UK’s online anti-vaccine movement growing rapidly
The number of people who follow social media accounts that promote anti-vaccine messages is rising sharply.
On Instagram alone, major anti-vaccination accounts grew nearly fivefold in 2020, reaching over 4m followers in the UK, according to new research by BBC Monitoring, shared in BBC Panorama last night.
On Facebook, anti-vaccination pages grew by 19 per cent and on Twitter, the number of UK anti-vax followers nearly tripled.
Health information online
The findings come alongside an overall increase in people looking for health information online, the BBC researchers said, stressing in a statement that the “raw numbers still mean anti-vaccine claims are reaching millions more than ever before, just as the Government races to get more people vaccinated.”
Facebook – which also owns Whatsapp and Instagram – did remove a number of pages and posts that were flagged by the researchers. Twitter also said it’s prioritising the removal of Covid-19 content that could potentially cause harm.
One of the anti-vaccine tactics investigated by the BBC team looks at the targeting of ethnic minority communities with specific claims “that they know will alarm some people such as the false claim that the vaccine contains meat,” according to the statement.