Information disorder, the Triumvirate, and COVID-19: How media outlets, foreign state intrusion, and the far-right diaspora drive the COVID-19 anti-vaccination movement

Information disorder has become an increasing concern in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election. With the state of the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly evolving in all facets, the vaccination debate has become increasingly polarized and subjected to a form of politics based around identity markers such as nationality, ethnicity, gender, and ideology. At the forefront of this is the COVID-19 anti-vaccination movement that has gained mainstream attention, leading to conflict with pro-vaccinationists. This has paved the way for exploitation by subversive elements such as, foreign state-backed disinformation campaigns, alternative news outlets, and right-wing influencers who spread false and misleading information, or disinformation, on COVID-19 in order to promote polarization of the vaccine debate through identity politics. Disinformation spread sows confusion and disorder, leading to the erosion of social cohesion as well as the potential for real-world conflict and violence. As a result, the article below will generate further understanding of the modern-day spread of disinformation, the strategies and tactics utilized by state and non-state actors, the effects of its exposure, and the social-psychological processes involved in its spread and resonance. Furthermore, in countering this phenomenon, this article recommends a collaborative framework involving emphasis on critical media literacy skills, citizen participation, and development of counter-offensive capabilities towards state-backed information operations.

The AstraZeneca affair. A litmus test of information disorder in the Italian hybrid media ecosystem

In this paper we seek to demonstrate how a variety of information disorder phenomena comes to be at the intersection of legacy and social media interaction. To do so, we collected more than 750.000 tweets and 30.000 news articles related to the adoption of AstraZeneca vaccine in Italy for a period of six months (1st January 2021 - 30th June 2021). Initially, using timestamps of publications and tweets, we tracked the pace of public debate. Then, using a mixed methods approach, we investigated Twitter reaction during the climax of attention toward AstraZeneca. Acting as a litmus test, our study reveals three different but intertwined information disorder phenomena: first, the vaccine debate exhibit a flat progression with few condensed peaks of attention (acceleration phenomenon); second, the two main peaks that involve both journalistic coverage and Twitter discussion generate from news of suspect deaths related to AstraZeneca (sensationalisation phenomenon); and finally, the report of suspect deaths news by mainstream media accounts on Twitter correlates with a polarized and ideological reaction of the connected publics (fragmentation phenomenon). These results highlight how a direct implication of the hybrid media ecosystem's actual configuration could be a resistance in the formation of a public arena capable of sustaining a prolonged and effective debate, particularly with respect to controversial societal issues such as those related to the covid-19 vaccination campaign.

Our Best Shot: Bridging the Gap in the Vaccine Divide

Infection preventionist, JoAnn Adkins; psychologist, Dr. Lily Brown; and mother of a son with autism, Susan Senator, share their insights into how vaccines work, how to recognize when anxiety may be clouding our judgment, and how both sides of the vaccine debate can finally have a real—and productive—conversation.

Vaccination with vector type vaccines – is it worth the risk?

COVID-19 has the potential to re-frame the whole debate about individual and societal risk, risk balancing, benefit-cost analysis, individual rights, societal responsibilities of individuals and responsibilities of Governments within the overall context that there are limits to what can be achieved in particular instances, and in totality across society. There has been considerable discussion and debate globally about the real and perceived risks of having a vaccination against COVID-19. This might be interpreted as having contributed to the uncertainty in the vaccine debate and contributed to doubt and even erosion of trust in some of the population. Some of this has been due to an understandable demand for immediate answers, before the necessary and detailed data were available and verified. The recent publication of unexpected negative side effects from the Astra Zeneca version of the vector-type vaccine, “vaccine induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia” (VIPIT), has been the latest complicating development, which has caused further concerns, uncertainties and confusion. The risk figures that Governments use are derived from whole population data and processed to give a smeared out average “societal” risk. But to the individuals having to make the choice, these figures may, or may not, be relevant. The corresponding societal estimate of an individual’s chance of being stuck by lightning is the well-known 1 in a million. But individuals know intuitively that for someone who never goes out in bad weather, this is way too high. Conversely someone who goes out to fly a kite in a thunderstorm has an almost certain chance of being fried. In this paper we discuss the current arguments put forward, which accept the 1 in a 100,000 as acceptable collateral damage for societal exposure. It then contrasts them against the numbers that could be derived, if it is approached from the point of view of a particular individual’s risk benefit calculations. Subsequently we discuss how communication and information by policy makers and media may influence the decisions of individuals to have or not have themselves vaccinated. While the current debate about vaccinations provides data and the central focus of this paper, the issue is a general matter, it is symptomatic of a much wider risk question which the vaccine debate has brought into focus; and not just for other vaccines and medical interventions.

VACCINE INFORMATION SEEKING AND SHARING: HOW PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUPS CONTRIBUTED TO THE ANTI-VACCINE MOVEMENT ONLINE

Although vaccines are supported by decades of research demonstrating their efficacy and safety, many parents still decide not to vaccinate their children due to the perceived risks. One major factor in vaccine dissent is the proliferation of vaccine opposed content online. Online content has become an integral part of how people make health and science-related decisions. This study explores how members of anti-vaccine Facebook groups use the platform to seek and share vaccine information. Using interviews and Facebook posts shared in vaccine opposed groups, this study was able to identify the information seeking and sharing behaviors on Facebook and how Facebook’s platform changes are affecting the vaccine opposed movement. Findings from this study will provide further insights into the relationships among social media use, values, and trust in the vaccine debate. In addition, results may be applicable to other scientific controversies, online misinformation, and the development of public health interventions.

The Visual Vaccine Debate on Twitter: A Social Network Analysis

Pro- and anti-vaccination users use social media outlets, such as Twitter, to join conversations about vaccines, disseminate information or misinformation about immunization, and advocate in favour or against vaccinations. These users not only share textual content, but also images to emphasise their messages and influence their audiences. Though previous studies investigated the content of vaccine images, there is little research on how these visuals are distributed in digital environments. Therefore, this study explored how images related to vaccination are shared on Twitter to gain insight into the communities and networks formed around their dissemination. Moreover, this research also investigated who influences the distribution of vaccine images, and could be potential gatekeepers of vaccination information. We conducted a social network analysis on samples of tweets with images collected in June, September and October 2016. In each dataset, pro- and anti-vaccination users formed two polarised networks that hardly interacted with each other, and disseminated images among their members differently. The anti-vaccination users frequently retweeted each other, strengthening their relationships, making the information redundant within their community, and confirming their beliefs against immunisation. The pro-vaccine users, instead, formed a fragmented network, with loose but strategic connections that facilitated networking and the distribution of new vaccine information. Moreover, while the pro-vaccine gatekeepers were non-governmental organisations or health professionals, the anti-vaccine ones were activists and/or parents. Activists and parents could potentially be considered as alternative but trustworthy sources of information enabling them to disseminate misinformation about vaccinations.

Beyond the “Hullabaloo” of the Vaccine “Debate”: Understanding Parents’ Assessment of Risks When Making Vaccine Decisions

To ascertain the risk assessments parents use when making vaccine decisions, I conducted semi-structured interviews with mothers of young children. Treating these interviews as texts, I rhetorically analyzed how parents talk about their chil­dren’s vaccination in order to better understand reasons for vaccine hesitancy. My analysis reveals that despite the difference in behavior between parents who vac­cinate and parents who hesitate, there is a commonality in discourse. Three topoi emerged within these mothers’ explanation of their vaccination decisions: percep­tions of diseases, perceptions of environmental threats, and assessment of their child’s vulnerability. Considering the common ground these topoi reflect, I explore possible alternative messaging about vaccines that might better encourage vaccine uptake. Ultimately, I argue a rhetorical approach to studying public and personal discourses about health issues can prove useful for identifying key topoi, which can generate communication strategies for addressing public concerns while potentially improving support for public health initiatives

The Online Vaccine Debate: Study of a Visual Analytics System

Online debates, specifically the ones about public health issues (e.g., vaccines, medications, and nutrition), occur frequently and intensely, and are having an impact on our world. Many public health topics are debated online, one of which is the efficacy and morality of vaccines. When people examine such online debates, they encounter numerous and conflicting sources of information. This information forms the basis upon which people take a position on such debates. This has profound implications for public health. It necessitates a need for public health stakeholders to be able to examine online debates quickly and effectively. They should be able to easily perform sense-making tasks on the vast amount of online information, such as sentiments, online presence, focus, or geographic locations. In this paper, we report the results of a user study of a visual analytic system (VAS), and whether and how this VAS can help with such sense-making tasks. Specifically, we report a usability evaluation of VINCENT (VIsual aNalytiCs systEm for investigating the online vacciNe debaTe), a VAS previously described. To help the reader, we briefly discuss VINCENT’s design in this paper as well. VINCENT integrates webometrics, natural language processing, data visualization, and human-data interaction. In the reported study, we gave users tasks requiring them to make sense of the online vaccine debate. Thirty-four participants were asked to perform these tasks by investigating data from 37 vaccine-focused websites. Half the participants were given access to the system, while the other half were not. Selected study participants from both groups were subsequently asked to be interviewed by the study administrator. Examples of questions and issues discussed with interviewees were: how they went about completing specific tasks, what they meant by some of the feedback they provided, and how they would have performed on the tasks if they had been placed in the other group. Overall, we found that VINCENT was a highly valuable resource for users, helping them make sense of the online vaccine debate much more effectively and faster than those without the system (e.g., users were able to compare websites similarities, identify emotional tone of websites, and locate websites with a specific focus). In this paper, we also identify a few issues that should be taken into consideration when developing VASes for online public health debates.

VINCENT: A visual analytics system for investigating the online vaccine debate

This paper reports and describes VINCENT, a visual analytics system that is designed to help public health stakeholders (i.e., users) make sense of data from websites involved in the online debate about vaccines. VINCENT allows users to explore visualizations of data from a group of 37 vaccine-focused websites. These websites differ in their position on vaccines, topics of focus about vaccines, geographic location, and sentiment towards the efficacy and morality of vaccines, specific and general ones. By integrating webometrics, natural language processing of website text, data visualization, and human-data interaction, VINCENT helps users explore complex data that would be difficult to understand, and, if at all possible, to analyze without the aid of computational tools.The objectives of this paper are to explore A) the feasibility of developing a visual analytics system that integrates webometrics, natural language processing of website text, data visualization, and human-data interaction in a seamless manner; B) how a visual analytics system can help with the investigation of the online vaccine debate; and C) what needs to be taken into consideration when developing such a system. This paper demonstrates that visual analytics systems can integrate different computational techniques; that such systems can help with the exploration of public health online debates that are distributed across a set of websites; and that care should go into the design of the different components of such systems.