Being a Vaccine Advocate on Social Media
Recently a number of people have reached out to me to ask how they can be vaccine advocates and how to deal with anti-vaxxers on social media. Here is my summary for the former:
Deplatform Disease’s Rules for Engaging Anti-Vaxxers on Social Media*
Your very first task is to recognize whether you are dealing with an anti-vaxxer. Right now, many people who aren’t very familiar with medicine or pharmaceuticals are being asked to suddenly take a pharmaceutical that may seem hastily developed. That is an understandable source of anxiety. It should not be stigmatized. These people need support and guidance to understand why it is safe and it is worth taking the time to explain it to them whenever possible and they are NOT anti-vaxxers. It generally works better when you engage with these people privately.
Anti-vaxxers on the other hand will have decided in advance that they do not need this vaccine. They may resort to minimizing COVID-19 as a disease, denying its public health burden, or claiming general conspiracies e.g., microchips, Bill Gates, New World Order.
Anti-vaxxers may also have a histrionic tale about how they or someone they know were harmed by a vaccine, which will often have obvious holes in it.
Anti-vaxxers may use strange characters in writing “vaccine” or related terms out of concern for censorship by social media platforms.
If they do ask questions, anti-vaxxers will tend to ask loaded questions that carry the assumption of harm on the part of the vaccine, e.g., “How can you be comfortable getting this vaccine when it causes autoimmune disease?” If you work in STEM or healthcare, they may also carry the assumption that you are malicious solely by your professional position and respond accordingly.
Often a helpful litmus test is to ask for sources. It’s best to do this in a non-confrontational way e.g. “I haven’t heard about that before. Can you show me where you heard about that so I can look into it some more?” Anti-vaxxers may get angry with the request on its own, they may tell you to “do your own research” or some facsimile of that, or they will link to a conspiracy source e.g. bitchute is one I’ve been seeing more frequently. If you see a really strange looking source you can check it on mediabiasfactcheck.com as they will often have it.
Anti-vaxxers often love sealioning. They will pretend to be reachable and claim no strong feelings about the position and if you just give them some more information and answer their questions they will happily walk over to your side. Much of social media is public. If their posts are littered with anti-vaccine propaganda, they are sea lions. In general, if they are attempting to tempt you by saying their position can be swayed with convincing enough arguments, they are probably sea lions.
Decide whether it is worthwhile to engage them in the first place. In some cases, you can delete their comments for example or block them so they can’t comment on your material. Or you can restrict their access on Instagram.
It is not worthwhile to engage anti-vaxxers privately- only engage anti-vaxxers publicly. They have not arrived at their position from a place of logic and reason- you will not be able to help them think their way out of it. In general, in the rare occasions I have seen anti-vaxxers change their mind was when they firsthand or someone close to them experienced the devastation from a vaccine-preventable disease. Many of them have constructed an identity out of being anti-vaccine and it may feel like like an assault on their character to challenge them. They will resort to any measure necessary for belief preservation. They may call you a shill, insist you are corrupt, etc. If you encounter an anti-vaxxer only attempt to deal with them in a public setting where you can demonstrate to your audience that their claims are nonsense.
Your audience is never the anti-vaxxer. It is always the undecided lay people who might be swayed by their arguments and your job is to show that their claims are baseless and they are attempting to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt which is to the collective detriment of everyone in their audience.
Remain cordial and dispassionate. They may attempt to get personal. For example, they may cite concerns about infertility and asked if you have banked your sperm/eggs before getting the vaccine. Don’t engage with these comments. They are intended to make you angry and to get you to seem unprofessional. Anti-vaxxers will frequently attempt to dox healthcare professionals for vaccine advocacy. Consider engaging from an alternate account which can’t be traced back to your real identity and your employer (employers will generally not have an issue with you advocating for vaccines but they don’t often take kindly to being harassed by anti-vaxxers). If you speak out in favor of vaccines often enough it is inevitable that you will be targeted at some point. Take steps to secure your privacy online.
You should request evidence. This is always going to be a losing battle for the antivaxxer. The evidence they present will either be:
Not evidence (e.g., a random case report of something that happened in relation to a vaccine).
Overt lies.
An attempt to pass off a legitimate source as having claimed something it doesn’t. Watch carefully for signs of cherry-picking. They often select quotes without context when the rest of the publication does not support what they are claiming.
Try to avoid using requests for evidence as a weapon- if something they share is plainly false, it is often easier to just demonstrate as such e.g. “the clinical trials excluded people with comorbidities.” You can pull up the table demonstrating that people with comorbidities were included and accounted for a significant portion of the subject pool.
Do not ever attempt to lie or misrepresent the truth. You do not need to. The data is firmly on your side.
Occasionally there may be a kernel of truth to the claim put forth by the antivaxxer. Example: “measles vaccines cause encephalitis.” What is missing here is context. It is your job to provide it:
Per the package insert about 1 in 3 million doses of MMR vaccines is associated with encephalitis. In general, encephalitis from measles-containing vaccines occurs only in severely immunocompromised patients. These patients are contraindicated from receiving MMR vaccines and we screen for these immunodeficiencies at birth with the heel prick test.
Data and evidence are powerful and important but cannot be your only tool. People often respond to anecdotes much better than they do data or evidence. Be familiar with the possible harms from vaccine-preventable diseases. Shotbyshot.org has a collection of stories for instance. Use storytelling whenever possible.
It is often helpful after a protracted exchange to offer summaries for onlookers about what the exchange has demonstrated. For example, if a series of harms has been claimed in relation to a vaccine and you have demonstrated them to be false, it is helpful to explicitly say: “For anyone who may be reading along, (antivaxxer) has made the following false claims: (list them briefly). They have used (tactics). They have not been able to support any of the harms they claim to be from vaccines. Their position comes from a place of prejudice against the actors and process involved in getting a vaccine. For that reason, no matter how much evidence I offer to show why I as a (here you can use any ethos you may have e.g. physician, nurse, scientist) about how I came to be confident in my choice to be vaccinated they will not change their mind. Their position is not an intellectually honest one.”
Point out fallacies as they occur.
A favorite of anti-vaxxers is to make wild claims about vaccine ingredients. They ignore that the dose makes the poison. E.g. the quantity of formaldehyde in any vaccine is over 100 times less than the amount that is circulating in the bloodstream of an infant as a result of the child’s own metabolism.
Another favorite tactic is a goalpost shift. When you debunk one thing, they will shift to something else to undermine vaccines. Do not allow this to go unnoticed. An onlooker might not be aware of it unless you point it out.
If reasoning is obviously fallacious, it can be helpful to use an analogy to show why. E.g. “COVID-19 isn’t a problem because I don’t know anyone who’s had it” isn’t dissimilar to saying “I ate today so world hunger doesn’t exist.”
They also frequently resort to fake experts. Point out when this is the case e.g., Judy Mikovits or Yehuda Shoenfeld. Point out when a lone voice deviates from scientific consensus.
Conspiracy thinking is the cornerstone of the anti-vaccine mindset. It is helpful to point out the contrast between how many assumptions would have to be made about things being true to defend anti-vaccine sentiments and how much they are able to provide evidence supporting.
Be considerate of framing effects. You are better off emphasizing the extraordinary safety record of vaccines rather than the very small probability of an adverse event following immunization.
You are not obligated to continue engaging with them at any point. If they are harassing you, block them and report their account.
You don’t have to engage with anti-vaxxers to be a vaccine advocate. It can be very time-consuming to do this and you understandably may not have that time. If this is the case, consider using your platform to share vaccine positive content e.g., sharing a post of someone getting their COVID-19 vaccine, sharing a post from the CDC about how vaccines can be protective.
My brilliant friend Liz Ditz also recommends a great rhetorical strategy called the truth sandwich:
Start with the truth. The first frame gets the advantage.
Indicate the lie. Avoid amplifying the specific language if possible.
Return to the truth. Always repeat truths more than lies.
* This list may be updated as I think of more things
Liz also graciously shared with me the following excellent resources:
