Items
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Misinformation
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2022-07-24
Fear for My Mother's Saefty
I've written a short story centered around my experience with fear of this virus, particularly focusing on how my fear is heighten with an immuno-compromised mother. I wrote about how the media the people around me consumed affected their behavior and played a role within my fear and the impact it had on my mother. This story says two things about this pandemic I think: it shows the impact that information had/has on how people approach the virus and the emotional toll the pandemic had on people living their daily lives. What I've submitted is important because it validates what Americans have experienced. Many Americans -
2022-06-09
Sharing source-backed information can help reduce COVID-19 misinformation online
This is a news story from Penn State University by Jessica Hallman. A recent study has shown that user corrections given back and forth on social media has helped reduce the spread of misinformation. Through sharing source-backed information, people were able to pick out fake news easier. -
2022-05-03
Eranga Narangoda Oral History, 2022/05/03
It provides the pandemic perspective of Dr. Eranga Narangoda, a practitioner of internal medicine specializing in infectious disease, as he served on the front lines of Sri Lanka's COVID response. -
2022-04-28
What Musk's free-speech Twitter could unleash
This is a news story from Axios by Ina Fried. This is about the ramifications that could happen with Elon Musk's Twitter buyout. The author is worried about both election and COVID misinformation becoming more common on Twitter again. Other things added to this list include: sharing of manipulated media, impersonating others, increase of spam content, hateful conduct, and forms of violence being allowed. -
2022-04-21
Does Free Speech Protect COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation?
This is a story from Standford Medicine's Scope Blog by Sharon Beckstrand. This is an opinion piece on free speech and misinformation as it relates to COVID-19. Beckstrand goes over some of the reasoning some might resist getting vaccinated, such as political beliefs. Some of these beliefs can come from well-intentioned individuals thinking they are spreading good information, or from intentionally misleading sources. Both of these examples are classified under misinformation. The author of this asks: how can the spread of misinformation be stopped without quashing free speech? To get an idea on how the United States approaches this with the First Amendment is though Supreme Court cases. The Supreme Court has upheld that false statements are still protected under free speech. A 2012 case of United States vs. Alvarez struck down a law that made it a criminal offense to lie about receiving military medals, as a false statement is still protected under the First Amendment. Other types of speech are not protected, such as: lying in court, making false statements to the government, impersonating a government official, and defaming someone. Beckstrand lays out some of the dangers that can come from the government trying to police false claims. One thing she asks people to consider is that a scientific statement claimed as false today could be considered verifiable at a different time, especially if it is something that has not been studied yet. Additionally, many do not trust the government to not abuse power when deciding what is misinformation. The article ends by saying that if something becomes politicized, they are more likely to view messages from groups they don't identify with as suspicious, regardless of how much evidence there is to back it up. At the end, Beckstrand closes with saying that if we cannot make sound decisions on how we interact with information, we can't make sound decisions about health. -
2022-04-26
WHO Warns About the Dangers of Health Misinformation as Musk Takes Over Twitter
This is a news story from Bloomberg News by Andy Hoffman and Clara Hernanz Lizarraga. Since Elon Musk has officially acquired Twitter, it has prompted groups like the World Health Organization to give warnings on COVID misinformation. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the health emergencies program at the WHO issued a statement on Musk buying Twitter for $44 billion dollars. “When anyone reaches a position in life where they have so much influence over the way information is shared with communities, they take on a huge responsibility,” Ryan said at the media briefing in Geneva. “We wish Mr. Musk luck with his endeavors to improve the quality of information we all receive.” Throughout the pandemic, the WHO has worked to make sure correct information about the pandemic and vaccines are being spread. The WHO has an overall fear now that bad information could be spread more easily about COVID and possibly cause more death. -
2022-04-19
GB Oral History, 2022/04/19
The interviewee discusses vaccine hesitancy and life during the pandemic without having received the vaccine. -
2020-06
Fort Sill - Trainee
While the pandemic had made digital communications and networking boom. Anything in the real world came to a screeching halt. I went into Fort Sill, Lawton Oklahoma for Advanced Individual Training (AIT) while had just begun to really put its foot into the door on US soil. Entering the facility we were immediately put in makeshift facilities specifically designed for incoming soldiers, they looked like 2-story mobile homes and each building contained roughly 60-80 troops per floor (can't remember exactly how many fit. but we were packed in there like sardines). We were originally told we would be in the facilities for 2 weeks before we would be allowed onto the rest of the base to begin training. 2 weeks, turned to 4, and that turned into 6 weeks. We weren't allowed to go outside other than to get an MRE and then go right back into our bays. We became so restless we would disassemble bunks and make makeshift pull-up bars, running up and down the hall in order to run miles. Eventually, we were released and allowed to continue training. Once we had actually begun AIT. We were immediately told that they were "overbooked" the facilities were forced to hold more soldiers than it was designed for due to outgoing flights being halted until an entire flight could be filled with military personal all going to the same location. Masks mandation was very hit or miss. Some days we would go by without them at all, others, we would be told to wear them the moment we got up, even wearing them during physical training, and while on the firing range shooting artillery. -
2022-01-29
Save our Children Tour?
The anti-vaxxers are out in full force. Disguising themselves as Patriots dedicated to personal freedoms and, for some reason, the saviors of children? This Save Our Children tour harkens back to Anita Bryant’s homophobic “Save Our Children” movement in the 1970s but it’s unclear if they’re the same thing? No about page on their website. I find this disturbing that not only are people hesitant to get vaccinated, some groups are mobilizing to spread misinformation and disinformation about the vaccines as well. This comes in the tail of Neil Young’s ultimatum he delivered to Spotify about their hosting of Joe Rogan’s podcast. Neil Young and now Joni Mitchell have demanded that Spotify drop their music if they keep hosting Joe Rogan. Spotify’s stocks are way down since they chose Joe Rogan over Neil Young. -
2021-11-13
Anti-Vaxxers in the Family
I have a minimum of 2 resolute anti-vaxxers in my extended family. We try to avoid conflict but sometimes their ignorance is just too much for me to bear and I feel like I have to set the record straight. Here's a summary of what's going on in these screenshots from a FB post. 1. Great aunt posts a meme using the experience of the Polio vaccine to promote the COVID vaccine. (meme included) 2. Anti-vax aunt (orange) posts snarkily that in the case of the polio vaccine, it was only rolled out after 60 years of research. 3. I step in (as a historian of public health) and comment that she's mistaken, the polio vaccine went from lab to roll out in 25 years. While mRNA (on which the COVID vax is based) was first discovered in a lab 35 years ago so it stands to reason that the amount of time between lab and roll out is similar. 4. Meanwhile... anti-vax second cousin (purple- daughter of great aunt who made the original post and also resolutely anti-vax) tags anti-vax aunt (orange) and says "amen." as in... she lends her support 5. Anti-vax aunt (orange) responds to my initial rebuff in #3 and says "wrong. it took 35 years to discover it was a virus" (as if that, added to the 25 years of development constitutes 60 years of "research" 6. I step back in and repeat... polio vaccine research began in 1930, and it rolled out in the US in 1954. Surely she doesn't want to go back to the "good old days" when it took 30 years to discover whether something was a virus, really...?? 7. I was wrong. Anti-vax aunt (orangs) DOES want that. She says, "Yes, really" 8. pro-vax cousin (light blue-an oncology NP) comments "Wow. That's sad to think about" 9. Anti-vax aunt (orange): ? 10. pro-vax cousin (light blue): is we were not able to identify viruses like we can today. It's sad to think about all of the people that would die unnecessarily. This exchange went on but I just don't have it in me to continue with screenshots. Great aunt (original poster) chimes in and says she doesn't care what people's beliefs are but both of her daughters (one of them the anti-vaxxer in purple) families have COVID right now and she's in her 70s and was exposed to both and never caught it. She firmly believes it's because the vaccine works. Anti-vax aunt claimed she "didn't post a belief, she posted a fact" I said "no. you posted an incorrect fact that was skewed to make it look like the polio vaccine underwent 35 more years of research than it actually did and I corrected you." It's amazing to me that technology that has been in development for 35 years (mRNA) is seen with such suspicion because the virus it's being used with COVID-19 is new. So the assumption is that the vaccine is "untested" even though the technology behind it has a robust research history. I'm even more amazed by people who are anti-covid vaccine even though they had their full slew of childhood vaccines on schedule. I have two very close family members who refused to get vaccinated (different family members than the two distant family featured above) and they had all of their childhood vaccines. One of them even told me she fully expected that everyone who was vaccinated with the COVID vaccine will die in a few years or even "sprout dicks" for all she knows.... yes... It's imperative that we, as a society, figure out how to address misinformation and disinformation. Certainly, facts/statistics/"Research" are open to interpretation to a degree but much anti-vax info out there is politically motivated. It's not coming from scientists who spend their whole lives studying this stuff.... it's coming from PACs and anti-establishment groups who have beef with the US government and/or "Big Pharma" or Western medicine. -
2021-02-19
Absurdist (pandemic) humor
Sometimes I feel as though the people grifting off of the pandemic and people willingly sharing misleading information for political reasons just do not care about the harm being caused. It is also strange because many people seem to enjoy, like Squidward here, being a bearer of “fake news”. -
2021-05-16
Vaccine Hesitancy in the Black Community
This tweet reflects an ongoing controversy of the Covid-19 vaccine. The media has reported a hesitancy of the mRNA vaccine amongst the black community, but with little to no context on why there is such hesitancy. Based on the history of the U.S. public health institution, there have been reported inequalities that include a racial hierarchy within the medical system. This tweet specifies the instances of medical malpractice committed towards people of color and insists on an understanding of racial inequality through the lens of people of color that led to skeptical feelings about the vaccine. -
2021-10-01
I don't have any answers.
One of the more grueling things to come out of the pandemic, for me at least, has been to watch my family fall prey to misinformation and fear-mongering. When the vaccines started coming out, my family refused to get them. I felt like I couldn't get them without causing an upset in my family. I figured that, since I am an online student and I rarely leave the house, it was okay if I didn't get vaccinated, but really the only reason I didn't was because I was afraid of my family's anger. I felt like I had no choice, to be honest. It's a horrible feeling. In addition, my mother convinced my grandparents that getting the COVID vaccine booster shot is pointless, because people who are vaccinated are still getting COVID. Even though from what I understand, this only happens in very rare cases. She also tried to scare me out of getting the vaccine by claiming that women who get it experience irregular menstruation, a sign of infertility, or sharing news stories of people who had allergic reactions, got sick from the shot, etc. I cannot adequately describe my sheer frustration with this attitude of thinking they know better than doctors. A month ago, my mother noticed a strange purchase listed on one of our bills. She called my father and learned that he had purchased Ivermectin, a drug normally given to horses, because he had read something on the Internet about how it could be used to treat COVID. People have been overdosing on this stuff and it makes them extremely sick or could even kill them. We were able to convince my father to return his purchase, but my mother heard from her chiropractor (a very strange and eccentric man, in my opinion) that his wife, a licensed doctor or nurse, had been giving her elderly father small dosages of Ivermectin to treat COVID, and that it had supposedly worked. She asked me if I thought she should tell my father this. I said no, because I don't think he understands the difference between a licensed medical professional doing something and a person with no medical training attempting to do the same. Having said all this, I also must admit that I do not know who or what to believe. Do I put by absolute faith and trust in anyone who is labeled an "expert"? Well, no. Experts are human, and they are not immune to mistakes. So part of me does understand people wanting to take matters into their own hands, because they feel like the only person they can completely trust is themselves. I just wish more common sense was used and more people were able to grasp nuances, I guess. Is that the experts' fault for not being clear enough, or is it the people's fault for not understanding? I don't have any answers. I don't think anyone does. -
2021-09-22
Breitbart says the Left is Trying to Kill Conservatives En Masse with Reverse Psychology
I just can’t. I shit you not….. right wing nutters are now claiming that the organized left is doing everything they can to make sure the right does not get vaccinated… things such as vaccine Mandates…….. VACCINE MANDATES. He says the Biden Admin has instituted mandates in order to ensure that the right DOES NOT GET THEM. I’m so sick of the victim mentality exhibited by the far right. It’s so dangerous and the misinformation and disinformation being circulated on social media and right wing “news” is genuinely terrifying to me. I have family members who have refused to get vaccinated and I have begged them, BEGGED them to get vaccinated. So much that they refuse to talk to me about it. It’s lunacy to me that my efforts could be construed as “reverse psychology” to ensure their deaths. -
2021-09-14
Rampant misinformation and disinformation continues
This is a screenshot from a group several friends are in. The group is holistic-minded which, in itself, is not anti-science but folks who are into holistic medicine seem to be particularly vulnerable to the misinformation and disinformation out there. This screenshot shows one person asking the OP if they’ve tested their child for COVID. The OP answers that they’ve swabbed their child several times. A third person warns the OP that sterile swabs contain ethylene oxide and so they cause cancer. Reuters did some myth-busting regarding this claim. (Link included). It’s so disheartening to see this rampant disinformation and misinformation, especially in communities I formerly felt a part of. -
2021-05-14
"Disinformation Dozen"
This article discusses "misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter". According to the article, 12 people are behind the majority of the misinformation surrounding COVID and the vaccine that leads to conspiracy theories. Many of these theories have led some social media users to avoid the vaccine and ignore scientific facts. It is scary to think that such a small group of people are in control of so much of what we see on social media. What this small group shares and communicates to users are so widespread... I can't open a social media app without seeing some sort of conspiracy theory about COVID or the vaccine. We are so close to overcoming the pandemic, but this type of misinformation is holding us back. -
2020-10-06
Fear, Fiction, and Facebook
(HIST30060) Content warning: suicide mention. As the pandemic has developed over the course of the year and Victoria has progressed through lockdowns, a Facebook friend of mine from high school has taken to discussing COVID-19 extensively. She posts very regularly (on average between 20 and 30 times per day) with commentary on the pandemic, ranging from sanctimonious to outraged, sharing posts from conspiracy groups, pandemic-denying politicians, and other Facebook users that downplay the existence or severity of the virus. The series of unsubstantiated claims and recurrent mentions of ‘breaking news’ from various unnamed rogue health workers results in some of her Facebook friends querying her content and questioning the validity of her sources. When they reply to her posts, her Facebook friends often attempt to share news articles and updates from verified, fact-checked sources, but when this happens she talks past them, avoids the question, engages in a range of logical fallacies, or outright denies the validity of the information with which she’s been presented. In particular, she received significant backlash from her friends when she shared a post about the Australian suicide rate in 2020, crediting an alleged (untrue) increase directly to the lockdowns: one friend responded to say ‘I’m swiftly losing respect for you and the misinformation you keep posting.’ Earlier in the year, her posts gained greater traction among her Facebook friends: people would react to them, comment with information, speculation, or gentle disagreement; by now (November), the engagement her posts receive has dwindled down to the occasional like, but usually nothing more than that. Seeing her posts when I checked Facebook began to remind me of a conversation I’d had with my housemate about the role of fear and a desire for control behind belief in conspiracy theories; namely that these belief systems might bring warped comfort on some level. In situations that are scary, believing in some nameless, faceless ‘them’, or connecting with other people who claim to have secret insider information hidden from the general public, might help ease a feeling of powerlessness by believing someone is in control. I would allege her Facebook posts stem at least in part from fear, which I feel is more than understandable given an underlying experience for many people this year has been a deep, semi-constant sense of paralytic uncertainty. While I empathise with this, and genuinely feel compassion towards her for what she’s going through, I can’t help but think the way she has responded to these feelings is irresponsible at best, and dangerous at worst. I find her advocacy of the importance of independent research and critical thinking approaches irony, as the ‘research’ she describes appears to consist of discussing factually incorrect information with other scared people who are also searching for stability and predictability. I don’t begrudge her the fear she feels in any capacity, nor do I want to pass judgement on how others cope with this experience, but I can’t help feeling that this does more harm than good; I worry it proliferates false information, and further demoralises those who read it. While individual conjecture, ideas, philosophising, and critical thinking are absolutely necessary and a healthy degree of scepticism is vital when reading anything, I believe there is a degree of responsibility one assumes to check, even cursorily, that the content they’re sharing has some basis in fact, especially in instances like this where people are quite literally dying. While the experience of the pandemic is undoubtedly having a severe effect on her, I feel irritated reading her advocacy of things that will objectively place other people at risk of illness. It seems to me insensitive to spread deliberately divisive misinformation, given there are people who are assume risk every day when they go to work (even in a country that has implemented measures to control the spread of the disease, when many countries overseas have not). I worry about the broader social repercussions of the division and polarisation that misinformation contributes to, both in the case of COVID-19 and in other contexts. When I look over the things she’s been posting on Facebook, I feel overwhelming pity and compassion for what she is going through individually, and what everyone in Victoria is undergoing as a collective. I understand that everyone is coping with an extremely stressful and emotionally taxing experience and is attempting to manage as well as they can. I’ve seen parallels drawn between the COVID-19 pandemic and previous pandemic disease outbreaks and major historical events in general, and the comfort people derive from a sense of shared experience during difficulty. I think in part the pandemic has cemented in my mind the confronting fact that being alive is just living through a series of major historical events; that history is not something that has happened to other people, in other places, at other times, but is happening now and will continue to happen, over and over. While this is incredibly confronting to think about and dredges up an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness at times, it seems to me by looking at both the past and the present that people working to mutually support each other make upheaval, fear, and uncertainty much easier to bear. -
1919-02-22
Deadlier than a Disease: The Pandemic(s) of Misinformation
This piece brings to light the persistence in human ability to question authority. The "tar cures" of yesterday are scarily similar to the presidential suggestions to "inject bleach" today. To me, this piece brings a sense of comfort; just knowing that the people of 1918 had their share of pseudo-scientific authority figures to dodge and denounce just as we do in 2020. -
2020-10-22
Epoch Times found in Mailbox
The front page literally only covers China and Covid-19 conspiracies. The Falun Gong own and run the Neo-Conservative paper. This and the Shen Yun dance trope appears to be apart of the continuous push to reach non-chinese North Americans. -
2020-09-13
“Quack conjurers” and Snake Oil: Drawing Parallels Between Defoe’s Plague Year and Public Exploitation During The Age of COVID-19.
This story is a short essay for my graduate literature course, analyzing parallels between Daniel Defoe’s Plague Year and our current experiences in the pandemic of COVID-19. It is important to me because I believe these parallels illustrate the importance of putting our faith in reliable information, and learning from the mistakes of the past rather than repeating them.