Truth decay“It's not all about autism”: Analyzing a Facebook-fueled anti-vaccination attack
Social media has given those espousing anti-vaccination sentiments an effective medium to spread their message. However, an analysis of a viral Facebook campaign against a Pittsburgh pediatric practice reveals that the movement isn’t “all about autism.” Instead, new research finds that anti-vaccination arguments center on four distinct themes that can appeal to diverse audiences.
Social media has given those espousing anti-vaccination sentiments an effective medium to spread their message. However, an analysis of a viral Facebook campaign against a Pittsburgh pediatric practice reveals that the movement isn’t “all about autism.” Instead, the research from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health finds that anti-vaccination arguments center on four distinct themes that can appeal to diverse audiences.
The research, published today in the journal Vaccine, suggests a framework that pediatricians can use to open a conversation with parents who are hesitant to immunize their children, while also “inoculating” those parents with skills to resist anti-vaccination messages on social media.
“If we dismiss anybody who has an opposing view, we’re giving up an opportunity to understand them and come to a common ground,” said senior author Brian Primack, M.D., Ph.D., director of Pitt’s Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health, and dean of the Pitt Honors College. “That’s what our research is about. We want to understand vaccine-hesitant parents in order to give clinicians the opportunity to optimally and respectfully communicate with them about the importance of immunization.”
Vaccines are hailed as one of the greatest public health achievements of modern medicine and have prevented more than 100 million cases of serious childhood contagious diseases. However, in the U.S., only 70 percent of children ages 19 to 35 months receive all recommended immunizations, and, so far this year, hundreds of children in a dozen states have contracted measles, a disease that was declared eliminated in the U.S. nearly two decades ago due to high vaccination rates. In Europe, tens of thousands of children have been diagnosed with the vaccine-preventable disease, and dozens have died in the past year.
In 2017, Kids Plus Pediatrics, a Pittsburgh-based pediatric practice, posted a video on its Facebook page featuring its practitioners encouraging HPV vaccination to prevent cancer. Nearly a month after the video posted, it caught the attention of multiple anti-vaccination groups and, in an eight-day period, garnered thousands of anti-vaccination comments.
