The Baltic States have set up systems to identify, monitor and confront disinformation linked to Russia. But the uptake of COVID conspiracies show that disinformation actors exploit vulnerabilities in our societies. After all, as discussed in the previous blog post on, conspiracists hitch multiple ideologies onto the first one they manage to push through. Listen to our podcast featuring disinformation …
Interview with a Swedish journalist who infiltrated the antivaxx movement
Ever since a speaker at Dataharvest mentioned the SVT team’s investigation into the anti-vaccination movement, I wanted to interview someone from this team and ask what it was like. The Swedish team started their investigation at a similar time as Eva and I started ours, but instead of spreading wide in Europe they traced influences all the way to US …
Who believes misinformation?
Cecilie Steenbuch Traberg researches collective intelligence. She is now using her knowledge to find out how people ‘absorb’ misinformation. Eva interviewed her about this research, and you can hear our discussion on the findings on our podcast.
Anti-vaccination movements, their connections and funding
In this episode of The Inoculation podcast Eva and I talk to Dr Aliaksandr Herasimenka about his findings on the global connections and funding sources of anti-vaccination movements. If you’re interested in this topic, do subscribe to our weekly newsletter – after all, newsletter subscriptions are better than social media.
New articles and research on vaccine mandates and vaccine hesitancy
Our selected readings and comments
The big vaccine gamble
EU countries agreed to pre-book several vaccines together. But the (now former) prime minister of Slovakia decided to act when the Western vaccines wouldn’t come fast enough. This cost him his post. Learn what happened on the latest episode of our podcast, produced with help from award-winning Slovak journalist Lukáš Onderčanin. Lukáš and I met on a press trip to …
Italy shows what the stakes of vaccine hesitancy can be
When my colleague Eva and I drafted our project before the pandemic, we thought we would definitely include Italy in our itinerary and talk to parents and doctors about living with widespread vaccine hesitancy, also promoted by certain politicians. It took us a while because we had to take our research online, but I am proud to present this collaborative …
Vaccine ‘space race’
The media reported today that French-speaking ‘influencers’ on social networks have been approached by a dubious PR agency to promote negative messages about the Comirnaty (Pfizer) vaccine (I saw it on Twitter and then it was reported here). In this episode, Eva and I talk to experts who have been collecting data about how false claims about vaccines link to …
Is that post you saw misinformation or disinformation?
Both disinformation and misinformation mix facts with distortions and/ or falsehoods. Disinformation is intentional. But how do we know that when looking at a specific post on social networks? Eva and I try to unpack the terminology in our latest podcast episode. Disinformation is often systematic and sustained over time. And when its spreaders are faced with debunks, they never …
Misinformation and disinformation: what’s in it for spreaders?
Since my colleague Eva and I started our project on anti-vaccination movements, reading about the topic has often led us to academic and media articles on misinformation or disinformation. The distinction between the two is not always clear, but it is based on intent. Disinformation is defined as intentional efforts to mislead people in order to sow distrust and chaos. …