Student: Truta Ingrid Laura

Group: 1207B – FABIZ Business Ethics

STOPPING THE SPREAD OF ANTI-VAX MEME

How does COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy differ from vaccine hesitancy before the pandemic?

Concerns about vaccines have historically had a significant impact on the immunization system.
Several concerns about vaccines are still arising, and diverse factors influence people's beliefs on
vaccination, not only in the new vaccines but also in routine immunization. Media and social
media are vehicles of false news and non-factual information about vaccines in general. Surveys
have highlighted the key drivers of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine hesitancy are related to concerns about
the accelerated pace of vaccine development, side-effects and the spread of misinformation about
the pandemic. Underlying reasons of vaccine hesitancy are a complex interaction between trust
in government and health authorities coupled with new information —and misinformation— on
the vaccine safety and disease risk arising everyday.
Google searches on anti-vaccine terms have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. The
COVID-19 pandemic has also changed parents' intentions to vaccinate their children. In the
group of previously hesitant parents about vaccines, 50.9% were still reluctant during the
pandemic, 40% of them consider that vaccines are necessary, and 9.1% were uncertain. Goldman
reported that parents' intentions to vaccinate their children against influenza increased by 15.8%
during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the previous year.

Who are the different shareholders impacted by vaccine hesitancy? What are the
conflicting interests or values of these shareholders?

Ahead of shareholder meetings for the giant pharmaceutical corporations, the People’s Vaccine
Alliance calculates that Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca have paid out $26 billion in
dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders in the past 12 months. While the global
economy remains frozen due to the slow and uneven vaccine rollout worldwide, the soaring
shares of vaccine makers has created a new wave of billionaires. The founder of BioNTech,
Ugur Sahin, is now worth $5.9 billion and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel $5.2 billion.
According to regulatory filings, Bancel has cashed out more than $142 million in Moderna stock
since the pandemic began. Many other investors have also become billionaires in the last few
months, while the International Chamber of Commerce projects a worst-case GDP loss of $9
trillion due to global vaccine inequity. One of the reasons Pharma companies have been able to
generate such large profits is because of intellectual property rules that restrict production to a
handful of companies.

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Student: Truta Ingrid Laura
Group: 1207B – FABIZ Business Ethics

How much responsibility lies with social media platforms for failing to regulate their
platforms vs the social media users who share misinformation?

Sharing of fake news on social media platforms is a global concern, with research offering little
insight into the motives behind such sharing. Fake news has an adverse impact on individuals
and society as it deliberately persuades consumers to accept false beliefs that are shared to
forward specific agendas. Social media companies are under increased scrutiny for their
mishandling of hateful speech and fake news on their platforms. Visuals on social media like
memes, videos, photos, posters and emojis are processed faster, accepted without being
questioned, and remembered for a longer period than text posts. Especially since the visual often
includes a personalized dramatization of vaccine injuries — like an individual having a life-
threatening seizure after receiving a vaccine. Since social media has rapidly grown as a source of
news, more and more people are obtaining health information from social media. As a result,
visual messaging on social media has significant associations with people’s intentions to get
vaccinated — not only against COVID-19, but also for other immunizations.

What are the possible value conflicts or tradeoffs that will emerge if social media platforms
make a concerted effort to de-platform anti-vax speech?

At the core of social media is the ability for us to share ideas and content with our peers. While
this freedom of information is what makes social media so appealing, it is also what can make it
dangerous. Social media is not the cause of vaccine hesitancy, but it has certainly played a role in
making anti-vaccination arguments and pseudoscience accessible to a wider audience.
None of these sites are removing the harmful content, just making it more difficult to find.
Furthermore, given that there seems to be some correlation between political populism and
vaccine refusal, at least in some countries, the changes implemented by social media companies
might play into the hands of the most vocal anti-vaxxers, providing them with the opportunity to
point to censorship of their freedom of speech and to deepen their mistrust of the mainstream.

Where do you draw the line between harmless memes and harmful misinformation? Would
all art (including humor) suffer if it was subject to tests of truthfulness or public safety?

While we may all enjoy a good laugh with a new meme, memes – particularly those sowing
political discord – have actually been identified as one of the emerging mediums for propaganda.
In recent years, the practice of using memes to incite divisiveness has rapidly escalated, and
extremist groups are using them with increasing effectiveness.
Their origins as benign images have led our brains to classify memes as enjoyable or, at worse,
harmless.

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Student: Truta Ingrid Laura
Group: 1207B – FABIZ Business Ethics

There are several ways to protect yourself from propaganda. The first and most important way is
verifying the validity of data by checking legit sources. It is important to identify and
acknowledge your biases, and take care to be extra critical of articles you agree with. Try seeking
to prove them false rather than looking for confirmation they’re true.
Even if some art/memes is(are) made just to entertain the public and earn engagement, most of
them are based on fake information and it can have a strong impact on some users. In my
opinion, most of the regular art would suffer if it was the case of a test of truthfulness, but not all
of it.