The anti-vaccine discourse took advantage of the pandemic to expand its audience via social networks.

Driven since the end of the 1990s by a study suggesting a link between MMR vaccination (measles, mumps, rubella) and autism, yet many times demystified, the anti-vaccine or “anti-ax” movement has now become more democratic .

Once confined to small communities, it has spread to a public worried about an unknown virus.

“These movements have always understood the interest of the information battle,” explains Laurent-Henri Vignaud, French science historian and co-author of the book

Antivax

(Vandémiaire éditions).

Knowledge deficit, communication errors ...

Confined, eager to understand the Covid-19 epidemic, this disease that has stunned the world, the population sought their information online.

But the lack of available knowledge, errors in official communication - for example on the mask deemed useless at first -, a lack of scientific culture, have opened the door to disinformation.

The novelty of vaccines using novel messenger RNA technology, their rapid arrival on the market, also fueled mistrust, as did the revelation, once the campaigns began, of more serious side effects than expected for AstraZeneca and Johnson. & Johnson.

Explosion of anti-vaccine accounts on Facebook

Facebook accounts peddling false information on vaccines thus saw their number of subscribers explode last year, according to a BBC study published at the end of March on seven countries (Brazil, Mexico, India, Ukraine, France, Tanzania, Kenya ).

In France, pages sharing anti-vaccine content received nearly four million likes (+ 27%, a growth three times faster than in 2019, but comparable to 2018).

These theories are no longer limited to "marginal groups" but "resonate with the movement of" yellow vests ", libertarians, New Age groups", creating alliances "ideologically incongruous", explains the NGO against disinformation First Draft which carried out a study in the summer of 2020 on approximately 14 million publications related to vaccination.

The anti-vaccine message also finds a strong echo among supporters of the extremes, right or left, and among abstainers, notes Florian Cafiero, sociologist at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research).

And conspiracy theories - New World Order, Transhumanist Agenda, or even QAnon - "incorporate vaccines into their stories, to ensure they remain relevant," notes Seb Cubbon, research analyst for First Draft.

Infox relayed by political figures and influencers

Infox sometimes take the form of neat productions on the Internet such as the documentary “Hold-Up” in France which denounced a “global manipulation” around the pandemic of which vaccines would be part, garnering millions of views.

They are invited into the public debate, also relayed by political figures, celebrities and influencers.

Vaccines accused of being ineffective or even fatal by anonymous "doctors", fake videos of vaccinated dead after injection or diverted pharmacovigilance data ... Anti-vaccine content has never had as much audience on social networks.

Large platforms like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube have also had to speed up the hunt for anti-vaccine content and false information in 2020, while promoting the recommendations of health authorities.

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