Of Virality and Viruses: The Anti-Vaccine Movement and Social Media
Renée Diresta
SUMMARY
In this essay, Renée DiResta argues that a confluence of three factors – mass consolidation of audiences onto a handful of social networks; the adoption of curatorial algorithms as a primary means of disseminating and engaging with content; and the ease of precision targeting of users via the leveraging of proprietary profiles built from their own media consumption signals – has resulted in an information ecosystem that can be manipulated by a variety of actors with relative ease. This paper looks at the social media presence of one specific group of actors, American anti-vaccine activists, as a case study to better understand strategies, tactics, and impact, as well as counter-messaging and interventions.
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