As stated in a recent study presented at the American Public Health Associations Annual Meeting in Chicago , IL, a great deal of anti-vaccine websites use a hefty amount of deceptive information as well as primitive scientific practices and exaggerations to reinforce the idea that vaccines are dangerous.
The research team has discovered that many sites have referred to existing peer reviewed journals but they have misapprehended the results of various studies to give leverage and foster their anti-vaccination agenda.
Childhood vaccines are extremely important to prevent children from diseases and epidemics, but there is an increasing number of parents who opt out, delay or pay no attention to the importance of vaccination, for a number of reasons. The Internet is usually looked at as the source of providing vaccine information and also controversy.
Pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine website comparisons in the past reflect that pro-vaccination sites have been focused more towards evidence-based scientific research regarding vaccines and government-endorsed vaccination-related practices. Anti-vaccine websites on the contrary are inclined to forming groups of people who are affected by vaccines and vaccine-related practices, formulating a personal framework that is used to test the information given in the scientific literature and government documents.
The study team examined the data presented on nearly 500 anti-vaccination websites and found that more than 60 percent of websites incorrectly claim that vaccines can cause autism. Various research papers have already identified that there is no link between vaccines and autism.
Primary health groups are highly concerned regarding the insufficient amount of success in restoring the confidence of parents who do not wish to have their children vaccinated, even with the use of educational and misinformation-correcting announcements. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the highest number of measles cases since measles was declared eliminated in 2000.
Lead author of the current study and associate professor at the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Meghan Moran and her colleagues wanted to analyze the plan of action through which anti-vaccine supporters create such powerfully held anti-vaccine campaigns so they can create a more effective vaccine promotion strategies.”So the science itself was strong, but the way it was being interpreted was not very accurate. It was being distorted to support an anti-vaccine agenda” said Morgan.
Moreover, they have identified a few search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves, using key words like “immunization dangers” and “vaccine danger,” and others identified using Google Trends. After eliminating similar results, they had a combination of nearly 500 personal websites and blogs, Facebook pages and health websites using a convincing approach to market themselves, and express specific beliefs about vaccines.
Various studies of people who are susceptible to agree with conspiracy theories indicate that readers drawn to conspiracy-related online news tend to be more focused on what filters into their narrow, conspiracy-oriented communities, reinforcing confirmation biases and adding fuel to the conspiratorial machine.
Moran said in a statement, “In our review, we saw communication for things we consider healthy, such as breast-feeding, eating organic, and the types of behavior public health officials want to encourage. I think we can leverage these good things and reframe our communication in a way that makes sense to those parents resisting vaccines for their children.”
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