5 takeaways:
➀Misinformation often works because there is some historical reason for people to believe it. “Every bit of misinformation usually has a grain of truth inside of it,’” said Jacquelyn Mason, a senior investigative researcher for First Draft, a journalism nonprofit that researches mis- and disinformation. In the Black community, that grain of truth is the nation’s shameful history of medical experiments involving Black people during the Tuskegee experiment, as well as current-day racial disparities in treatment.
➁ Vaccine hesitancy has been higher among Black people, but the gap is narrowing. Recent polls have found vaccine hesitancy easing among Black people, even as the Black community is still targeted with anti-vaccine messages. One of the chief purveyors of misinformation about vaccines has been the Nation of Islam, according a report by Mason for First Draft. She tracked the group’s verbal and social media messaging, which she said “explicitly and repeatedly blames Jewish people and Israel for the coronavirus pandemic.” According to Mason, the messaging alleges that thousands of Americans have contracted COVID-19 after being inoculated with an experimental vaccine and that the Black community is being targeted with experimental military technology.
➂ Misinformation peddlers use celebrities. When baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron died, Mason said, misinformation peddlers falsely linked his death to his vaccination. (See a fact check on that issue here.) “Reverend Jesse Jackson also was hospitalized, but for something completely unrelated after his vaccine,” she said. “That ended up being manipulated.”
➃ Missteps by public officials hurt. Joe Smyser, CEO of The Public Good Projects, which tracks misinformation, said that early misstatements about COVID by public health officials undermined their message. It gave the misinformers room to run. Likewise, a politician saying one thing – don’t go to restaurants! – and then doing the opposite were rightly seen as hypocritical and harmful. “I think it definitely undermines the science and the solid reason for there being a public health protocol or guidance,” Smyser said.
➄ Get help tracking misinformation. Smyser’s group has partnered with UNICEF, First Draft and the Yale Institute for Global Health to create the “Vaccine Misinformation Management Field Guide.” Among the issues it addresses: Should the media and others respond to misinformation circulating in the public by writing about and exposing it? Or does doing so just get the bad information in front of more eyeballs? “Are we going to make it worse by talking about it?” Smyser asked.
