A map of anti-vaxxer Facebook users shows how they're better targeting neutral parties in the dangerous war against vaccine supporters on social media, according to a new study

• As the coronavirus continues to spread across the world and shutdown public events and gatherings, vaccine critics relying on junk science are already protesting a coronavirus vaccine.
• A recent study published in Nature looked at pro- and anti-vaccination Facebook posts in 2019, and found the anti-vaxxers engaged more frequently with people whose ideologies appeared to be on the fence on vaccines.
• Experts say that scientists and vaccination proponents need to get better at engaging on social media to combat vaccine misinformation.

Anti-vaxxers have been waging a campaign against vaccines on social media for years, but now that we're in a global pandemic and a vaccine is likely the only way out, the possible effects of these efforts are far more serious. A lot of misinformation has been spread about COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, since this pandemic began, often by bots, and it appears a lot of people believe what they're seeing on social media.

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 40 percent of Americans believe that Bill Gates, who is contributing to the development of a vaccine, is planning to use the vaccine to inject people with microchips in order to track them. This is widely debunked conspiracy theory, but it's just one of many conspiracy theories being spread on social media.

A study published in the journal Nature earlier this month found that observed anti-vaxxers on social media interacted more with people who are on the fence about vaccines than vaccine supporters did. The researchers behind the study analyzed nearly 100 million Facebook users across 37 countries last year.

They looked at how these users were talking about vaccines on over 1,000 Facebook pages between February and October and created a map to show how anti-vaxxers were interacting with neutral users in these groups. The blue dots represent where vaccine supporters are expressing their support for vaccines in neutral green groups, which have nothing to do with vaccines, and the red dots represent where anti-vaxxers are spreading their message in these groups. As you can see (below), red dots are interacting with neutral users a lot more.

Neil Johnson, a professor of physics at George Washington University and one of the authors of the study, tells Insider that while vaccine supporters would mostly only express their support for vaccines when there was something in the news related to vaccines, anti-vaxxers tend to be talking about their cause on a regular basis. He said their numbers are smaller than those who support vaccines, but they're "heavily embedded" in these online communities that have nothing to do with vaccines, and they're able to spread their message there over time.

"The first part of our paper was mapping this out because our idea was how could you ever win a battle of ideas if you don't know what the battlefield map looks like?" Johnson says. He says they found that not only were anti-vaxxers embedded in these neutral groups and spreading their message that way, but they found they were more skilled at messaging than those who support vaccines.

While it's good that Facebook and Twitter are allowing organizations like the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) to share the latest information about the virus for free, Johnson says these kinds of organizations don't tend share things in a way that piques people's interests and gets them to believe the facts. People who are against vaccines also don't trust these institutions in the first place.

On the other end of the spectrum, the anti-vaxxers have become very skilled at creating content that people find convincing and easy to digest, so that gives them an advantage on social media. Johnson says vaccines supporters need to get better at putting out more engaging content that will appeal to more people and reaching the right groups.

"If they were selling a soda, you wouldn't buy that soda because it looks so boring and so bland," Johnson says. "It's not the right marketing."

Beth Hoffman, a research assistant at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Behavioral Health, Media and Technology, tells Insider that her research has also shown that anti-vaxx content seems to spread in many places people wouldn't expect.

"Anti-vaccine misinformation appears to spread through a variety of channels," Hoffman says. "I think in the last year or so, as we've seen the anti-vaccine movement grow on social media, the importance of public health and medical professionals being on social media and reaching people through social media has become increasingly clear."

Hoffman says she was happy to see National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and other public health officials taking over popular celebrities' Instagram accounts to spread accurate information about the pandemic to a wider audience recently, and she says she'd like to see more public health officials and scientists finding creative ways to get information out. She says the anti-vaxxers are spreading their conspiracy theories now, so scientists shouldn't wait until the COVID-19 vaccine is ready to start sharing accurate information about vaccines.

Mark Dredze, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, tells Insider that these anti-vaxx groups are very coordinated and are constantly working on spreading their message, which is why you see more of them talking about it with people who are on the fence on social media.

"The anti-vaccine people are much more consistently engaging in the issue. So because they're more consistently engaged in the issue, they have campaigns and they think these things through," Dredze says. "And so there's a lot of these groups spending money on advertising and creating accounts to promote these issues."

Dredze says pro-vaccine figures need to improve their online communication strategies, and he says they need to learn how to target their message to specific groups in the most effective way possible, as each different group of people will have different priorities and concerns that you can focus on to help get them on your side. He says one problem is that the fight is inherently easier for the anti-vaxx crowd.

"One of the challenges here is that the pro-vaccine side has to convince people to go and do something and have confidence that what they're doing is right," Dredze says. "And that's a higher bar than at the anti-vaccine crowd has, which is to get you to do nothing, right? Literally just don't do anything and you're fine. They just have to sow some doubt."

While most Americans support vaccinations, the more the anti-vaxx crowd recruits people to their cause, the fewer people will get vaccinated. As vaccination rates drop, due to quarantine efforts, an uncomfortable number of children are being left open to disease. If public health officials and scientists want to avoid that scenario, they're going to have to step up their social media game.

Read more

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Read the original article on Insider