Dairy Exporter December 2021

Page 56

SPECIAL REPORT

COVID FATIGUE

Social media and anti-vax:

The dirty dozen

Words by: Delwyn Dickey

D

isinformation and conspiracy theories on social media are rife and are often behind why some people are vaccine-hesitant. Then add to the mix an array of bad actors connected to far-right extremism and white supremacy in the United States stoking local fires here on social media and the anti-vaccination protest events around the country start to make a bit more sense. While there have always been antivaxxers, social media has given them a much larger and, with the way platform algorithms direct viewers to similar and progressively more extreme material, more captive audience. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), noted earlier this year roughly 31 million people follow anti-vaccine groups on Facebook. Another 17 million subscribe to anti-vaccine accounts on YouTube. Between 2019 and 2020 the number of social media accounts held by people opposed to vaccinations rose by 8 million, they say. They also found 65% of Covid-19 antivaccine misinformation and conspiracy 56

theories came from the ‘disinformation dozen’, just 12 personalities. Another study out of the University of Southern California into the link between social media use and vaccine hesitancy also found that anti-vaccine misinformation on platforms such as Facebook was extensive and poorly policed with 95% of the Covid misinformation reported to these platforms not removed. “Facebook, Google and Twitter have put policies into place to prevent the spread of vaccine misinformation; yet to date, all have failed to satisfactorily enforce those policies,” CCDH CEO, Imran Ahmed, said in their report. “All have been particularly ineffective at removing harmful and dangerous misinformation about coronavirus vaccines.” Leaked information from Facebook earlier this year, as disinformation around vaccines really ramped up, shows a group of Facebook employees found they could reduce the spread by changing how posts about vaccines were ranked in people’s newsfeeds, and offering posts from legitimate sources including from the World Health Organisation. But this was shelved after a meeting with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee also released internal documents this year accusing the social media giant of repeatedly prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation. “Why would you not remove comments? Because engagement is the only thing that matters,” Ahmed says, “It drives attention and attention equals eyeballs and eyeballs equal ad revenue.” Closer to home and the news is also bad. After the country went into Alert Level 4 lockdown in August, researchers at Te Pūnaha Matatini connected to the University of Auckland spotted a big increase in popularity and intensity of Covid-19-specific disinformation online in New Zealand. As part of The Disinformation Project they keep tabs on what’s happening on NZ social media. “We’ve really witnessed a downgrading of social discourse – so an acceptability of really vulgar, obscene, denigrating, rude, misogynistic, racist terminology just being used,” lead researcher Kate Hannah says. The extreme nature of some of this material seems to have become more appealing to New Zealanders during

Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | December 2021


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Articles inside

The Dairy Exporter in December 1971

3min
pages 90-92

Gen Z to make their mark

4min
page 89

Tracmap unit eases compliance pain

3min
page 88

Never too late to learn

5min
pages 86-87

A beetle to beat the thistle

2min
page 85

Plants waiting to be weeds

2min
page 84

The art of saying no

5min
pages 82-83

Variety from consulting to composting

7min
pages 78-81

Vet Voice: More to it than

4min
pages 74-75

Fast track to management

5min
pages 76-77

Reducing heat stress over summer

2min
page 73

M. Bovis: It had a head start

6min
pages 71-72

Restoring Horowhenua’s waters

6min
pages 65-67

And now, freshwater plans

3min
page 64

Sustainability: Gaining the knowledge

8min
pages 58-61

Open Country: Online tool for FEP

3min
pages 62-63

When will all this end?

5min
pages 54-55

Social media and anti-vax The dirty dozen

6min
pages 56-57

How to handle Covid-19 coming onfarm

3min
pages 50-51

No Jab, No Job in the milking shed

4min
page 48

It’s a health and safety issue

4min
pages 46-47

Dealing with vaccine reluctance

3min
page 49

Taranaki soft core

12min
pages 34-38

When the lights go red

5min
pages 44-45

Prepare for a virus attack

6min
pages 42-43

Ryegrass: Twelve years of torture

6min
pages 39-41

Benchmarking: Measure it to be sure

5min
pages 32-33

Ahuwhenua Trophy: Taking the leap to manager

5min
pages 26-27

Spending the payout: new kit or cutting debt?

8min
pages 14-17

Ahuwhenua Trophy: Quality on the coast

9min
pages 22-25

Frances Coles loves being an ambassador for Kiwi farming

3min
page 10

Future farming will need to give more than profit, writes George Moss

3min
page 12

What a payout, writes John Milne, but what prices

2min
page 13

Market View: Hedging bets on Singapore

3min
pages 20-21

Global Dairy: All change at FrieslandCampina

5min
pages 18-19
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