The final project is an opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge gained through three Modules in a unified assignment dedicated to anti-vaccination discourse. The op-ed piece is written from the perspective of a public medical researcher and physician who seeks to convince a broad audience that the measures taken by Instagram are correct and appropriate. Reflection describes how I combined skills and knowledge from Computer Science, English, and Philosophy in composing the op-ed.
Op-ed Piece
Analysis and evaluation of anti-vaccination rhetoric are particularly relevant now during the pandemic. According to Evrony and Caplan (2017), anti-vaccination websites and groups in social media “have contributed to the drop in vaccination compliance and anxieties concerning vaccination” (p. 1475). People, and especially parents of young children, become fearful and confused about the dangers and risks of vaccination. These attitudes result in a certain proportion of the population refusing to be vaccinated against diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella. Researchers state that due to the anti-vaccination propaganda, the vaccination rate has dropped in many states, especially in Western Europe and North America, which resulted in several breakouts of measles (Hussain et al., 2018). Thus, the consequences of such misinformation are real and threaten public health.
It should be noted that social media platforms are considered to be a place where everyone can express their opinion in accordance with democratic notions of freedom of speech. There is no doubt that this idea deserves respect and recognition. However, there are exceptional cases that require the restriction of this freedom for the sake of public safety and health. For example, there is no doubt that the dissemination of information on the recruitment of young people by terrorist groups should be banned. The same is right for drug trafficking and prostitution in many jurisdictions. Instagram suggests limiting the spread of anti-vaccination propaganda by blocking hashtags (Newton, 2019). This measure may be seen as such a restriction, but for the reasons given below, it is justified. According to Ma and Stahl (2017), “the increased socialization of anti-vaccination individuals” through social media “creates larger, more visible communities than previously possible” (p. 303). Ordinary users are not always critical of the information they perceive, and large groups of people who advocate a specific position may seem authoritative and persuasive.
The peculiarity of social media is that the content placed in them may seem entirely rational and convincing, and at the same time, be misleading. For example, a thesis about the dangers of vaccination in social media can spread virulently through posts and hashtags, and thus quickly gain supporters, increasing the number of users in groups and on websites. A large quantity of disseminated information and people who agree with it produces the impression that this thesis is correct. Researchers pointed out that the advocates of anti-vaccination “create an isolated, sentimentalized information context favoring immediacy and emotional impact over scientific research and statistical evidence” (Ma & Stahl, 2017, p. 303). Thus, the peculiarities of data distribution in social media contribute to the fact that misinformation can influence the behavior of many people.
For these reasons, measures taken by Instagram are necessary in order to provide people with accessible and accurate information about vaccination. When the COVID-19 vaccine is invented, only vaccination of the majority of the population will entirely prevent the spread of infection. The spread of anti-vaccination misperceptions is particularly dangerous at this time, as it can increase people’s anxiety and unwillingness to be vaccinated, which potentially threatens both them and others.
Reflection
The knowledge and skills acquired from each discipline contributed to the different elements of the op-ed. The methods I acquired during the English Module allowed me to construct a fictional character, design a suitable plot, and use appropriate perspective and language. The character who authored this paper is a public medical researcher and physician. Accordingly, he advocates the principles of evidence-based, scholarly medicine, and rejects what appears to him to be mystification and misinformation.
He is aware of the risks of the pandemic and the possible negative consequences of anti-vaccination propaganda and is convinced of his opinion. He fully supports that Instagram will block hashtags that return anti-vaccination misinformation. The main objective of the author’s work is to convince a broad audience of his point of view. The author appeals to scientific research, as he must confront unscientific speculation with evidence-based research. He uses a more formal and academic language that he considers authoritative but does not address the scientific analysis of the benefits or harms of vaccination because he addresses a general audience. The author writes in the third person and uses parenthesis and connection lexical structures to create a flow of the text.
In this way, the English Module allowed me to construct the author’s supposed background, which influenced the style and language of the work, the advocated point of view, and the tools used. At the same time, Computer Science and Philosophy shaped the content of the op-ed and argumentation that the author used. I assumed that the author, who is a medical researcher and doctor, has insight into these areas.
The author needed to start the article with a description of the data that confirms the relevance and severity of the problem. This is a typical beginning for scientific researchers in any field. That is why the author’s paper is similar to a scientific article in many respects, as he perceives this format as rational and convincing. He might not have thought that this format is not always easily perceived and understood by ordinary readers because it is very familiar to him. The author assumed that one of the main counterarguments would be the thesis of the freedom of speech and the unacceptability of such restrictions, and therefore he specified his position on this issue in advance. At the same time, he made a logical failure when comparing information on terrorist recruitment, drugs, and prostitution with anti-vaccination propaganda. The first three phenomena are clearly dangerous, and in order to convince readers, he had to provide data on vaccination safety. However, the author considered it rational not to dive into scientific explanations of the issue.
The op-ed discussed how the features of a social media platform influence the reason and rationality in the context of the anti-vaccination debate. This was one of the author’s main arguments about why the measures taken by Instagram are correct. In this way, he designed his reasoning according to his cognitive habits and ideas about how to defend a point of view rationally. At the end of the op-ed, the author justified its social significance as being linked to current events related to the pandemic and the potential need for vaccination of the population.
Conclusion
Thus, all the skills and knowledge acquired in all three disciplines were necessary to write the op-ed from the perspective of the character. However, it should be noted that the English Module had more influence on the formal and stylistic features of the paper, while Philosophy and Computer Science were concerned with content. The final project allowed me to combine all the skills from different disciplines and apply them to a single assignment.
References
- Evrony, A., & Caplan, A. (2017). The overlooked dangers of anti-vaccination groups’ social media presence. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, 13(6), 1475–1476.
- Ma, J., & Stahl, L. (2017). A multimodal critical discourse analysis of anti-vaccination information on Facebook. Library & Information Science Research, 39(4), 303-310.
- Newton, C. (2019). Instagram will begin blocking hashtags that return anti-vaccination misinformation. The Verge. Web.
- Hussain, A., Ali, S., Ahmed, M., & Hussain, S. (2018). The anti-vaccination movement: A regression in modern medicine. The Cureus Journal of Medical Science, 10(7), 1-8.