The End of the Observable Infodemic: Privatised Observability and Public Health Monitoring

ABSTRACT

Infodemiology and infodemic management rest on a premise so foundational that it is rarely stated: health information behaviour leaves traces that researchers and public institutions can observe. This paper argues that the premise is dissolving. Health information seeking is migrating from publicly observable websites and platforms into conversational artificial intelligence, where exchanges unfold in private dyads between user and system and are visible in full only to the providers operating them. The paper develops a typology of three observability regimes, termed open, brokered and enclosed observability, which differ in trace custody, conditions of third‐party observation, attainable granularity, stability of access and the epistemic position of public health. It traces the arc from the open web through the platform era, whose brokered observability collapsed in the post‐API age, to the enclosed regime of conversational agents, in which knowledge about population health information behaviour is produced and selectively disclosed by commercial providers. The analysis derives implications for infodemic management, for the evaluation of health information environments and for regulation, and argues that privacy‐preserving research access to conversational health data should be established as public health infrastructure.