Covid-19 is real and vaccines work, but you might not know just how definitive and one-sided the research on this is because you are a victim of a global, co-ordinated disinformation campaign.
What is darkly funny about this is that it is almost a direct correlation of the formulation of most conspiracy theories: the idea that you are being deliberately kept in the dark by a small group of shady and powerful figures.
This is the narrative of fear and fakery being told every day on our social media, including the “dark social” of WhatsApp (termed “dark” because we can’t see what’s being shared like we can with public platforms like Twitter). We have known about it for years (the disinformation, not the Covid claims specifically), and we don’t seem to be getting any closer to effectively combating it.
There is a ream of new studies and reports published recently that have made the reach and ramifications of disinformation transmission much clearer to us.
In March 2021 the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a 40-page report on what it termed “the disinformation dozen”. The study analysed a sample of anti-vaccine content shared on Facebook and Twitter about 812,000 times between February 1 and March 16 2021 and found that almost two-thirds (65%) of this content could be traced back to the accounts of just 12 people.
For your reference, the dirty dozen are as follows: Joseph Mercola; Robert F Kennedy Jnr; Ty and Charlene Bollinger; Sherri Tenpenny; Rizza Islam; Rashid Buttar; Erin Elizabeth; Sayer Ji; Kelly Brogan; Christiane Northrup; Ben Tapper; and Kevin Jenkins.
Time for a vigorous unfollowing, I’d suggest. Mercola’s other claims, for example, include the ideas that tanning beds reduce the chance of you getting cancer and that spring mattresses “amplify” radiation.
And it’s seemingly worse on Facebook, with the same dozen being responsible for 73% of the anti-vaccine content (shared 689,000 times in two months) on Zuckerberg’s social platform. It’s clear the company has a lot to answer for.
CCDH found that the platforms “fail to act on 95% of the Covid and vaccine misinformation reported to them”. A 5% act or catch rate is atrocious by any standard.
The full report is online, but all evidence suggests you won’t read it. That would involve putting aside considerable time to consume and assess written material, check the sources and track some of the funding back to its sources. That just doesn’t seem to appeal to the masses online, who would rather declare themselves proficient researchers after watching a YouTuber rail against “big pharma” for five minutes.
Then, just days ago, the BBC blew the lid on a well-funded campaign the likes of which Bell Pottinger would have been proud. Mirko Drotschmann is a German YouTuber with 1.5-million subscribers, and he was one of the content creators targeted by an influencer marketing agency called Fazze, which approached him with the offer of payment to promote what it called “leaked information” on the death rate of people getting the Pfizer jab. The information in question? Utter fabrications. And Fazze’s client wished to remain anonymous, apparently. Can you say “red flag”?
French YouTuber Léo Grasset was another target. He says he was offered €2,000 to participate by making a video in which they suggested he “act like you have the passion and interest in this topic”, and not to disclose that it was a piece of sponsored content. Both pretended to consider the offer to get more information before blowing the whistle, but others apparently took the cash, including — allegedly — Indian YouTuber Ashkar Techy and Brazilian prankster Everson Zoio, who were found to have created videos using the sources and claims fed through by Fazze.
The rise and rise of the internet influencer has created a space ripe for manipulation. Manipulating journalists is an old technique that has been used to varying degrees of success for decades, but a journalist operates within a structure designed with safeguards.
That’s not to say the influence never works — the SA Revenue Service “rogue unit” story is a prime (and painful) example. But in journalism, influence has obstacles to overcome, including fact-checkers, editors, press ombuds, critical and vocal readers, and usually defined recourse for walking back misinformation. This is why a press code of conduct isn’t lip service. If I make a demonstrably fake claim here this publication has a clear system for recanting that claim.
You know who doesn’t have any of that? Your friendly local wellness influencer and B-list celebrity with a “followship” for sale. They may be beholden to a personal set of ethical criteria about who they take money from. Jameela Jamil, for example, is an actress and advocate who has incorporated into her life work — and into her brand, you might argue — being critical of things like diet culture and hawking untested diet “teas” to teenagers through your Instagram following.
The Kardashian family, on the other hand, are arguably as famous for their willingness to sell anything as they are for their sales savvy and scandalous personal lives. You could argue the Kardashian empire got its start in reality television, but family members built their individual fortunes via social media.
The democratisation of publishing through the internet was undoubtedly a good thing in a world where power was overly concentrated, but the removal of the barriers to publication means quacks and experts are operating on the same footing online. The only thing standing between you and believing them is your willingness to scrutinise sources and be incredulous.
You’ve probably heard the comparison before: globally, we are now fighting the effects of two incredibly virulent and damaging viruses: Covid-19 and disinformation. Covid spreads largely through the air, disinformation through the social networks (both online and in the more traditional sense). Both are killing people, but there’s only a vaccine for one.
• Thompson Davy, a freelance journalist, is an impactAFRICA fellow and WanaData member.
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