Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate

It turns out in the cyber-wars of the twenty-first century, truth is stranger than fiction:

We report the results of a retrospective observational study assessing the impact of bots and trolls on online vaccine discourse on Twitter. Using a set of 1 793 690 tweets collected from July 14, 2014, through September 26, 2017, we quantified the impact of known and suspected Twitter bots and trolls on amplifying polarizing and antivaccine messages. This analysis is supplemented by a qualitative study of #VaccinateUS—a Twitter hashtag designed to promote discord using vaccination as a political wedge issue. #VaccinateUS tweets were uniquely identified with Russian troll accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency—a company backed by the Russian government specializing in online influence operations.20 Thus, health communications have become “weaponized”: public health issues, such as vaccination, are included in attempts to spread misinformation and disinformation by foreign powers. In addition, Twitter bots distributing malware and commercial content (i.e., spam) masquerade as human users to distribute antivaccine messages. A full 93% of tweets about vaccines are generated by accounts whose provenance can be verified as neither bots nor human users yet who exhibit malicious behaviors. These unidentified accounts preferentially tweet antivaccine misinformation. We discuss implications for online public health communications.

From https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567>

David A. Broniatowski et al. “Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate”, American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 10 (October 1, 2018): pp. 1378-1384.  DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567