Anti-vaccination

In addition to being anti-biotechnology, there are also many anti-vaccination groups active around the globe. Many of them are playing on society's trend to embrace zero risk on any technology. These groups capitalise on the internet and various rapid communication methods to spread the message in a very subtle and forceful way.

We argued above that provaccination advocates would be more likely to use scientific studies and evidence of VPDs when compared to antivaccination advocates. While we did not assess the types of information sources people use for this issue, those with high levels of belief in vaccinations would at least be more open to the scientific literature on this topic.

This tactic should not be surprising given that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. served as a producer on “Vaxxed II.” A recent study found Kennedy’s anti-vaccination organization, the World Mercury Project, was one of two groups responsible for 54 percent of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook.

The study, which mapped the vaccine conversation on Facebook during the 2019 measles outbreak, found that there were nearly three times as many active anti-vaccination communities as pro-vaccination communities. In addition, they found that while pro-vaccine pages tended to have more followers, anti-vaccine pages were faster-growing.