ABSTRACT
This paper describes a 2020 disinformation campaign promoting the unsubstantiated claim that the novel coronavirus is the product of a Chinese bioweapons program. Exploiting a vulnerability in open-access scientific publishing, the campaign was based on papers posted to an online preprint repository designed to accelerate the diffusion of scientific knowledge. This provided the campaign with an air of scientific legitimacy, helped it reach millions of Americans, and muddied public discourse over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This case study offers insights into the tactics and practices of media manipulation, the contested nature of modern epistemic systems, the interplay of technical and social systems, and the vulnerability of open systems to manipulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
This paper describes a 2020 disinformation campaign promoting the unsubstantiated claim that the novel coronavirus is the product of a Chinese bioweapons program. Exploiting a vulnerability in open-access scientific publishing, the campaign was based on papers posted to an online preprint repository designed to accelerate the diffusion of scientific knowledge. This provided the campaign with an air of scientific legitimacy, helped it reach millions of Americans, and muddied public discourse over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This case study offers insights into the tactics and practices of media manipulation, the contested nature of modern epistemic systems, the interplay of technical and social systems, and the vulnerability of open systems to manipulation.
ABSTRACT
Amid the roiling debate over the impact of the internet on democracy, we reflect on a recent contribution to this topic in these pages by Francis Fukuyama, who proposes that internet companies open their platforms to outside content-moderation services. We support exploring new approaches that promote greater user control and autonomy on social media platforms but take issue with his narrow definition of the problem. While the core issues of agency and power in democratic systems will not be resolved by better technology, improving design can make a positive impact. Whole-of-society problems will ultimately require whole-of-society thinking and action.
ABSTRACT
In it, anthropologist Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, surveys the factors - social, psychological, political, historical and cultural - that influence attitudes to vaccines, mainly in high-income countries. [...]researchers and public-health professionals must look at the vaccine experience: the whole process of having children, discussing vaccines with family and social circles and choosing whether or not to immunize your child or, later in life, receive vaccinations yourself. [...]after videos showing girls convulsing - allegedly after receiving a vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) - were shared on social media, a small town in Colombia saw a wave of hospitalizations supposedly linked to the immunization.