With some dangerous childhood diseases making a comeback due to lower vaccination rates, social media is now battling against bogus claims about the dangers of vaccines. But so far, the effort is falling short.
FILE- In this March 27, 2019, file photo, measles, mumps and rubella vaccines sit in a cooler at the Rockland County Health Department in Pomona, N.Y. In social media’s battle against misinformation, bogus claims about the dangers of vaccines are the next target.
But it’s been a leaky quarantine. Recently, a search for “measles vaccine” still brought up, among other things, a post titled “Why We Said NO to the Measles Vaccine,” along with a sinister-looking illustration of a hand holding an enormous needle titled “Vaccine-nation: poisoning the population one shot at a time.” Search results for “vaccine safety” and “flu vaccine” can turn up posts with scientifically debunked information.
“There has been hesitancy about vaccines as long as vaccines have existed,” said Jeanine Guidry, professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies social media and vaccines. Such sentiment, dating back to the 1700s, was once confined to towns and local communities. Online, it dates back long before Facebook and Twitter. A 2002 study on Google search results found that 43% of the sites surfaced after searches for “vaccination” and “immunization” were anti-vax.
Guidry said social media amplifies these conversations and makes it easier for people to have such conversations in echo chambers that can reinforce misinformation. Her research found that that Pinterest — popular with women — has been especially susceptible to vaccine falsehoods. Nearly 75% of vaccine-related “pins” were against immunization in her 2015 study, compared with roughly a quarter on Twitter .
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