How is health being depicted in online debates? The cases of 'detox practices' and 'vaccines' (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
This paper analyses the contemporary public debate about vaccination, and medical knowledge more broadly, in the context of social media. The study is focused on the massive online debate prompted by the Facebook status of the digital celebrity Mark Zuckerberg, who posted a picture of his two-month-old daughter, accompanied by a comment: “Doctor's visit -- time for vaccines!” Carrying out a qualitative analysis on a sample of 650 comments and replies, selected through systematic random sampling from an initial pool of over 10,000 user contributions, and utilising open and axial coding, we empirically inform the theoretical discussion around the concept of the reflexive patient and introduce the notion of multi-layered reflexivity. We argue that the reflexive debate surrounding this primarily medical problem is influenced by both biomedical and social scientific knowledge. Lay actors therefore discuss not only vaccination, but also its political and economic aspects as well as the post-truth information context of the debate. We stress that the reflexivity of social actors related to the post-truth era re-enters and influences the debate more than ever. Furthermore, we suggest that the interconnection of different layers of reflexivity can either reinforce certainty or deepen the ambiguity and uncertainty of reflexive agents.
Internet Discourse and Health Debates
The research presented in this book looks at the internet and asks how people and organizations use it to communicate with one another about health risks. It is particularly concerned with forms of online commu- nication that are public (that is, not formally restricted in any way to particular groups of people). Public communication does not begin and end with the internet. Where the internet goes now, the mass media have gone before, and continue to go. But public communication in the age of the internet is not what it used to be and it is important to set up some lines of enquiry to find out how it has changed and is still changing. The present book offers one such line of enquiry. Public communication about health risks offers a useful point of entry into this territory because health risks are such a universally relevant topic, and the internet, in its public communication mode, is such a universal medium, in principle if not in practice. 1 Although health risks in general are universally relevant, particular health risks of course are not. Not everyone is at equal risk from HIV/AIDS, or lung cancer, or of contracting v-CJD from contaminated beef products. The risks exam- ined in the present volume (cellphones and cancer, SARS, MMR vaccine and autism) were not chosen according to any particular principle, although all of them had at different times attracted mass media atten- tion and all involved uncertainty as to whether there was a risk of the proposed kind, and/or what kind of behaviour would entail running that risk
2020
Since 2016, social media companies and news providers have come under pressure to tackle the spread of political mis-and disinformation (MDI) online. However, despite evidence that online health MDI (on the web, on social media, and within mobile apps) also has negative real-world effects, there has been a lack of comparable action by either online service providers or state-sponsored public health bodies. We argue that this is problematic and seek to answer three questions: why has so little been done to control the flow of, and exposure to, health MDI online; how might more robust action be justified; and what specific, newly justified actions are needed to curb the flow of, and exposure to, online health MDI? In answering these questions, we show that four ethical concerns-related to paternalism, autonomy, freedom of speech, and pluralism-are partly responsible for the lack of intervention. We then suggest that these concerns can be overcome by relying on four arguments: (1) education is necessary but insufficient to curb the circulation of health MDI, (2) there is precedent for state control of internet content in other domains, (3) network dynamics adversely affect the spread of accurate health information, and (4) justice is best served by protecting those susceptible to inaccurate health information. These arguments provide a strong case for classifying the quality of the infosphere as a social determinant of health, thus making its protection a public health responsibility. In addition, they offer a strong justification for working to overcome the ethical concerns associated with state-led intervention in the infosphere to protect public health.
Redeeming by Unlearning: A Critical Discourse Analysis of COVID ‐19 Vaccine Hesitancy on Facebook
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022
As false and debunked claims about the COVID-19 virus and vaccines were pervasively disseminated across online social networks, their detrimental effects necessitated that social media companies track down and remove the disinformation. To explore the lingering vaccine hesitancy and resistance within a vaccine discussion group on Facebook, this study applies a nascent framework called Information Acts in three communication styles. Employing critical discourse analysis methodology, this study showed that the dominant communication styles of vaccine hesitant participants (VHPs) are locutionary and perlocutionary acts. Those VHPs can reduce and eventually end their vaccine hesitancy and resistance in the process of informative and rational communication and interactive and ad-hoc support for informed decision-making. The results pose challenges and opportunities for public health communication and information provision to cultivate information resilience and interventions targeting VHPs.
Background: There is a need to develop innovations that can help bridge the gap between research and policy. Web CIPHER is an online tool designed to help policymakers better engage with research in order to increase its use in health policymaking. The aim of the present study was to test interventions in order to increase policymakers' usage of Web CIPHER. Namely, the impact of posting articles and blogs on topics relevant to the missions and scope of selected policy agencies in the Web CIPHER community. Methods: Five policy agencies were targeted for the intervention. Web CIPHER usage data was gathered over a 30-month period using Google Analytics. Time series analysis was used to evaluate whether publication of tailored articles and blogs led to significant changes in usage for all Web CIPHER members from policy agencies, including those from the five target agencies. We further evaluated whether these users showed greater increases in usage following publication of articles and blogs directly targeted at their agency, and if these effects were moderated by the blog author.
Frontiers in Communication, 2022
As the COVID-19 pandemic began, health authorities rushed to use social media to communicate information and persuade citizens to follow guidelines. Yet a desire to “come closer to citizens” often came into conflict with the very consequences of doing so—many social media interactions were characterized by complaint, resistance, trolling or misinformation. This paper presents a case study of the Danish Health Authority’s (DHA) Facebook page, focusing on the initial phase of the pandemic and on posts about face masks. Face masks were chosen as an exemplar of the many topics where scientific research was being communicated as it unfolded, and where relations between science, policy, and politics were also evolving in public. In other words, topics where what should be communicated and why was unclear and unstable. A qualitative thematic analysis of the DHA Facebook page, grounded in the practice-based knowledge of one of the authors and feedback meetings with DHA staff, unpicks what kinds of engagements between authority and citizens occurred, both explicitly and implicitly. The analysis particularly looks for dialogue—as a mode of communication implicitly promised by social media platforms, and as a well-established ingredient of trust in relationships between experts and citizens. Drawing on Grudin’s definition of dialogue as “reciprocal and strange,” we argue that the DHA’s Facebook policy limited such encounters, in part by practical necessity, and in part due to professional constraints on the ability to discuss entanglements between health guidelines and politics. But we also identify “strangeness” in the apparent disconnect between individual engagements and collective responses; and “reciprocity” in the sharing of affect and alternative forms of expertise. We also highlight the invisible majority of silent engagements with DHA information on the Facebook page, and ask whether the visibly frustrated dialogue that ran alongside was a price worth paying for this informational exchange. The paper also serves as an example of qualitative research situated within ongoing practice, and as such we argue for the virtue of these more local, processual forms of evidence-based science communication.
Is there a duty to participate in digital epidemiology
Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 2018
This paper poses the question of whether people have a duty to participate in digital epidemiology. While an implied duty to participate has been argued for in relation to biomedical research in general, digital epidemiology involves processing of non-medical, granular and proprietary data types that pose different risks to participants. We first describe traditional justifications for epidemiology that imply a duty to participate for the general public, which take account of the immediacy and plausibility of threats, and the identifiability of data. We then consider how these justifications translate to digital epidemiology, understood as an evolution of traditional epidemiology that includes personal and proprietary digital data alongside formal medical datasets. We consider the risks imposed by re-purposing such data for digital epidemiology and propose eight justificatory conditions that should be met in justifying a duty to participate for specific digital epidemiological studies. The conditions are then applied to three hypothetical cases involving usage of social media data for epidemiological purposes. We conclude with a list of questions to be considered in public negotiations of digital epidemiology, including the application of a duty to participate to third-party data controllers, and the important distinction between moral and legal obligations to participate in research.
It’s not all about autism: The emerging landscape of anti-vaccination sentiment on Facebook
Vaccine
Background: Due in part to declining vaccination rates, in 2018 over 20 states reported at least one case of measles, and over 40,000 cases have been confirmed in Europe. Antivaccine posts on social media may be facilitating anti-vaccination behaviour. This study aimed to systematically characterize (1) individuals known to publicly post antivaccination content on Facebook, (2) the information they convey, and (3) the spread of this content. Methods: Our data set consisted of 197 individuals who posted anti-vaccination comments in response to a message promoting vaccination. We systematically analysed publicly-available content using quantitative coding, descriptive analysis, social network analysis, and an in-depth qualitative assessment. The final codebook consisted of 26 codes; Cohen's κ ranged 0.71-1.0 after double-coding. Results: The majority (89%) of individuals identified as female. Among 136 individuals who divulged their location, 36 states and 8 other countries were represented. In a 2mode network of individuals and topics, modularity analysis revealed 4 distinct subgroups labelled as "trust," "alternatives," "safety," and "conspiracy." For example, a comment representative of "conspiracy" is that poliovirus does not exist and that pesticides caused clinical symptoms of polio. An example from the "alternatives" subgroup is that eating yogurt cures human papillomavirus. Deeper qualitative analysis of all 197 individuals' profiles found that these individuals also tended to post material against other health-related practices such as water fluoridation and circumcision.
Variations and Arguments of Anti-Vaccine Movement Groups on Facebook
KnE Social Sciences, 2022
This study examined a social movement in the digitalized world along with its role in the public policy process. The research focused on how the social movement was accessed and spread, and how knowledge was formed on Facebook so that it could influence the success or failure of a certain policy. It is essential to further explore how knowledge is mobilized through social movements in the digitalized world so as to enrich the theories of governance and public policies. In this study, content analysis was ued. The results showed that the group of main actors who criticized the vaccine's safety was heterogeneous. In terms of vaccine criticism, there were the anti-vaccine movements, the marginally anti-vaccine movements, and the occasionally vaccine-critical movements. This heterogeneity could be found in the type of arguments mobilized to question the vaccine's safety and in these actors' likelihood of being involved in any vaccine-related controversies. The religion and conspiracy theory discourses were the two most used discourses to reject the vaccine delivery program in Indonesia. By mobilizing knowledge through a social movement in the digitalized world, the anti-vaccine movement actors had a wider network and had the potential to influence the success of the government program.