Gillian Parker is a sustainability principal at Economist Impact, policy & insights and is currently based in Singapore. Previous to this role, she was deputy editor for Eco-Business, a news site and business intelligence firm specialising in sustainability issues across Asia. Before moving to Singapore in 2019, Gillian lived in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly a decade. Gillian worked in Johannesburg and Lagos as a risk analyst for Control Risks, helping firms operate in challenging environments in West and Central Africa. Her other consulting work includes UKAID projects focussing on policies, laws and regulations affecting businesses in Nigeria and climate resilient infrastructure in southern Africa. Before that, she was reporting as a journalist across a dozen countries for The Economist, TIME and Voice of America among other international outlets. She was also a contributor to The Economist Intelligence Unit, focusing on bespoke reports and indexes ranging from food security to SMEs in Nigeria to Islamic finance. Gillian has a MSc in African and Asian Politics from SOAS and hails originally from Northern Ireland.
In this episode, Gillian Parker speaks to Yeong Zee Kin, deputy commissioner of Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Commission and Rama Vedashree, chief executive officer of Data Security Council of India, about the challenges in data privacy and how governments and the private sector can work together in Asia Pacific.
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A rigid approach to data privacy cannot capture the full range of needs,
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In this episode, Jason Wincuinas speaks to Masato Kajimoto, Associate Professor, at Hong Kong University in The Journalism and Media Studies Centre, and award-winning journalist Syed Nazakat, founder and CEO of DataLEADS, a digital media and information initiative, and founder of ‘Health Analytics Asia’, about the spread of misinformation in Asia and ways to combat it.
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Covid-19 vaccines do not alter DNA. Nonetheless, the idea is widely shared on social media. It’s simply false and education is needed to battle the notion.
But a frightening and misunderstood instance of rare, potentially fatal blood clots in a handful of cases is harder to combat. There have been links to clotting with certain vaccines and researchers are only beginning to understand why but peer reviews are still pending. Meanwhile, misinformation is still spreading. The public doesn’t wait for answers; they take inaction now.
Even before various covid-19 vaccine injections began, anti-vaxx sentiment—which has existed as long as vaccines—went on an upswing. Propagation of the myriad half-truths and outright lies have hampered vaccination efforts globally.
For all the attention they receive, adamant anti-vaxxers may not be the biggest roadblock to controlling the virus. The vaccine-hesitant form a far larger global population. And while they may not question the motives of pharmaceutical companies, doctors or policymakers, they are exposed to enough mis- and disinformation about the efficacy and side effects of vaccines, as well as covid-19’s severity, that many decide against vaccination.1
People acting or not acting on health-related matters based on bad information is nothing new. And hostility or indifference to modern medicine is ancient. What is new is the sheer volume of mis- and disinformation and the variety of mediums through which it is disseminated and consumed widely and almost instantaneously.
1 Considering Emotion in COVID-19 Vaccine Communication: Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy and Fostering Vaccine Confidence. Health Communication. 30 October 2020. Available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2020.1838096
Fact or fiction: Overcoming health misinformation
