Vaccine Misinformation is Nothing New - Vaccine Conspiracy Theories with Anna Muldoon

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

vaccination, misinformation, people, vaccine, conspiracy, anti, smallpox, conspiracy theories, communities, movements, inoculation, social, vaccine hesitancy, concerns, arguments, conversation, hear, feel, fears, disease

SPEAKERS

Shawn Walker, Michael Simeone, Anna Muldoon

Michael Simeone  00:00
This is Misinfo Weekly, a somewhat weekly program about misinformation in our time. Misinfo Weekly is made by the Unit for Data Science and Analytics at Arizona State University Library. 

Hello and welcome. It is Friday, March 26. And today we have a special guest to talk to us about vaccination conspiracies, anti vaccine and vaccine hesitancy surrounding COVID-19. We have with us Anna Muldoon. She is a co-author of the new book COVID-19 conspiracy theories. And she currently focuses on conspiracy, misinformation, and apocalypticism around infectious disease outbreaks. She's a former science policy advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services. While there she focused on international public health systems,  lab biosafety and biosecurity science, communication and policy development for regulating genetically altered biological organisms. She has published peer reviewed articles on bio defense history, US implementation of non proliferation treaties and infectious disease surveillance systems. She holds a Master's in Public Health from George Washington University and is currently a PhD student in the School for the Future of Innovation Society at ASU. Anna, welcome.

Anna Muldoon  01:11
Thank you. I forget how ridiculous my bio is until somebody reads it to me.

Michael Simeone  01:17
It's not ridiculous. It's exciting and impressive. 

Anna Muldoon  01:20
Thank you. 

Michael Simeone  01:20
And we can't wait to talk to you today about vaccines, misinformation, and COVID-19. As you know, the misinformation seen around COVID-19 has been distinct. And one of the things that we've been talking about on the show for a little while now has been kind of angles around anti-vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. Not just because they're kind of of the moment, but also because anti-vaccination and vaccine conspiracies are an interesting inroad into understanding misinformation. And so you're the perfect person to talk to about this. But one question that, you know, folks that we've interviewed previously have been practitioners in medicine, but you've got this kind of unique perspective on these issues. And so one of the first questions that we want to ask you is historical. Namely, you know, a lot of folks are kind of familiar with the recent history of anti-vaccination, going back to some of the published literature in the kind of late 80s and 90s. But where is all of this anti-vaccination coming from? Or where are the some of the earliest meaningful points in anti-vaccination? How do we get here?

Anna Muldoon  02:36
So as you both know, this is one of my favorite topics. You know, basically, as long as vaccines and inoculation have existed, there have been people who resisted taking them or resisted using the mass social tools. So my favorite example, because it gets a little bit crazy is, and 1721-22, Cotton Mather, in Boston, was told about inoculation by a slave, Onesimus, who he owned, and decided that this practice should be adopted in all of Boston as a way to prevent the just starting smallpox outbreak. It didn't go well. A lot of people did not have any interest in inoculation. They were very concerned that it would spread smallpox instead of preventing it. And there were a lot of theological concerns about it as well, about whether it was human interference in the divine plan. And this all spins out of control into this, kind of amazing war of pamphlets being published back and forth, which are, they were kind of the social media of the day, right? They're just short documents that people would sell or give out to spread their viewpoints because, well, Twitter didn't exist in 1722. They needed a different way to yell at each other. So it turns into a pamphlet war, and then it turns into a massive fight in the Boston City Council. And sort of the place that most of us end the story is part way through this someone through a flaming brick through Cotton Mather's window in an attempt to set his house on fire with a note attached that said, 'I'll inoculate you with this, you dog'. So, basically, inoculation and vaccination have been controversial, since they were proposed in the United States. We all, we like to think our moment is unique. Not as much.

Michael Simeone  04:44
Would you say that flaming brick with a paper note tied to it with the expectation that the receiver would actually get the note is emblematic of some of the reasoning behind the anti-vaccination?

Anna Muldoon  04:56
This is one of the things that I sort of love about that story. Like, if the flaming bridge had worked, he would never have seen the note with the cause, we know that right?

Michael Simeone  05:07
 It seems so. So speaking of reasoning, take us into the reasoning. So you mentioned some theological concerns, some concerns that would spread everywhere. And that it, that it escalated to, to the city level. What do you make of some of the concerns? What, what kinds of issues were people wrestling with? Was this, a was this a good faith, skepticism of vaccination, or was something else going on?

Anna Muldoon  05:31
So I think that some some of the skepticism was reasonable, unlike vaccination, inoculation, in involved cutting a slit in someone's arm and putting live smallpox from someone who had survived in it. So it was not a pleasant process, it did give you smallpox. And they would try to get material from the person with the you know, mildest case, but no guarantees. So some of the concerns were reasonable, and others of the concerns. Sound not that unfamiliar to things we hear now, right? This is experimental, we don't know what it's going to do. It might harm me, it might let me spread it, it might harm my family. I don't understand how it works. And so I don't want to participate. There were a lot of calls for more research. There are things that we hear now. But there were also a lot of concerns about, I don't want to put something in my body. Right? That I think we also hear echoed in discourse today.

Michael Simeone  06:37
 Yeah, fascinating. That does seem to rhyme with a lot of what we hear, and kind of, in our own contemporary moment. Moving forward, after the smallpox kind of debate, and Boston, what's the next checkpoint for you? That brings us along the path that we're on now?

Anna Muldoon  06:56
So I think that there, there were several moments in the evolution of vaccination that were really contentious. So when we moved from inoculation, into actual vaccination with Jenner for Smallpox, the instant anybody talked about requiring vaccination to keep the population safe, there was immediately a movement against it. So the, the earliest real anti anti-vaccination, organizations pop up within 10 years of vaccination becoming common.

Michael Simeone  07:32
With Jenner, what year are we talking here? 

Anna Muldoon  07:35
So the the first anti-vaccination leagues had gained public power and really organized themselves by 1866. So by the end of the 19th century, there are several anti-vaccine organizations in Britain that are making arguments against compulsory vaccination. Including individual freedom, bodily autonomy, medical exemptions, which hopefully all sound somewhat familiar to people living now, the arguments were not that different. 

Shawn Walker  08:11
So, go back one second, you've mentioned two words, you mentioned that inoculation and you've mentioned vaccination, are those different or the same thing?

Anna Muldoon  08:18
So they're, they're very different. Inoculation is insertion of live Smallpox into the skin right through, you just cut an arm. A lot of people would use a thread and put it in the cut, but it basically gave people a mild case of Smallpox. Vaccination, on the other hand, doesn't use live virus. Most of the time, early Smallpox vaccinations used cow pox. So it's incredibly mild, humans don't get sick with it, but it does protect from the regular Smallpox virus. And then once you get to modern vaccination, there's one or two attenuated virus vaccines left that we use very rarely that are just a very weak form. Most vaccinations have absolutely no live virus in them, and very few even have full virus. So much safer, way less dangerous, inoculation was not very safe. Vaccination is very safe.

Shawn Walker  09:22
Sort of considering, you know, as I think in COVID, as we've seen, people are talking about the risk of getting COVID versus the risk of vaccination. Where their discussions historically about the risks of say, the Smallpox inoculation, versus getting Smallpox or Polio, the vaccine versus getting polio.

Anna Muldoon  09:41
Absolutely. Those conversations happen around pretty much every vaccine. And you almost always have someone out there somewhere saying 'No, no, I'd rather just get it regardless of the risks. Because I want the natural route or because I don't trust the vaccine'. And so, yes, with inoculation with early Smallpox vaccination with every vaccine that we've had the conversation about, kind of the relative risk of getting the disease versus getting the vaccine has been a social conversation. And unfortunately, that conversation rarely includes the piece about, you know, once I get the vaccine, then I become a firebreak for the people in my life who have compromised immune systems or can't get the vaccine for some odd medical reason, or, you know. So, with all vaccines, right, each one of us that gets it protects the other people around us. And that's unfortunately, not often part of that risk benefit calculation. 

Shawn Walker  10:46
In current conversations around COVID, the more sort of anti-vaccination crowd, their argument is that those people should just stay home until it's safe, right? 

Anna Muldoon  10:55
It is. Unfortunately, for some of those people, that would mean basically staying home forever. For people with severely compromised immune systems. All of us being vaccinated is kind of the only way that they ever get to be out again. And since I love some of those people, I think it's worth it. We as a society have to make the choice to care about the people among us who need our help, right? It's sort of an individual and social choice about what you prioritize.

Michael Simeone  11:28
So it's fascinating to hear you talk about we call it the early history of vaccine hesitancy and then drawing out through line to our present moment. Because what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that in the 1700s, in the 1800s, you might have had a point, if you were a little hesitant about cutting your arm open and running Smallpox through it. But those arguments don't age well, when we move into the 21st century, and so it feels like the same arguments being made in a completely different context. 

Anna Muldoon  12:00
Exactly. It's one of the things I think is really interesting, is that even as vaccines have gotten safer, and safer and safer, and more and more and more data is available, particularly on something like the MMR vaccine, we really haven't totally erased those very, very old lines of argument that really don't hold up with how safe and effective the vaccines that we have now are. But they still pop up over and over.

Shawn Walker  12:33
And on the flip side is that the diseases that we vaccinate for are pretty nasty diseases. These aren't run of the mill 'That's like I stubbed my toe', these are lots of people die before these vaccines were in development, right?

Anna Muldoon  12:48
Absolutely. In the very early 20th century, the majority of children did not survive until age five. That's one of the reasons people had so many children, right? Our perception of the severity of infectious disease seems to have fallen away, as we're really mostly protected from them. And we don't see them as often. I think particularly and, you know, the US, the UK, Canada, right? Since I primarily study the US, I try not to make big statements about global issues. But..

Shawn Walker  13:26
Would it be fair to say that vaccines are a victim of their own success in that we don't see these horrific diseases that the vaccines prevent? So therefore, it's easier for some people to feel that the vaccines might not be necessary?

Anna Muldoon  13:40
Yeah, absolutely. I think in a lot of cases, that's very true. And I think it's really easy to say, Well, you know, 'I only have a one in 1000, or one in 10,000 chance of this terrible long term effect from a disease or of dying, and, you know, I won't be the unlucky one', or 'My kids won't be the unlucky ones'. And I think that's also part of it, right? We all sort of assume that we won't be the one whose child has terrible effects from one of these diseases, or us ourselves when they're adult vaccinations.

Michael Simeone  14:22
The idea of all of us being connected somehow, or being part of a network, or even just the concept of a network is becoming much more prevalent. And so it feels kind of anachronistic and out of time, not only to advance 18th century counter arguments to vaccination, but also to insist that only individual choice matters. And that individual choices only go as far as individual lives, that that feels almost like an extension of a philosophy that may have lost some of its explanatory value for what we observe in social systems today,

Anna Muldoon  15:02
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I find fascinating about my historical infectious disease work is the ways in which it's very clear that despite some of the political philosophies of the 18th and 19th century it is really pushing towards individualism. There was also kind of an instinctive social understanding that infectious disease was a social issue, right? That there was no real way to like, protect only yourself, you had to get the disease out of the space and out of the community, if you want it to actually protect yourself. And so kind of community action was almost a baseline. Now look, not always good community action, some of the, some of the responses to infectious disease outbreaks have been really awful. But still community response and the idea that, you know, individual lives matter and individual choices matter, but so does the social body, and that there is a good, larger than the individual good. And I think, I hope that we are kind of rediscovering now, the 21st century, that concept of the larger social good inside the social network, and the need for you know, coordinated social action to protect ourselves from things like disease and climate change, you know, all the bad stuff.

Michael Simeone  16:35
That's very interesting. I like so your your historical perspective seems to indicate that it's almost like this hyper individualistic approach to vaccination that we're hearing today is like, it's kind of a caricature of some of the some of the earlier kind of political visions in the time contemporaneous to what your research indicates. So that's, that's interesting to me, that, that that's present. And that people really do feel in the rhetoric of a lot of things that that we've observed. We feel like this is their fundamental right, as an American that goes back that traces its lineage back to hundreds of years ago. And they feel like it's their individual liberty that they're expressing through their resistance to vaccination, or to wearing a mask, is part of the Constitution is part of this important 18th century document.

Anna Muldoon  17:29
Yeah, I, I like the idea of kind of a caricature of older ideas. I mean, I, I still, you know, of course, I work on conspiracy. So I spend a lot of my time existing in kind of strange cognitive dissonance. But I find it fascinating to hear all of these arguments about what the founders would have thought about individual liberty around vaccination. When, you know, George Washington is the guy that made Smallpox vaccination mandatory for the Revolutionary Army, because too many people were getting sick and they couldn't fight, sorry, inoculation, back and back then. But he basically said, 'Yeah, everyone's getting smallpox, and we're gonna lose this war, and not make a country if we do not actually just start vaccinating everybody'. So if this idea that they would not have agreed with things like compulsory vaccination is surprising, but also really kind of in a historical way of looking at their own statements and actions. And then also at like early Supreme Court cases, that upholds the greater good over individual liberty during infectious disease outbreaks. So it's, it's a reconstruction, basically, and one that is not totally accurate. 

Shawn Walker  18:59
So I see a new ad campaign with you know, COVID vaccination. Washington did it with Smallpox, you can do it with COVID. Right?

Anna Muldoon  19:07
I like it. Right? I mean, I have no objections to mobilizing patriotism, to get people to get vaccinated if that line will work. I'm a bit of a pragmatist on some of these things. 

Shawn Walker  19:22
In thinking about these theories, this misinformation around historical perceptions, why do you think that these incorrect perceptions we know where they're saying the founding fathers, you know, they would be against vaccination? But we have historical evidence that that's totally not correct. Why do you think that misinformation is allowed to survive and prosper?

Anna Muldoon  19:47
A really good question. Um, I, you know, I think that there are so many ways where we reconstruct history around what we want it to say right? We've all seen this in that high school textbooks that make the history of our country cleaner and nicer than it ever was. But I think that humans might be just kind of terrible at actually identifying what we're freaked out about in the moment. And so people mobilize other forms of evidence, and other forms of argument to justify what they're feeling or thinking or worried about, when they can't quite articulate what the actual thing is. And I think some of that is going on around the anti-vax movement.

Michael Simeone  20:41
People who describe misinformation and conspiracy to resort to the language of mental illness, to describe the motivations for why someone would believe a conspiracy, or, or subscribe to misinformation. And if somebody is really committed to a conspiracy or misinformation, the word that comes out is crazy. These people are crazy, or they've lost their minds or all these ways of really obfuscating the mechanic that you're talking about. That human beings have this thing that they do, where they Marshal other forms of evidence to explain explanatory value is something that you can ignore when you're thinking about misinformation. And so, I like this point that you've made because it helps humanize people who are oftentimes, right, it's very easy to dehumanize them, it's very easy to be angry. But resorting to just the same tropes of mental illness feels like it's not helping the conversation either.

Anna Muldoon  21:39
Oh, yeah, I am definitely the person who like sighs at CNN, every time someone says the conspiracists are crazy, because I think it doesn't, one it doesn't move the conversation forward. But I think the dehumanizing point is a really important one, that the ways that we talk about each other, and in my case about my subjects of study really matters, right? The words we use really matter. And so I take both the narratives that I study these conspiracy stories, and the humans that are creating them, seriously as humans, right? I don't think that they're crazy. I think sometimes, sometimes they're being misled. Sometimes they're feeling desperate. Sometimes they're very scared. And honestly, sometimes it's just a really good story that you want to pass on, because it is the craziest big fish story you've ever heard. A couple of my friends from home, definitely retell conspiracy stories, because they're like, 'Alright, we love big fish stories. This is better than anyone we've ever come up with'. But who knows if the friends they're telling them to end up believing them as reality? Right?

Michael Simeone  22:56
Yeah, but they have some entertainment value. 

Anna Muldoon  22:58
Oh, yeah. Particularly the kind of more out there once right. Aliens living in the center of the earth, running the government through a variety of institutions are particularly the ones that go into a lot of detail describing the aliens. I totally understand why people find them entertaining, even if they don't actually believe them.

Michael Simeone  23:20
Yeah, and I think one way to humanize anyone who's on the receiving end of misinformation, is to ask what the value of that misinformation is to that person. And sometimes that value can be explanatory, and sometimes that value can be entertained.

Anna Muldoon  23:36
Yeah. And I think I mean, one of the things that's really fascinating about urban legends is that their morality tales a lot of the time, right, they work a lot like fairy tales, not always, but a lot of the time. And they're basically explaining good behavior and the consequences of bad behavior.

Michael Simeone  23:55
One of my favorite takes on 80s slasher films, is this idea that there's this tacit morality at slasher films because it's teenagers behaving badly and they're going to be punished by some kind of aberration. Sorry, slight detour. We warned you that this might happen. We're going back on track now. Yeah.

Anna Muldoon  24:15
I love detours. I love detours. But yes, absolutely. And conspiracies are not always that dissimilar. I think, sometimes, but not always. 

Shawn Walker  24:28
And I think another point about the value of misinformation is that there's value in those CNN commentators and others, saying that people who believe conspiracy theories are crazy, or I have these sorts of fears are crazy, because then that legitimizes their fears, and delegitimizes others fears.

Michael Simeone  24:45
Such a good point. 

Shawn Walker  24:46
It's useful across the board, and this other ring creates some distance to say, 'Well, that's not legitimate, but this is'.

Anna Muldoon  24:54
Absolutely. And I mean, I think there's also a deep tendency, among all of us to say, 'Well, those people believe in conspiracy theories, but I wouldn't, right? My community doesn't'. Well, one, that's highly unlikely the overwhelming majority of Americans hold some conspiracy belief. And there is a fabulous book that looks at letters to the editor over a pretty large timespan. I honestly can't remember how long it is. And finds that, yeah, it's always been like this. There have always been people writing letters to the editor of newspapers about the conspiracy theories that they believe in. And it's just, it appears to kind of be a built in facet of at least our society, which unfortunately, we seem to be pushing out further and further to more and more of the world, which is less than great. But, you know, hopefully, we'll figure out what to do about that.

Shawn Walker  25:56
I agree that everyone loves a tall tale. I mean, I grew up in Northern Kentucky, you know, the home of tall tales. And maybe, but do you think that there's a difference between the circulation of a conspiracy theory and the belief? Like can we separate those two things out? Because if someone might circulate a conspiracy theory for entertainment value, but not honestly believe it, but then might that lead someone to believe it?

Anna Muldoon  26:23
Yeah. I don't think I have a great answer. It's one that I think about, and have been trying to figure out a good way to think through and to study. But I think that we have a fair amount of evidence that some of the people circulating conspiracy theories, don't believe them. Or believe a piece, but not all of it. Or are circulating them for entertainment. So I do think there is sometimes a difference between people who are marginally interested in an idea, and people who hold it deeply. Right. And both can transmit the idea without having the same levels of belief, if that makes sense.

Shawn Walker  27:16
It does. And in the past, we've talked about other conspiracy theories, like some of the QAnon conspiracy theories around, say, Wayfair, for example. And we've often talked about their gaps in the conspiracy theories that are kind of entry points, so they let you fill in. So it's not like you don't have to believe the whole thing. But there's a gap in here that you can fill in that resonates with your beliefs, your fears, your concerns, and that becomes your entry point. And then you sort of then start to get caught up in this conspiracy theory community. Which then sort of turns into this, this process of bringing you in, is it is that is that a possibility, do you think?

Anna Muldoon  27:55
Oh, yeah, some of the people I know are looking at the way that people get pulled into conspiracy. A lot like a radicalization process. It starts as like, light conversations, someone's sort of thinking something and over time, they get pulled deeper and deeper and deeper in. And particularly with something like QAnon. That is this unbelievably complex, deeply coded, super conspiracy of super conspiracies. I think that there's there's very clearly a process of people getting sucked in. The good news is I think that that means that if you can catch your family and friends early in starting to think these things or use the language, sometimes you can pull them back before they get all the way sucked in.

Shawn Walker  28:47
Yeah, because right after the Capitol occupation on January 6, there are a whole bunch of stories in the news and they're talking about this deprogramming. How do we think of ISIS for example, as a potential, like people enter ISIS people exit ISIS? What are those processes? And can we use that as a similar sort of QAnon but they often describe it a bit like you know, the white van that comes up and picks someone and takes them away to deprogram them more like a deprogramming?

Anna Muldoon  29:13
Yeah, I get a little itchy. When it starts to sound like we're gonna like, kidnap people and force them to believe something else. Although I understand the impulse, having some people in my life that do believe in QAnon, trust me, I get it, but also, you know, kidnapping is bad. So I think the, the moment after January 6 was really interesting. Because a lot of QAnon people did lose faith. And a lot of them could be kind of peeled away by family by friends, sometimes on social media, right by people who had left QAnon. But in other cases, they move deeper and deeper in and as QAnon was deplatformed from, you know, mainstream social media and moved into more closed spaces it has. It has gotten more radical and also has become, really those channels are full of people recruiting for much more concerning groups like white supremacists who I'd rather didn't get more members.

Michael Simeone  30:22
Yeah, one of the kind of deplatformed QAnon theories that I had seen was that former President Trump and current President Biden had exchanged faces. And they were living a kind of presidential version of the film face off, where President Trump was actually in power wearing President Biden's face.

Anna Muldoon  30:48
But yeah, there there is a book that more and more of us just keep talking about constantly to the point I think everyone's getting annoyed at us, called When Prophecy Fails. And I think that it might be a book that everyone needs to read right now. If they're interested in what's going on with things like QAnon. Because it, it discusses what happens when prophecy does not come to pass. And we're seeing everything in that book happening with QAnon.

Michael Simeone  31:21
Can you give an example?

Anna Muldoon  31:22
Sure. So one of the options is to just move the goalposts, right? Well, the apocalypse wasn't today. Maybe it's going to be next year. Right? Interestingly, we saw this with the Miller Rates, right, one of the first big apocalyptic movements in the US the first date, Miller predicted pass, nothing happened. And so they pushed it back a year. So the great disappointment is actually almost a year after, when he originally predicted the Second Coming. This is really common. And you've seen it with QAnon, right? So, you know, Trump was supposed to win the election, and then it wasn't getting get certified. And then they were gonna take back the capital, and then it was gonna be March 20. There's another date now that I actually don't remember what the new one is. It's now changing often enough that I have lost track because QAnon is not my main objective study, thankfully. So you know, that kind of ever adjusting goal, when the major thing is going to happen is really common. A lot of people losing faith and walking away, while others really dig in is another really well known response to failed prophecy. So there's a reason none of us will shut up about this book for the past couple of months.

Shawn Walker  32:44
So let me briefly ask the question, we've mentioned misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theory, and now prophecy. Are these different? Are these the same thing? Is there light between them? Are they all enmeshed in so connected that we can't pull them apart?

Anna Muldoon  33:00
Is this the part where we get to disagree with each other on air? Because I think that would be entertaining.

Shawn Walker  33:05
This is where we fight to the death, and then whoever's living wins.

Anna Muldoon  33:08
Right? So Shawn, and I have had some conversations about separating out mis and disinformation, and like whether and how important the separation is. In my own work, I use disinformation for kind of intentionally spread bad information that has a goal, misinformation for confusion, like lack of intent to mislead. But wait, what is going on? And then conspiracy theory and conspiracy belief, really are much more narrative, right. So misinformation can be very simple. Conspiracy really is a narrative core, rather than it's a story, not just a piece of information. I love apocalypticism. It's how I got into conspiracy, and it will always sort of be at the heart of my studies. Prophecy is just the prediction of a particular thing at a particular time, usually with a religious connotation. But in studying conspiracy theory, I've started using the word to talk about conspiracy prediction, as well. Because I think it fits as does the level of faith required to keep following it when the prophecy doesn't come true, right.

Michael Simeone  34:34
It's interesting to think like, the literal definition of Apocalypse is like what unveiling or revealing, right and so that that totally fits with a lot of what you've been saying. This point that you've made about the kind of end of the current border, that apocalypse in a lot of traditions is kind of understood as this and of the way that we know it. And yeah, who could fault anyone for thinking that right now because we are, I don't know. The soft argument about this is change, you know? It's just feels completely meager and inadequate to talk about any of this as change or even transformation. This feels incredibly radical, it makes sense, what you're saying, very much.

Anna Muldoon  35:13
I do think it's worth just like for a little bit of hope, right? Because yes, in a lot of ways, I don't think the world will ever be the same. But in all my historical work that ended up getting me to apocalypticism, and disease and then eventually to conspiracy in this book, right. One of the things that, I with my strange responses to history, find really encouraging, is that, yeah, the world is never quite the same after a major outbreak. Right? Things don't go back to what they were. But sometimes the ways they rearrange themselves are kind of progress. Or move us towards something better, right? It is possible to make good out of the terrible over time, and sort of human civilizations have figured out how to do that over and over. So I have hope that we too, will figure out how to get there.

Michael Simeone  36:15
And all this change sounds like a great opportunity for misinformation, to just make up stories and have people believe it about things like vaccinations.

Anna Muldoon  36:26
I think particularly in this moment, because of some of the politics we experienced. Trust is a institutions is a probably an all time low. I have not looked at a survey, but I would be very surprised if it wasn't. And information chaos has created so many giant social cracks for misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy, to weave their way into particularly around COVID and around vaccination and treatment and quarantine and masks. And it's really been kind of amazing, the extent to which these social fractures have allowed a blossoming of conspiracy and misinformation in a way that honestly even studying this I, I knew it was gonna be bad, I did not realize it was going to be this bad.

Shawn Walker  37:26
But I think this makes sense. In many ways. If we go back to fear of the vaccine, fear of COVID itself, fear of limitations, there's this deep fear that things will never be the same that our every change is a threat to our way of life or the way our life was.

Anna Muldoon  37:46
I think that a lot of the anti-lockdown protests really are about, I just want my life back, stop telling me that I have to live like this, I want things to go back to the way that they were. And I think the as frustrating as I find some of the anti-lockdown and anti-masks protests, I also have some sympathy for the levels of desperation to return to our lives that people feel. It doesn't make me agree with them, but I can for some of their arguments, I guess I can understand kind of where they're coming from. But it's, you know, we also have to try to protect each other too.

Shawn Walker  38:32
So that brings me to this idea that you've mentioned, kind of a thread that's been throughout our conversation, one of the many threads is that conspiracy theories are built on real fears. And, for example, there are certain populations in the US, especially African American populations that might specifically for the vaccine, be afraid, because in the past, they've had some, I don't think poor experiences cuts it. They've been abused, tormented by the medical establishment by their political establishment. So they're vaccine hesitancy, which is different, of course, then anti-vaccination might make sense, right?

Anna Muldoon  39:11
Absolutely. In these conversations, I've discovered that apparently, most most people know about Tuskegee, which is really good. But it's pretty rare that people know about sort of the long and really dark history of the US medical system with black communities. A lot of the a lot of the conspiracy theories that have been circulating in black communities around the vaccine in particular, and a lot of the misinformation, relate to fears of experimentation, of targeting by the government, of targeting by medical systems. And also quite frequently a well, there's barely any medical system in the neighborhood, city, town. Why are they here with the vaccine now? Right. And that I think that those are things that we're going to have to fix long term as a society, because they don't, they don't seem unreasonable as foundation points for concern for misinformation for conspiracy. And then there is also the really horrifying phenomenon of very wealthy white anti-vax communities, mobile mobilizing those fears to target misinformation and conspiracy theory at black communities.

Michael Simeone  40:45
Say more about that. Could you unpack that a little bit?

Anna Muldoon  40:47
Sure. So, the United States anti-vax movement is actually majority white, very wealthy, often very well educated. Unfortunately, there are a lot of anti -vaxxers in academia, who knew I did not until I started studying this. Now I'm sad. And those movements have a lot of infrastructure and a lot of money. But also are perfectly willing to encourage anti-vaccine and vaccine hesitant ways of thinking in other communities using whatever tools necessary. So in this case, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, I believe, put out a documentary that's really targeted at black communities, mobilizing real fears, real discrimination, real history, to push anti COVID vaccination lines. I personally find this deeply disturbing. And we'd like people not to do that. Black communities in the US have enough to deal with without being the targets of yet more. But, it has been sadly, pretty effective. Now, the good news is that some vaccine hesitancy we have kind of a long standing set of toolkits to deal with. But unfortunately, they're really human. Right? So getting community leaders and organizations and churches and musicians and you know, the grandmother that knows everyone in the neighborhood involved in promoting vaccination actually counters that kind of campaign really well. But of course, it's human to human so it's a little bit slower than pushing out documentary with a lot of bad info in it on social media.

Shawn Walker  42:46
The Center for Countering Digital Hate calls John F. Kennedy Jr, one of the disinformation dozens stating that he's one of the primary points of contact that are the vast majority of anti-vax messages that are circulated in social media come from, like his account, and they claim that he's part of the so called anti-vax industry.

Anna Muldoon  43:06
That is correct. There really is basically an anti-vaccine industry. And it's, it's unfortunate that they have so much money and influence that they can push anti COVID messages as well as kind of more traditional anti-vaccine messages. But yeah, there's there's an entire infrastructure and industry and set of conferences, you know, websites, publications, social media accounts, YouTube channels. But also in person conferences all over the world run by the anti-vax movement.

Michael Simeone  43:42
It does feel like that that anti-vaxxers are kind of obsessed with cleanliness and purity. Oh yes. And that is a completely different motivation from say we don't trust vaccines because the establishments that that are the purveyors of the vaccines at the moment have a really uneven history. Those feel like totally different motivations

Shawn Walker  44:03
But you're making me think of the you know the the organic whole food like the organic clean food movement that's part of QAnon that when you tell most people like shocks the hell out of them. Like they don't understand why the quote unquote QAnon shaman why would only eat like organic food, but that's part of the whole anti-vaccine movement that intersected with key like, oftentimes you have multiple conspiracy theories and multiple communities coming together at these points and COVID was an excellent example of that. Right?

Anna Muldoon  44:38
That that's a really good way to ask it. I mean, we can also be fancy and use convergence.

Shawn Walker  44:45
Well, you can say convergence. I don't know, I slightly not obsessed but the QAnon Shaman guy cracks me up in a way but.

Anna Muldoon  44:53
Oh, he's wonderful. And he's Oh, he's fascinating. 

Shawn Walker  44:56
And he's is also like, it's like this like buff man, too. Which is very weird. Like, it's not what you think the public perception of what a member of Q, a conspiracy theory would be like, that's that he doesn't look like the archetype that we've built in our heads.

Anna Muldoon  45:14
Oh, we need to introduce you to Pastor Q on Instagram. Because how do you feel about organic clean eating yoga teachers doing yoga on surfboards wearing QAnon mega gear? Because no, nothing makes sense anymore.

Michael Simeone  45:34
That makes perfect sense to me. I know you were saying nothing makes sense anymore. Facetiously. But it does make sense to me. In the sense that this kind of quest for purity, 

Anna Muldoon  45:45
Yeah.

Michael Simeone  45:47
Is is in some ways, an attempt to troll or declare your independence from a lot of the institutions you distrust in the first place?

Anna Muldoon  45:57
Absolutely, there is an entire long conversation about like, the various forms of self making that happen in anti-vax movements in conspiracy movements, right? Like, I am genuinely still feeling my way through what I think about it. Because I am increasingly convinced that like self making, and sense making and narrative creation are all happening at the same time in these movements. 

Shawn Walker  46:28
So is self making and identity making the same?

Anna Muldoon  46:31
A way that people are defining themselves to and in themselves. While there is also the creation of a group identity that allows people to feel part of a community, so that anti-vax mom groups, right, or the the matching QAnon shirts that you see at conferences, they're their ways of marking an identity that is linked to the conspiracy belief or the conspiracy narrative.  And I think that there's sort of an individual internal one, a group identity creation, one, and then also the narrative itself, and how all three of those things hook together.

Michael Simeone  47:20
Yeah, well, I mean, it sounds like a really interesting braid of concepts. You know, I'm just struck by just how interesting this entire trajectory is that you've traced. From the historical roots, to some of the religious and apocalyptic resonances, to some of the political expediency. All of these things are part of anti-vaccination. And then even some, you know, very, kind of good faith skepticism, that has been part of it, making this not as simple an issue as just saying, you know, all of these oat milk drinkers on Instagram who don't want to get a vaccination have just lost their minds, right. That's probably the laziest and least helpful way of reading this. And a lot of what you've brought to the to the interview today has just kind of given all kinds of texture, tools and insights to help think through this.

Anna Muldoon  48:19
I think particularly around health topics and vaccines, it's incredibly important to think about the complexities of these movements and of people's motivations. And sort of the ways in which it's not totally unreasonable that people were worried about a vaccine that was created really quickly with a technology they're not terribly familiar with. And that's under an emergency use authorization, right? We have more and more and more data to show that it's safe. But the initial concerns were not in like they weren't crazy. The public health people were like, yeah, we're making no comments until we see the data. Once we saw the data, we said, 'Yes, they are safe and effective'. That is awesome. But before we had gotten to see the data, the conspiracies were already up and out and running in the world, as were the concerns about experimentation and discrimination and depopulation. And some of the vaccine conspiracies go to some very dark and strange places, but they are not the majority of.

Shawn Walker  49:29
Because there's some interesting bedfellows within the conspiracy community that we're discussing here around COVID and QAnon and such, you know, because we have anti-vaxxers, which have been around for a while, as you said, well, since the 1770s, right? We have white supremacists that are involved, we have militias, we have far right communities. We have clean natural food movements that are involved some extreme versions of that. I mean, it's this Las Vegas buffet of different groups that you can hit your wagon to. And then we have a whole bunch of groups, right? If you don't like the chicken, have the beef, if you don't like the beef, have the tofu.

Anna Muldoon  50:07
Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that seems to be happening right now is kind of a rearrangement of who's connected to who, who's working with who, who's being recruited by who, among these movements, and how they're combining and recombining and breeding new versions of conspiracy or extremist or social movements. It's fascinating. But I will say, I do not like the anti-vaxxer, QAnon, militia hookup, right? I don't want to know what that's going to make. And I do not like it at all. I would like it to stop, but it's out there. And I think that we're gonna continue to see wee combinations of these things. De Certeau would say that this is what happens in a social crisis, right? That all the things that underlie our society, all the things that we don't think about the contentions, the mess, the weird stories sort of float up to the surface, and then we actually have to deal with them. just so happens that for COVID, we had a lot to deal with. And now it's all up and encountering each other and becoming something new, and honestly more frightening.

Michael Simeone  51:35
Well, on that cautionary insight, and on probably one of the best metaphors Shawn has ever rolled out on the podcast. 

Shawn Walker  51:43
Do you want to stake or the tofu?

Michael Simeone  51:45
We thank you for joining us. I can tell we know already that we're going to have to talk to you again. This has been a cracking interview. It's covered hundreds of years worth of material and has kind of brought, touched us down in a place that is is very thoughtful for our own contemporary moment and I think gives a lot of food for thought.

Anna Muldoon  52:03
 Anytime. This was super fun.

Michael Simeone  52:05
Alright, so that's all we have for this installment. Thank you for joining us this time, be thoughtful and be well. For questions or comments, use the email address data science@asu.edu. And to check out more about what we're doing, try library.asu.edu /data