Digital Media Researcher Attacks CHD for Spreading ‘Misinformation’

During a July 17 presentation at the International Conference on Social Media & Society in…

Children's Health Defense

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) last week was the focus of a presentation delivered at the International Conference on Social Media & Society in London during a session on “misinformation.”

During the presentation — “Deplatforming Children’s Health Defense: Fighting Health Misinformation or Building a Reactionary Health Populism Movement?” — Victoria O’Meara, Ph.D., a lecturer on digital media at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, accused CHD of spreading “dangerous” information about vaccines and other public health topics.

The presentation research, yet to be published, provided background on CHD’s organizational history and online content and focused on content posted on the CHD Telegram channel between 2021 and 2023.

Co-authors who were not present at the conference include:

Jaigris Hodson, Ph.D., an associate professor of digital communication for the public interest at Royal Roads University (Canada).
Anatoliy Gruzd, Ph.D., professor of privacy-preserving digital technologies at Toronto Metropolitan University (Canada).
Philip Mai, Ph.D., senior researcher and co-director of the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Esteban Morales, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Royal Roads University.
Joan Owen, a Ph.D. student at Royal Roads University and a member of the “Polarization Team” at the Cascade Institute.

O’Meara’s, Hodson’s and Gruzd’s research interests include the spread of “misinformation,” while Morales’ research interests include “online violence.”

In 2022, Hodson and O’Meara co-authored an academic paper, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, examining COVID-19 health-sharing practices on social media.

The 2022 paper concluded that “misinformation researchers need to do more to educate the public about the inefficacy of debunking and the importance of being pre-emptive in spreading credible information” and that “communicators who wish to counter health misinformation” should “try to appeal to those people and platforms that are more likely to serve a broadcast function within a larger community.”

Other presentations during Wednesday’s panel also focused on the spread of supposed “misinformation” and so-called “conspiracy theories,” and how Bill Gates has been a frequent target of such narratives…