Social listening is a specific means of gathering public discourse from a variety of sources to assess and address public attitudes and perceptions on key public health issues. It is authoritatively defined as the “regular and systematic aggregation, filtering and monitoring of conversations and public discourse in a combination of traditional media, digital media, off-line and on-line sources of information that represent different populations and geographies” (Chaney et al. 2021, 5). Because of its ability to access these alternative sources, social listening offers public health practitioners a speedy means for information gathering on public health that bypasses time-consuming and cumbersome traditional methods (Picone et al. 2020). The non-traditional data collection tools used in social listening “range from sophisticated artificial intelligence and machine learning platforms to telephone hot lines, broadcast radio talk shows and documentation of community dialogues” (Chaney et al. 2021 6). Data collected through social listening can help anticipate trends in health and develop appropriate and timely public health responses. The rapidity of social listening is thus particularly well-suited to the urgency of developing public health programmes during a severe and rapid global health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic (Picone et al. 2020; Hou et al. 2021; Chaney et al. 2021). Moreover, social listening offers an informational tool that is particularly well-suited to addressing the “infodemics” that frequently accompany epidemics or other acute health crises in the form of overabundant “information, accurate or not, in the digital and physical space” (Chaney et al. 2021, 5; World Health Organization 2023).

Social listening to various sources of health information that illustrate “people’s perceptions, attitudes, and health decisions” can enable public health practitioners to identify and close gaps “between health guidance and the population’s behaviour” (World Health Organization 2023, 1). In this light, social listening offers a critical policy tool for states to understand the nature of such infodemics and mitigate their negative impacts on public health responses to serious health threats (World Health Organization 2023), and ergo improve the efficacy of pandemic responses. In some ways, it can be considered a logical extension of standard public health surveillance methods that systematically collect, store, use, and disseminate personal information to identify an outbreak and mitigate the spread of disease (Gostin 2010). And in the same way that there have traditionally rights-based concerns about how the data collected through public health surveillance tools is used (Sekalala et al. 2020a, b), there are comparable human rights concerns about social listening.

In considering these concerns, it must be acknowledged that not responding to infodemics creates its own public health and human rights risks. The negative health impacts of the informational overloads, gaps, and confusion inherent to infodemics are clearly outlined by the World Health Organization (2023, 1):

An infodemic can promote stigma, erode trust in health authorities, affect mental health and negatively influence health decisions and behaviours, thereby making it more difficult for health authorities to respond effectively and protect the population’s health

As some of these health impacts may imply, the process and outcomes of social listening hold the capacity to realize a range of human rights of those affected, including rights to life, health, equality, participation, privacy, and free expression. These human rights place legal duties on states to first, appropriately respond to pandemics and second, they offer principles and standards to guide states in balancing urgent public health imperatives with individual rights during such an emergency, including through ensuring that “the public has accurate information about serious health threats” (Orentlicher 2021).

Yet inasmuch as social listening offers the potential to realize human rights, its misuse equally holds the capacity to violate these same rights: if the process and outcomes of social listening are not necessary to serve legitimate public health goals, if they impose disproportionate restrictions, if their use is not time-bound, or if they are used in a discriminatory way. These are the criteria proposed within international human rights law to guide justifiable restrictions of human rights, namely that such restrictions are necessary, proportionate, time-bound, and non-discriminatory (United Nations 1984). These criteria recognize that state measures (including those in service of public health) that exceed these criteria pose the risk of disproportionately harming marginalized populations and deepening power inequities. For example, social listening is misused if its purpose is to harass, persecute, silence, or stigmatize minority populations or political opposition rather than advance public health. Social listening runs afoul of human rights standards if the data collected is not anonymized or is collected without the knowledge or explicit consent of those being listened to. And social listening is not compliant with human rights if it is implemented in discriminatory ways, for example, by targeting marginalized groups in ways or for purposes unjustified by public health.

In this paper, I explore what a rights-compliant form of social listening during an infodemic might entail. I argue that human rights offer guardrails to protect against illicit and unethical abuses of social listening during an infodemic like those outlined above. I argue further that beyond guardrails, human rights offer “signposts” for equity in the form of norms, standards, and rules that can guide the formulation, implementation, and uses of social listening to protect human rights and potentially improve public health outcomes. I argue that if implemented in a rights-compliant way, social listening holds the potential to be deeply synergistic with the emphasis in human rights on participation, accountability, and non-discrimination (Potts 2008a, b), by respecting and/or including people affected by policies in their design and revision, and by building social trust in public health measures.

Yet recognizing and implementing human rights criteria in social listening face multiple broader challenges in domestic and global health governance: from assuring that non-state actors like private companies take account of human rights, to the frequently limited ability and/or willingness of states to regulate such entities, to the ability and indeed freedom of civil society and marginalized populations to challenge human rights violations and injustices by a range of state and non-state actors in this context, to the erosion of human rights in an era of growing right-wing nationalism. Recognizing these broader challenges, this paper delves into the potential contribution of human rights to assuring more ethical, equitable, and fair approaches to social listening to counter infodemics. To do so, I first expand on the human rights dimensions of COVID-19, infodemics, and social listening. Second, I focus on how social listening impacts on human rights to health, life, and free speech. I then turn to consider the criteria in international human rights law discussed above that guide state limitations of these rights. Finally, using this framework, I pose four key questions that could guide states towards a rights-based approach to social listening during a pandemic: Why do we listen? How do we listen? Who do we listen to and who is doing the listening? And what are the outcomes of such listening?