First post is up for SIO’s Virality Project, a study of info dynamics surrounding COVID. 1st topic: the recasting of Judy Mikovits -a best known for a retracted paper- as whistleblowing influencer. A case study in how marketing & misinfo can intersect. https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/manufacturing-influence-0

Plandemic was one video in a string of cross-platform promotion efforts. This post explains what happened. We classified 16k pages & groups that generated 41,662 posts about Mikovits, looking at post & interaction dynamics in aggregated communities. (There are interactives!)

We cover the pre-Plandemic period, when most of the activity was in a handful of echo chambers: shared videos by blue-check Facebook and Insta accounts, and YouTube creators with large audiences. Then we look at the explosion of communities and activity following Plandemic.

We wanted to begin to trace the debunking content dynamics, too, so we looked for prominent debunking articles within our communities. Debunking content was shared into the Groups that had previous credulously shared Mikovits-related content.

Though the conversations around the debunking content varied a lot... some people sincerely wanted to understand. Others shared the links to encourage Group members to go downvote the debunking videos.

Even as we saw debunkings began to make their way around the English language social media ecosystem, we kept getting Crowdtangle alerts for mentions of Mikovits - this time in non-English languages. Many of those posts were translations/local-language discussions of Plandemic.

There are a lot of interesting dynamics we’ve yet to explore, but the post includes some preliminary observations about how platforms might consider policies beyond takedowns, or make debunkings more effective.

There were a few interesting details not discussed in the post: a handful of groups had remarkably rapid audience growth over the period we observed. The one that had the most posts mentioning Mikovits, “Collective Action Against Bill Gates”, grew from ~6k members to nearly 100k.

There are also really interesting dynamics regarding Instagram, and influencers, requiring more study: many of the highest engagement posts were by blue-checks like RFK Jr. and regional influencers. Influencer marketing is effective for selling products - also ideas….or books.

Ultimately, Mikovits had a new book to sell, and this case is interesting in that both ideological and economic motivation were driving forces.

Hope you enjoy the post.