The political economy of digital profiteering: communication resource mobilization by anti-vaccination actors

The Journal of Communication · 7 authors, 8 centres

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TL;DR

The key finding is that the majority (85%) used monetization, with donations being the most common strategy, indicating reliance on a popular base for funding.

Full summary

847 CHARS

The study used a manual selection of 59 anti-vaccination websites and conducted a multifaceted content and features analysis to understand how these actors gather material resources. It analyzed monetization strategies and used HTML code analysis to identify linked websites. The authors found a diversity of resource mobilization strategies, describing them as a 'hybrid' model blending elements of social movements, digital news, and online celebrity practices. Limitations include the inability to estimate fund volume, an incomplete view of resource-gathering activities due to not analyzing email lists, and the use of Google IDs as an imperfect proxy for identifying linked sites. The findings suggest anti-vaccination actors use modern digital affordances for networked promotion and monetization, contributing to their communication power.

STUDY TYPE

other

SPECIALTY

public health

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AI pipeline

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100% · A

ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10066223

The political economy of digital profiteering: communication resource mobilization by anti-vaccination actors

The Journal of Communication

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ABSTRACT

Abstract Contemporary communication requires both a supply of content and a digital information infrastructure. Modern campaigns of misinformation are especially dependent on that back-end infrastructure for tracking and targeting a sympathetic audience and generating revenue that can sustain the campaign financially—if not enable profiteering. However, little is known about the political economy of misinformation, particularly those campaigns spreading misleading or harmful content about public health guidelines and vaccination programs. To understand the political economy of health misinformation, we analyze the content and infrastructure networks of 59 groups involved in communicating misinformation about vaccination programs. With a unique collection of tracker and communication infrastructure data, we demonstrate how the political economy of misinformation depends on platform monetization infrastructures. We offer a theory of communication resource mobilization that advances understanding of the communicative context, organizational interactions, and political outcomes of misinformation production. Keywords: hybrid media, vaccines, COVID-19, misinformation, communication resource mobilization

CITATION EXPORT

Aliaksandr Herasimenka, Yung Au, Anna George et al.. The political economy of digital profiteering: communication resource mobilization by anti-vaccination actors. The Journal of Communication. (2022). https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqac043

AUTHORS

7 · 8 CENTRES

Aliaksandr Herasimenka, Yung Au, Anna George, Kate Joynes-Burgess, Aleksi Knuutila, Jonathan Bright, Philip N Howard

1 University of Oxford, UK
2 University of Oxford, UK
3 University of Oxford, UK
4 University of Oxford, UK
5 University of Oxford, UK
6 University of Oxford, UK
7 The Alan Turing Institute, UK
8 University of Oxford, UK