monkeypox conspiracy theories spread like wildfire on tiktok
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"we know that many people are increasingly using tiktok not just as entertainment, but also as a source of news and information," says health misinformation expert dr. timothy caulfield. reuters
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just a day and a half after the world health organization (who) declared monkeypox an emergency in july, hundreds of conspiracy theories had been spread on social media, according to a new study from the university of alberta. the rapid-fire spread of misinformation on these platforms poses a significant threat to public health and highlights the importance of understanding and monitoring social media platforms.
belief in one conspiracy theory leads to belief in others
when monkeypox was classified over the summer as a “public health emergency of international concern,” many of the conspiracies that started to spread — that the outbreak was orchestrated, that it was a ruse to force people to get vaccinated, that bill gates was somehow involved — closely resembled the conspiracy theories that circulated about the covid-19 pandemic.
“it’s incredible how consistent the conspiracy theories are,” said health misinformation expert dr. timothy caulfield, one of the study’s authors and a canada research chair in health law and policy.
researchers focused on tiktok, the fast-growing app that allows users to watch and share short videos. “tiktok has really emerged as a social media platform juggernaut,” caulfield says, pointing out that the app has nearly two billion global users. “we know that many people are increasingly using tiktok not just as entertainment, but also as a source of news and information… what we really wanted to do is get a sense of the degree to which you can use a platform like tiktok to identify emerging misinformation.”
together, caulfield and his colleague marco zenone watched hundreds of tiktok videos. they searched the app for the hashtag “#monkeypox” and collected 864 videos: 153 of them contained conspiracy theories or conspiratorial themes about the virus — purporting that it was a hoax, that it was released deliberately or that it was created to grant more power to who, for instance. within 30 hours, those 153 videos had 1.5 million views, 75,000 likes and 14,000 shares. (there were some limitations of the study, researchers acknowledged: they only looked at videos shared in english, and with that particular hashtag — there were likely many others with different hashtags shared in other languages.)
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the content of the misinformation wasn’t particularly surprising, caulfield says: vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing force, as is distrust around bill gates. there’s a similar ideology between a lot of the theories: “this idea that the government wants to control us, that the virus was manufactured… this idea of control, that we can’t trust these different institutions, particularly at the international level.”
but he hadn’t anticipated just how interconnected some of these conspiratorial ideas are.
“it highlights how belief in one conspiracy theory often leads to belief in every conspiracy,” he says. “people will use monkeypox as a starting point, but as they’re ranting into their phones, it will become about a biolab in ukraine.”
misinformation of this kind spreads on social media, but its impacts are in the real world: research has shown that it can increase vaccine hesitancy, lead to misallocation of health resources and erode the state of people’s mental health.
the role of social media in spreading health misinformation
the research has “highlighted the degree to which the algorithm matters,” caulfield says. social media platforms use proprietary algorithms to serve users with videos they may like — on tiktok, users scroll through a “for you page.” the app tracks which videos people watch, like, and comment on, and use that information to serve them more videos that match their past behaviour.
“all these factors are processed by our recommendation system and weighted based on their value to a user,” the app explains. “a strong indicator of interest, such as whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end, would receive greater weight than a weak indicator, such as whether the video’s viewer and creator are both in the same country. videos are then ranked to determine the likelihood of a user’s interest in a piece of content, and delivered to each unique for you feed.”
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that means people will get served the content that’s interesting to them, which can be a great thing if someone who likes baking gets served videos about cookie recipes. but it’s a lot less constructive if someone who’s already vaccine-hesitant gets served a video about the made-up dangers of the monkeypox vaccine.
“the studies have shown that those algorithms do push information,” caulfield says. “that’s the reasons that a video may go viral, even if it didn’t come from a really popular account, or from a celebrity from a sports star — it really is about these algorithms deciding what to see.”
but misinformation on social media, exacerbated by these kinds of algorithms, is a problem that extends beyond tiktok. nearly half of the covid content circulating on twitter is likely bots, according to researchers at carnegie mellon university. earlier this year, a study found that instagram regularly suggested content to users that featured lies about covid, and during the 2020 u.s. election, misinformation shared on facebook received six times the traffic as legitimate news, the washington post reported.
but as bleak as the misinformation problem is, there are positives to this research too, caulfield says. acknowledging how powerful social media is, and monitoring health misinformation on emerging platforms like tiktok, can help experts figure out how to respond.
“it’s so important, no matter how absurd the conspiracy theory may be, to counter that with engaging content,” he says. “we can use social media to say: ok, here’s what’s emerging. let’s create content to counter that.”
maija kappler is a reporter and editor at healthing. you can reach her at mkappler@postmedia.com
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