According to a new U.S. study, social media bots and Russian trolls have been sowing discord and spreading false information about vaccines on Twitter.
David Broniatowski, an assistant professor at George Washington University鈥檚 School of Engineering and Applied Science, co-authored the study, which is titled 鈥淲eaponized Health Communication鈥� and was
鈥淲e have a lot of accounts, a lot of actors that are out there that are perhaps masquerading as human users that in fact may not be human users. Or if they are human, they have different agendas,鈥� Broniatowski explained in an interview with 麻豆影视.
鈥淲e do have evidence of a foreign power that seems to be using the vaccine discourse and creating a vaccine debate in order to advance their own agenda, whatever that agenda may be.鈥�
By examining thousands of vaccine-related tweets sent between July 2014 and Sept. 2017, the research team identified several Twitter accounts that are now known to be tied to the Internet Research Agency: a Russian government-linked company that has been accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election. Malware and marketing bots, they also found, shared anti-vaccination messages 75 per cent more often than average Twitter users.
鈥淲hen we see actors such as these Russian trolls or such as bots, which are automated accounts that can spread spam and malware and other sort of unsavory content, they may simply be using vaccines as a way to get people鈥檚 attention, as a way to get people to fight one another, as a way to get them to click on a link,鈥� Broniatowski said.
鈥淯nfortunately, this does have some very concerning side effects because one of the things that we know from prior research is that exposure to the vaccine debate leads people to be hesitant, not to trust their physician鈥檚 recommendations and it may drive down vaccination rates, it may increase the likelihood of epidemics.鈥�
Such misinformation campaigns in the U.S., Broniatowski adds, also put Canadians at risk.
鈥淰iruses do not respect national boundaries and so if we get an epidemic, that epidemic鈥� is not going to stay just within one country,鈥� he said.
鈥淭witter messages are also not restricted to national borders,鈥� Broniatowski added. 鈥淭herefore it stands to reason that Canadian viewers that see these messages may also get misconceptions about vaccines and so it really does put the Canadian population at risk just as much as the U.S. population.鈥�
