Hi. Are you "doing your own research" to "uncover truths" about Covid-19? Are you calling yourself a "citizen journalist"? As a professional journalist, I have a checklist to help: (1/7)
1) When you see a study, are you going to the original source before reposting it? If a meme said the study is from the CDC, are you going to the CDC's website, finding the study, reading the whole thing, and calling the author to make sure you're correctly interpreting it?
2) Are you giving proper weight to the study authors? Are you acknowledging that the chair of epidemiology at a major research institution might be a more reliable source than the opinion of random family practitioner with no research or coronavirus experience?
3) Are you calling other, unaffiliated institutions to say, "What do you make of this study and its methodology? How does this fit in or not fit in with previous research?"
4) When you learn something that challenges your previously held beliefs, are you thinking critically about why that might be? Or are you creating an increasingly complicated narrative to explain why all of the doctors are wrong except the one who agrees with you?
5) If you post something later proven to be wrong, do you immediately and transparently correct it, in public, making a good-faith effort to explain why it's wrong and prevent further dissemination of falsehoods?
These are things good journalists do. If you are not doing these things, you are not a citizen journalist. You are a conspiracy theorist. (end).
