Study carried out by the Mesit Foundation – Foundation for Social Medicine and Technological Innovation, in collaboration with Reputation Manager and Eehta – Ceis of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. Between November 2020 and May 2021, over 147 thousand online contents related to Covid-19 vaccines were analyzed, equal to about one thousand contents per day.
UDINE. Thousands of contents published every day, fake news that using a grain of truth to seem real have had a huge and destabilizing impact on public opinion in terms of vaccines and health in relation to Covid-19. This is the subject of a study carried out by the Mesit Foundation – Foundation for Social Medicine and Technological Innovation, in collaboration with Reputation Manager and Eehta – Ceis of the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. Between November 2020 and May 2021, over 147 thousand online contents related to Covid-19 vaccines were analyzed, equal to about one thousand contents per day.
Among those potentially fake, one in two regards the danger of adverse effects (49.3%). The report highlights how, in our country, over 909 thousand people follow Facebook and Telegram pages, channels or groups in which there is a dialogue on the topic of vaccines. Over half of these (457 thousand) follow No Vax pages, channels or groups. Between March and May 2021, the study points out, No Vax Covid-19 users more than doubled (+ 136%). The theme most subject to fake news is that linked to the danger of the effects of vaccines against Covid-19, with 49.3% of potentially fake contents.
Following, the study notes, the theme relating to the experimental nature of the vaccine (18.2%), then the conversations on the composition of the vaccine (11.3%) and on the economic interests of the pharmaceutical manufacturers (10.9%). Conversations related to the effects of vaccines on DNA (4.3%) and its links with autism (2.3%) are more distant. «The fight against disinformation», explains Marco Trabucco Aurilio, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Molise and director of the Mesit Foundation, «must become a priority for institutions at their highest level. Other countries, first and foremost the United States, have deployed resources and operational tools for contrast, in Italy we are very late ”.
Precisely on the issue of disinformation in healthcare, the Mesit Foundation explains that it will set up a working table in October, “with the aim of developing and implementing a new vision and a new digital approach to combat fake news, which can be used by all Italian citizens “.
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