, we said, well, this is just as you know, this is a, a global, it's a global issue here.

We need to get this SOS Alert as soon as possible.

They, and we started working like that, populating it with content and things like that.

So this is mutated from SOS alert, which is 1 product into a new product, the knowledge panel, which you see now.

So I encourage you all to go to google.com and do a search.

And what you'll see when you get that search for coronavirus is information about the disease and the outbreak, of course, like symptoms, prevention, the statistics from WHO, but also from other areas.

We also have curated with them news from credible agencies.

When we have seen falsehoods being churned out by the same news agency, we have flagged to them that this news agency maybe should be looked into and be dropped from the news feed.

And they've been very good at finding the right balance in that area.

We've also offered global, global health advice from WHO, what WHO is is is providing to all the ministries of health.

But what we've tried to do is also localise it so that we give local health information from the health minister that you've done by Geo localising.

So if you're in Switzerland today and you search, you will have WHO information, you'll have a news feed and then you'll have things about from the Swiss government.

It includes numbers again, global and local to you.

The idea is that we're trying to provide everyone with the same messages with regards to what WHO is saying at the same, make it a useful tool for you that if you need to get tested or if you need to get help or if you need to listen to the government's health authority advice.

So that's the second pillar, Google search, the third pillar, tools and applications and channels.

This is kind of like the catchment error for everything else we do.

And I'll just talk about one tool that we've developed, which is actually very popular at the moment.

So WHO works with these companies to produce tools that will help people get the right information or help them with their symptoms or how to get testing and things like this?

So the one I'm going to talk to you about today is our chat bot features.

We've got, we've got 4 live at the moment.

We have a WhatsApp channel, a Viber channel, a Facebook Messenger channel and Apple Business Chat, which is going to launch hopefully today or if not this weekend.

So we've got 4 that are ready, but we plan to launch 30.

And the reason for that is we want to have a global coverage.

For example, in Japan, WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger and Apple Business Chat are not very popular, but there's a product called Line and it is popular.

[Other language spoken]

When it comes to languages, we already have 25 different languages out there and we're expanding new languages every week.

This is really important that we get and reach millions of people directly, but also in their own language within within I think two weeks of the launch, the WhatsApp Viber channels had over 12.5 million users immediately.

And one, we're seeing some really interesting trends when we look at the data of people who are coming on board and, and what are they doing and, and where they're coming from, what language they're using.

For example, 50% of all Arabic users on WhatsApp are from the yen.

And we've now that's prompted me to carry out a study on digital tools, bridging the gap for the most vulnerable populations and maybe people who have the weakest health systems.

And of course, when that small study has been done, it will be made available to everybody.

I'm now going to hand you over to Alex, who will speak to you about our work with social media companies such as Facebook.

Over to the Alex.

Thank you, Andy.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity and interest in in our work on digital platforms and social media in this pandemic.

My name is Alexandra Kuzmanovic and I'm one of WTO social media managers in in headquarters.

So together with Andy, my work is focused a lot on collaboration with social media platforms to ensure as many people as possible around the world have access to viable and accurate health information, not only in this pandemic.

We started this work long, way ago, but definitely as, as this outbreak started, we expanded it a lot.

And actually it helped a lot that we had already good relationships with some of the social media platforms.

And it came in naturally when the outbreak started to work together and to expand our collaboration and the, and the products on their platforms.

We also expanded our, our presence in new platforms.

And I'll, I'll elaborate now more.

So actually, I'll start first with, with those we, we already had good collaboration.

And the first one definitely is, is Facebook.

And we worked in to develop a number of different features or products on their platforms to ensure people have access to reliable information.

It started with search feature.

So when users are on on Facebook or Instagram and search for coronavirus or COVID related term, they are directed to WHO and to National Health authority.

And I want to stress the importance as well of directing people to National Health authority.

It gives opportunity to read information in your own language.

And it's really as well important because we will, we found some examples even in this outbreak that there was some misunderstanding in translation as well.

People, a lot of people speak English or some foreign language, but it's not the same as you get information in your native language.

And sometimes it's really crucial to, to stay protected, to understand well, what is the advice?

Then it expanded into a new feature when you are on your news feed and scrolling through the platform or when you just enter Instagram that you have a pop up banner that directs you to the National Health authority and tells you this is how you can protect yourself from coronavirus and the link to the to the website.

Then it, it expanded more, especially on Facebook.

For example, if you have event page, it directs you to when, when countries started introducing some restrictions on, on gatherings, Facebook was directing users to, to the website of national authority with these recommendations, how many people can gather and, and, and in which way, which I we found very, very, very helpful.

And then they also developed dedicated news page where depending on your location, if you go to that page, you would see the latest updates on the outbreak from WHO and National Health authorities on Instagram.

As I mentioned, they also like you, have the search engine that directs you to reliable information.

There is a pop up banner and they also introduce donation stickers.

We have similar collaboration with Twitter and LinkedIn, which also direct people to National Health authorities and to WHO when they search for information.

They both have dedicated events or updates pages where they highlighted WHO updates on the outbreak, on the guidance and how to protect yourself.

Twitter extended a lot their safety policy on how they detect misinformation and which kind of information.

Misinformation will not be tolerated on their platform.

We found this one most comprehensive so far on LinkedIn.

We also expanded in this outbreak our live feature with their help.

And when we have our pressors or live feature Live Q.

And as with our experts, those are immediately highlighted on their dedicated page to COVID-19.

Pinterest is another platform that we've been collaborating for, for a longer time and is also directing users to WHO and other health authorities when people search for coronavirus information.

And as Andy said, with several platforms, we worked on translation, translated materials and helping us to reach people with in various languages.

And we in WHO have limited capacities to do that on our own.

So this, this was really helpful.

New platforms where we establish our presence during this this outbreak are TikTok and Snapchat, because majority of our followers on on previous platforms are age 25 to 35.

But on TikTok and Snapchat, we are now reaching audiences that are much younger.

And it was important as well for us to communicate with teenagers how they can protect themselves and what they need to be aware of when it comes to health and when it comes to COVID-19 in particular.

So we have a great collaboration with Tiktok and establishing account together with their support was really helpful because we are science based organisation that has serious information.

And Tiktok is a platform that's perceived as funny people share funny videos, funny information.

So it was a challenge how we translate serious information and and be continue be perceived serious.

So what TikTok was lacking was educational content, as they call it.

So with their help, we actually adjusted some of our video products to be suitable to the to the platform.

But still this serious content is the most viewed among all of our our videos on the platform.

Then step by step, we started adjusted and started launching challenges and campaigns that are more in line with with TikTok look and feel and we had a very successful save save hands challenge campaign.

At the moment, we have a protect your hero campaign ongoing on Snapchat.

Similar, we worked with Snapchat to establish our presence on the on the platform.

And besides our our our profile page, Snapchat is using WTO content on their dedicated news page on COVID to inform their users on how they can protect themselves and to update on them on the outbreak.

They also worked with us to produce some creative features and creative education philtres on how to protect yourself.

And they also introduce very, very funny interesting philtre not funny interesting philtre to stimulate their their users also to to donate and to support the COVID-19 Solidarity Fund.

I also want to mention that our our country office in China works closely with Chinese social media platforms, especially as the outbreak started there.

So it was important to to inform our users in China on how to protect themselves.

So we have close collaboration with WeChat, with Weibo, Baidu and other other local social media platforms are collaborating in the same manner with our country office in in China.

In in terms of our products, so we continue our strong presence with public health advice and how people can protect themselves.

We also expanded our live Q&A feature where we have our experts responding questions to our viewers and we we've seen engagement increased massively in comparison to the average we had in in last year.

Also what's new for us and we were doing I think Q&A lives in the past only on Twitter and and Facebook.

Now we expanded this to LinkedIn and TikTok and we also expanded simultaneously live streaming across platforms and including on our pressors and engagement is just growing.

So there is really a **** interest in what WTO has to say about the outbreak, but also how to protect yourself and the new new findings and evidence that we are finding.

And last but not least, the product that we are constantly working on since the outbreak started is our meat Busters.

And it's a way to fight misinformation.

We use social media not only to place information but also to listen to people's concerns and also to see what are the misinformation spreading.

And we are reacting fast in our responses through this product to respond to facts and to and to share this widely through our channels and through our country and regional office channels to ensure that people are facing factual and evidence based information.

All these joint efforts from across the platforms and digital tools helped us that to significantly increase engagement on our social media channels.

And we see this as a big success in reaching more and more using the power of social media to reach as many people as possible with reliable and evidence based information and most importantly to protect them from the from the virus.

Thank you very much, Andy.

Thank you, Alexandra.

So we have time for some questions.

[Other language spoken]

You, you raise the hand.

So those who want to ask questions, please raise the hand and we will try to to take as many as possible.

[Other language spoken]

My question is directed to Andy.

Bit of a depressing message you have.

The truth shall not prevail.

Is it just based on this one study by MIT?

Because The Who is a science based organisation as is often said.

And you said that what we're saying is false stories outperform the truth and you used you said it just seems that the truth simply cannot compete with hopes and false hopes.

Do you have any more scientific basis for this rather depressing message?

Thanks, Peter.

[Other language spoken]

Yes, I think that we, you know, I read constantly in my business area what what's going on, what trends are out there and what studies have been done according to the MIT one because it was one of the largest that was ever carried out.

There is plenty of others and I can provide those later offline.

I do want to emphasise, however, that that's if we don't change the way that we do business, what WTO is trying to do is to change the way that the the information is done with regards to the way people can spread rumours, the way people can make things viral.

And we're also working with social media companies on educating people.

Hopefully in the next couple of days, WhatsApp will launch a product that we've been working with them on on how to Fact Check when something comes into your WhatsApp box, there's a little going to be a little icon to say, hey, this contains information about coronavirus, do you want to check the facts of the reliable source?

So we're also, you know, trying to educate people.

The fact of the matter is if anybody interacts with any kind of content, it's going to make it more viral.

That was the whole point.

The more popular things are, the more people are interested, the more viral they become.

But we're also working with companies to also say, is that the right approach?

How do we change that?

So the study that I was mentioning at MIT study was from 18 months ago, 15-18 months ago, I can't remember exactly.

We look at many other studies, of course, but the trend is that just from a human nature point of view, humans share bad news more than good news.

Because, you know, in the olden days when we were Cavemen running around, the bad news saved lives.

[Other language spoken]

There's a tiger.

[Other language spoken]

So that's, that's the way it's coming from.

But we can still change the, the, the paradigm and make health messages and science messages prevail.

But we need to work with the with the private sector to do that.

I hope that answers your question, Peter.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you, Andy, next question.

And Peter, if you have follow up, please raise the hand again the Maya Maya plans.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much for taking my questions.

I am really pleased.

To hear.

That you are doing so much great work with all these social media companies because as you know, they are quite important in terms of distribution of information and, and sometimes you know, overriding the news makers, the news organisations.

So could you talk a little bit about your collaboration with Facebook, Andy, if you would like to take that?

I think I can start, but then I'll pass it to Alex who's much more in the weeds reads with when it comes to Facebook, we work with Facebook on many levels, again, working with the policy, but Facebook is not just Facebook the platform, it's also many other subsidiary companies.

So we work with all of those or as many as that are relevant obviously, and we work with on the policy on our channel, but also in creating new tools and new products.

And maybe Alex can talk to one of the OR two of the the new products that we've created with them like the the knowledge hub that they've created.

So over to Alex.

Thank you, Andy, and thank you for your question.

So yes, we've been working with Facebook for a longer time and on, on various products.

And firstly is to direct users when they search for information that they have access that they are directed to reliable source.

We are also working with them on, as I mentioned, different, different ways that people are facing information.

Not necessarily you only search for information, but it's there even if you don't search for it.

We, we recognise the need people need to see a reliable source so that they make, make a good choice where they're going to go back for the, for the information.

And again, there is a dedicated update page and, and news hub, as Andy mentioned, that is there where you can go and see all the news on, on this, on this outbreak.

There are also creative side of the work where we work with them on campaigns like it was safe Hands Challenge or campaigns in the past related to mental health, where we use their creative solutions and and stickers and calling for people to join working together on Influencers Network to support our campaign so that we have more people engaged in sharing the message.

We are also working with them on, on capacity building of our our stuff on how better to run campaigns on on Facebook and use the power of of this platform to reach as many people as possible.

And because we are big organisation, but with limited resources to use all these wide range of digital and new tools.

So it's important as well for us to to build capacity in house that we can maximise the offer we are receiving.

Thank you, Andy.

[Other language spoken]

Alexandra here with Chris.

We are looking if there is anyone wanting to ask question.

I don't see any hands raised.

[Other language spoken]

I would like to know more about the Google search work.

[Other language spoken]

About it because that was this is one of the challenges usually right when there is a crisis immediately people start searching and and lots of people will be searching like misinformation, right and unless the Google does something there they could be.

Directed to to bad.

Information to outright this information so how to work with that with them in that aspect of developing the auto complete responses yeah Maya, Andy, if you can just really super briefly because we have to finish here because we have to connect for the for the next briefing and then what we can do is that you know you connect with with Maya for more for more extensive answer but please please go ahead very briefly.

Yeah sure so it's all about relationship building.

We've as Alex said we've been working with a lot of these technology companies for nearly two years now Some, you know Google relationships started with Google Fit two years ago so we had the connections we had the thing the the outbreak was so big that it went very **** very quickly.

They took it a lot more seriously they gave a lot more resources to to empower us.

It's also about common sense and humanity.

One of the outbreaks which effects absolutely everybody other outbreaks we've seen has affected small populations in sort of other countries or low income countries.

This one was clear that it was going to go everywhere.

So Google took this very seriously from the start.

It just, it's about about, you know, making the case for science, making the case for health and just talking to them and saying, listen, what you're doing could cost lives.

But if you act like this, we could save lives.

And I think that was just generally our pitch to them.

I'm happy to follow up afterwards with Peter by and anybody else.

OK, so we will conclude here.

I'm I'm happy that that we introduced Andy and Alexandra to, to to the Geneva press corps.

If you have any questions on their work, please let us know.

They will be happy to answer and then and then hope, hope we will see them again in one of these briefings.

And then I see all of you very shortly in 10 minutes.

Thank you very much.

[Other language spoken]

Thanks for your time.

[Other language spoken]

Thank you very much.