In the US, the most popular link on Facebook in the first quarter of 2021 was a story about a doctor who died after receiving the vaccine Covid-19.
In response to a report, the piece – updated to indicate there was no correlation with the vaccine – became popular among vaccine skeptics.
An article reported in a mainstream US newspaper that a doctor had died after getting vaccinated against Covid-19. That was the most viewed Facebook Link in USA. The link attracted nearly 54 million views. A subsequent update of the article indicated that insufficient evidence existed for concluding that the vaccine caused the death.
NEW w/ @rmac18: Facebook released its first-ever quarterly report on Widely Viewed Content this week. But an earlier report from Q1 existed and was shelved, bc execs were scared it would make the company look bad. https://t.co/SYcqhb7MQK
— Davey Alba (@daveyalba) August 20, 2021
The vaccine has been deemed safe and highly effective by health authorities around the world. Having the story of a doctor who died two weeks after receiving a Covid-19 vaccination widely circulated on the internet shows just how fertile a breeding ground Facebook can be for anti-vaccination content. According to the BBC, this can partly be explained by a network of activists who oppose Coronavirus vaccines.
One of their main tactics has been to promote emotive, personal stories like this one on Facebook in order to scare others away from getting jabbed – even when, as was the case with this story, it turns out the death had no relation to the Covid-19 vaccine at all. Through the pandemic, these activists have muddled together real – and rare – cases of adverse reactions from vaccines with extreme online conspiracies, exploiting medical debates, genuine grief, and legitimate questions.
Similarly, this illustrates the complexity of the disinformation ecosystem on social media – where users take a grain of truth, in this case a reliable news story, and turn it into a misleading narrative without the facts to support it.
Original Source: BBC