Read on Twitter
Interesting new paper out in Nature today! Paper finding: anti-vaccine groups are more adept at interlinking with "fence-sitter" communities and unrelated communities than pro-vaccine groups. Here's why this matters...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2281-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2281-1
In 2015, @gilgul and I looked at the networking of these communities on Twitter, observing the early indications that anti-vaxxers were moving away from toxins & autism narratives in favor of "medical freedom" and "choice" narratives (beautiful image his) https://www.wired.com/2015/06/antivaxxers-influencing-legislation/
At the time there was no really good way to do that style of work on FB; this new paper did it on Facebook and it's worth a read to understand the dynamics. Good summary here: https://www.insidescience.org/news/anti-vaccine-messaging-well-connected-social-media
One thing to point out, though: the challenge of building these ties. I had some firsthand experience via helping start Vaccinate California. It was an adventure. We ran FB ads to grow an audience; targeting options related to 
were all antivax interests. Took yrs to change.
were all antivax interests. Took yrs to change.
We did offline movement-building bc lots of groups who were allies for pro-vax advocacy weren't really online themselves. Health institutions dropped the ball on comms in the internet age. Groups like Voices for Vaccines are doing great work but 
was almost impossible to get.
was almost impossible to get.
Another interesting dynamic - #scicomm folks, chime in- health information advocates are committed to presenting verifiable facts. Meanwhile here's the Plandemic guy today saying he didn't really bother to sanity-check the claims he pushed out to the world https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-05-13/plandemic-coronavirus-documentary-director-mikki-willis-mikovits
(something about that excuse seems like nonsense but hey)
Point is: producing a story that goes viral and attracts the world's attention requires compelling content, networked distribution, and, often, algorithmic amplification.
Point is: producing a story that goes viral and attracts the world's attention requires compelling content, networked distribution, and, often, algorithmic amplification.
I wrote an article just last week ab this: "the people responsible for protecting the public do not appear to understand how information moves in the internet era. Meanwhile, people who best understand what content is likely to go viral are using that knowledge to mislead"
The stakes are high and it's sad that it's taken this moment for the widespread realization to hit that anti-vaccine misinformation is compellingly sensational, social media dynamics boost it, and it has a harmful impact on society. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/health-experts-dont-understand-how-information-moves/611218/
There is going to be one hell of an information battle over the vaccine for COVID-19, assuming we get to that point. The people responsible for the effort absolutely have to prioritize communication to these fence-sitting communities who are actively looking for information. /end
