Past and future of disinformation in childhood antivaccine videos. A Study of videos in Spanish

Background

Vaccination is globally considered one of the most cost-effective methods of disease prevention. However, parents’ vaccine hesitancy persists as a significant barrier to disease prevention, driving public health expenditures upward. A good part of anti-vaccine videos and channels on YouTube were closed during Covid-19, but now there is a high rate of childhood antivaccine videos on Odysee. This study analyses the strategic use of disinformation, pseudoscience, and emotional appeals in Spanish-language childhood antivaccine videos across both platforms before and after the pandemic. Despite its urgency, there is a notable lack of inductive studies analysing the structure and persuasive mechanisms of such content in this context.

Methods

Employing grounded theory, we performed an inductive content analysis on two samples: the most frequent YouTube videos released prior to 2020 and the most shared Odysee videos published after 2020. We collect data until reaching the saturation point, where no new codes or relations appear.

Results

Preliminary findings reveal that disinformation and pseudoscience serve as fundamental persuasive resources in childhood anti-vaccine video communication. In this analysis we establish a first gradation of the content of disinformation and pseudoscience, highlighting the nuanced and evolving tactics used to sway parental attitudes.

Conclusions

Health communication strategies promoting vaccination should consider the use antivaccine groups make of disinformation and emotions to build new online promotional childhood vaccine campaigns. Ongoing monitoring and tailored educational campaigns are necessary to counteract the evolving dynamics of vaccine hesitancy in social networks. There is a need for new health communication strategies that consider the use of emotions and persuasion in childhood vaccine disinformation, especially in online videos.

Key messages

• Current communication campaigns directly contradict the messages of anti-vaccine groups. This reinforces the idea of victimhood and persecution that these groups apply to themselves.

• We should create campaigns promoting childhood vaccines that counteract anti-vaccine messages. We propose using similar persuasion methods to that anti-vaccine groups use