How the US Government Used Social Media to Promote Anti-Vaccination in the Philippines
It’s clear to me that the US government has been studying anti-vaccination, and not just for public health reasons. Last month, Reuters reported that during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2020 to 2021, the US military used fake anti-vaccination Twitter/X profiles to discourage COVID-19 vaccine uptake in developing nations, including the Philippines. The Pentagon employed the most classic anti-vaccination talking points that I also found in my anthropological work among anti-vaxx and vaccine refusing parents in rural Arkansas right before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the summer of 2019 (halcyon pre-pandemic times!), I spent about ten weeks living in a small rural community in the Arkansas Ozarks, conducting interview and visiting homes and community gathering places, in order to learn more about the manifestation of anti-vaccination in a rural setting. As a former unvaccinated child myself, I was curious about how rural vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination differed from the more...