Hey {first_name, "there"}, you're reading Inoculated, a weekly newsletter that explores the intersection of anti-vaccine beliefs, technology, and politics. I'm Eva von Schaper and I write this newsletter together with Daiva Repečkaitė. If you like the newsletter, listen to our podcast, The Inoculation!
🎧 Before we get to this week's news, I want to tell you a bit about Héctor Villa León @heccctorv, who runs a news service for immigrants from Venezuela in Peru called Cápsula Migrante (@capsulamigrante) that is WhatsApp based. Not only is his project an innovative way of delivering news to a community that may not have other means of accessing it, he and his partner @pierast have also worked out a way to combat disinformation. This is remarkable, because WhatsApp groups are closed, making them hard to monitor, and because his service is in Spanish, one of the languages social media giants monitor far less than English. Take a listen tomorrow!
📰News of the week:
Here's more on the Covid culture wars in Europe, via the New York Times.
2. Facebook insists that mainstream news sites perform the best on its platform. But by other measures, sensationalist, partisan content reigns, The Markup reports.
3. The AMA says to stop granting medical exemptions for vaccines.
📲Tweets of the week:
Is Australia actually Scooby Doo?
Being smart does not inoculate (ahem) against believing in conspiracy theories:
That's it for this week. No newsletter next week, due to U.S. Thanksgiving 🦃 Is there a story we should add to next week's newsletter? Someone we should interview on our podcast? Ping us TheInoculation@gmail.com!
If you liked the newsletter, please share with your friends. If you have questions, please email Eva and Daiva TheInoculation@gmail.com.
The WHO has declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer a public health emergency of international concern. But does it mean that spreaders of pandemic disinformation have dispersed and gone dormant?
We discuss the persistence of pandemic disinformation with Tommaso Canetta, who works at Pagella Politica/Facta in Italy.
Welcome back! And welcome to a new season of The Inoculated newsletter. Keep on
reading to stay on top of what's happening in disinformation.
Here's the 📰News:
1. A Russia-based influence operation network has been operating in Europe
since at least May 2022 and is still