Russian Twitter trolls are 'weaponising' the online vaccine debate

Fake Twitter accounts and Russian trolls are “weaponising” public health communications, sowing misinformation and discord in online discussions on vaccines, according to research.

Researchers in the US have analysed 1.7 million tweets to look at the roles that bots – automated content generators – and trolls (individual users) play in influencing public debate around the safety of vaccines.

Debate on Twitter and other social media networks is generally skewed towards the anti-vaccine movement, which was sparked by now-discredited research linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine with autism.

Much public health research has focused on combating anti-vaccine content but there has been little work looking at who or what is behind this content.

The researchers from George Washington University studied the accounts behind the tweets as well as looking at 900 tweets using #VaccinateUS – a hashtag which researchers said was designed to promote argument as a “political wedge” issue.

These tweets were identified with troll accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, a company backed by the Russian government that specialises in online influence operations.

The paper found that bots and trolls have a significant impact on the debate around vaccines, tweeting about this much more frequently than general users.

The accounts tweeted pro, anti and neutral messages around vaccines, and seem to have a primary aim of promoting discord and uncertainty rather than undermining public confidence in vaccines per se.

Such “normalising of the debate” may lead the public to question long-standing scientific consensus around vaccine safety and efficacy, said the paper.

#VaccinateUS debates often included arguments related to racial/ethnic divisions, appeals to God and debates around animal welfare, the paper found.

And tweets on both sides of the debate addressed US politics and used emotional appeals to freedom, democracy and constitutional rights.

Sample tweets, characterised by poor grammar and strange choice of words, from this stream included: “Did you know there was secret government database of #Vaccine-damaged child? #VaccinateUS."

Another said: “#VaccinateUS You can’t fix stupidity. Let them die from measles, and I’m for #vaccination!”

Another said: “Dont [sic] get #vaccines. Illuminati are behind it. #VaccinateUS.”

“Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated anti-vaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord,” researchers concluded. “Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination.”

The research was published in the American Journal of Public Health just days after the World Health Organization announced that the number of cases of measles in Europe hit a record high.

So far this year there have been around 40,000 cases of the highly infectious disease, compared to 20,000 in the whole of 2017. One reason for the high number of cases is reluctance among parents to get their children vaccinated, experts believe.

Sandra Crouse Quinn, one of the researchers and professor of family medicine at the University of Maryland, said it is unclear what the motives behind the tweets are.

"One of the tweets was 'the elite get clean vaccines. What about the rest of us?' This is playing upon potential class or socio-economic differences.

"From doing the analysis the tweets were seizing upon the issue to create further dissension and division, some of whicy they did in the context of the 2016 [US presidential] election," she said. 

She said it was unclear what the long-term impact of such tweets would be.

"These tweets can feed the sense that there's a debate about vaccines when really the science about vaccines is clear and compelling," she said. 

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