Reaching beyond elections and race relations, Russian trolls also seek to disrupt Americans’ views on public health.
Though the debate regarding vaccines has swirled for years, it became another issue exploited by Russian trolls to widen existing rifts in America in hopes of turn citizens against each other.
#VaccinateUS tweets, identified with Russian troll accounts and backed by the Russian government, are using vaccination as a political wedge issue, according to research led by George Washington University and published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health.
Promoting brash, provocative arguments—both pro- and antivaccination–these Russian trolls could potentially undermine public health by causing people to question long-standing scientific consensus regarding vaccines.
“Thus, health communications have become ‘weaponized,'” the researchers wrote. “Public health issues, such as vaccination, are included in attempts to spread misinformation and misinformation by foreign powers.”
The team of researchers analyzed a database of Russian troll accounts assembled by NBC News and found that the accounts included several distinctive arguments not observed in the general vaccine discourse: including racial/ethnic divisions, appeals to God, and animal welfare. These divisive topics are seldom discussed in other tweets related to vaccines. For instance, “Apparently only the elite get ‘clean’ #vaccines. And what do we, normal ppl, get?! #VaccinateUS” appears to target socioeconomic tensions that exist in the United States. By contrast, standard antivaccine messages tend to characterize vaccines as risky for all people regardless of socioeconomic status.
“Messages containing #VaccinateUS contain a combination of grammatical errors, unnatural word choices, and irregular phrasing… however contain fewer spelling and punctuation errors than comparable tweets from the general vaccine stream. The #VaccinateUS messages are also distinctive in that they contain no links to outside content, rare @mentions of other users, and no images. Other small differences set the messages apart: #VacccinateUS ties both pro- and antivaccine messages explicitly to US politics and frequently use emotional appeals to ‘freedom,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘constitutional rights.’ By contrast, tweets from the vaccine stream focus more on ‘parental choice’ and specific vaccine-related legislation.”
“Like other antivaccine tweets, #VaccinateUS reference conspiracy theories but, whereas conspiracy theories tend to target a variety of culprits (e.g., specific government agencies, individual philanthropists, or secret organizations), #VaccinateUS almost singularly focuses on the US government (e.g., ‘At first our government creates diseases then it creates #vaccines.what’s next?! #VaccinateUS’). In general #VaccinateUS talks in generalities and fails to provide details typically found in other vaccine-relevant tweets. For example, the author might summarize an argument (e.g., “#VaccinateUS #vaccines cause serious and sometimes fatal side effects”), whereas tweets from the vaccine stream would typically use specifics to sound convincing.”
“Russian trolls promoted both pro- and antivaccination narratives, consistent with a strategy of promoting political discord. Whereas most nonneutral vaccine-relevant hashtags were clearly identifiable as either provaccine (#vaccineswork, #vax- withme) or antivaccine (#Vaxxed, #b1less, #CDCWhistleblower), with limited appropriation by the opposing side, #VaccinateUS is unique in that it appears with very polarized messages on both sides, without other non-neutral hashtags.”
By contrast, accounts that are known to distribute malware and commercial content are more likely to promote antivaccination messages. Genuine account users are significantly less likely to promote polarized and antivaccine content. Nevertheless, bots and trolls are actively involved in the online public health discourse, skewing discussions about vaccination.
