Coronavirus, conspiracies and cries of election fraud marked 2020 as the year of the infodemic. But the worst may be yet to come

Bill Gates became a supervillain, arson was blamed for catastrophic bushfires and dead people were said to have cast votes in the US presidential election: never before has there been a year so polluted by misinformation as has 2020.

When the director-general of the World Health Organisation declared in February that the world was fighting not just a pandemic but also an “infodemic”, it was not immediately clear just how prophetic that statement would prove to be.

Across more than 50 editions of CoronaCheck (our weekly email newsletter, subscribe here) and myriad fact checks and fact files, RMIT ABC Fact Check has rigorously debunked false and misleading claims made by public figures and politicians, and by anonymous posters to social…