Concerned scientists tracked Zika conspiracy theories in real time on social media. Their method revealed a rapid increase in pseudoscientific claims about Zika and a potential vaccine that coincided with an influx of media attention regarding the outbreak. The team's analysis recently appeared in Vaccine.
A research team composed of experts from George Washington University in Washington D.C., Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Georgia in Athens, monitored Twitter in real time to track public opinion and knowledge of the Zika virus. They identified nearly 140,000 Tweets between Jan. 1 and April 29 that employed the keywords "vaccine" and "Zika."
"Even though the science is relatively clear, we found many conspiracy theories that could be affecting people's health-related decisions, such as whether to vaccinate...unfortunately, the people most affected are from the most vulnerable communities, with little access to the facts," said David Broniatowski, PhD, corresponding author and assistant professor from George Washington.
Some of the more prominent conspiracy theories are strengthened by pervading opinions already extant in the public psyche. For example, the researchers identified one conspiracy theory involving a company one Bloomberg article described as "America's third-most-hated company."
In Vaccine, the authors wrote, "Monsanto... has been previously accused of such things as poisoning the environment and threatening farmers. Thus, the story that it is not the Zika virus, but pyriproxyfen, a mosquito larvacide allegedly made by Monsanto, that led to microcephaly among infants, was readily believable to people who already view Monsanto negatively. (Monsanto does not make the larvicide in question, nor has evidence linked larvicide to the microcephaly cases)."
According to the researchers, public health officials will need to make an effort to debunk Zika myths in order to ensure the efficacy of a potential vaccine. A real-time social media tracking method could prove useful.
Dr. Broniatowski said, "This is a promising approach to the fast response to disease, and could help counteract the negative impact of these conspiracy theories in the future."
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WHO director on Zika and recent outbreaks: 'The world is not prepared to cope'