Alaska’s COVID misinformation SWAT team

“Sometimes we will get tipped off by communities...  [They’ll] say, “There’s a bunch of angry posts on the Ketchikan city page,” or whatever. So we respond to SOS calls by healthcare providers or public health folks on the ground.  We’re available. You can always contact the cavalry, and we’ll try to show up. I can’t guarantee how many of us, but some of us will be there.” says professor Jennifer Meyer. “The anti-science, anti-vax communities are bullies. When you push back, they back off. “

This article is based on a January 3, 2022 interview with Professor Meyer, one of the leaders of The Alaska Public Health Information Response Team. Here she discusses how Alaska students, professionals, and educators engage in the misinformation fightback on Alaska social media sites. 

How did your group get started?

The Alaska Public Health Information Response Team was formed about a year ago. We knew that misinformation was dominating. It was dominating the social media platforms everywhere, as well as in Alaska. We thought we could mobilize some of our public health experts through the Alaska Public Health Association to respond online in real time, or as close to it as possible, to misinformation about COVID mitigation practices, and vaccines. We recruited volunteers and we vet them...  They completed training after that. And then we have a system where they receive alerts on their phone or an email. When misinformation is picked up online, we respond to it. 

It’s been a really neat collaboration with our communications expert, Dr. Joy Mapaye in the School of Journalism at UAA. She has expertise in crisis communications. Dr. Hennessy [an infectious disease epidemiologist and affiliate professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage] has been involved in this as well from the beginning. 

What social media is your group involved with?

We only respond on Facebook. The reason we’re on Facebook is because when we did surveys for the municipality, we learned that 70% or more of Alaskans are checking Facebook daily. That’s the dominant platform.

What do you do with the social media? For example, do you advertise on it?

We don’t do any advertising, but we monitor 25 different public-facing sites. Media monitoring is part of one of Joy’s classes, and one of our communications classes. The students learn how to do that. Sometimes a couple of them will start working with us on our project and they’ll practice that. She assigns which public-facing platforms we’re going to follow. They’re typically like news sites -- KTOO, ADN, the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services site -- places that have a lot of readership. 

We noticed that trolls and conspiracy-oriented commenters tend to gravitate there. I think there’s an industry behind them that’s coordinating some of that, but that’s another concept. So that’s where we feel like rebutting the misinformation might have the biggest impact, so we monitor those sites. I just got some alerts today. We use an app that signals messages, and the responders learn how to use the app. And if they click the link that the monitoring volunteer has sent out, it’ll take you right to the page with the comment that you need to debunk. It’s pretty cool.

Do you view the fight against misinformation as mostly a local problem, or is it bigger than that? How important is it to engage in that struggle?

At the very beginning of the pandemic Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus with the World Health Organization said, “We’re fighting a pandemic of misinformation.” And that viral misinformation can spread faster than the virus that we’re fighting. We’re not just fighting COVID, we’re fighting all the misinformation around COVID as well. 

What can people do? What I saw happening with public health here in Alaska is that people just don’t promote vaccines on their pages because they know they’re going to get a bunch of garbage in the comment section. If we allow ourselves to be bullied by the anti-vax community, which is a very small community, if we allow our policies and our promotion of life-saving vaccine to be affected by that -- it’s not acceptable. We can’t do that. We need to be providing people science-based information such that they can make the right decisions. 

And I think our policies need to align with that as well. I’m very frustrated with the school vaccine requirements, you know, for kids, and safe workplaces for staff, instructors, and administration. We have to have vaccine requirements, and that term has been hijacked. There’s all this anti-mandate garbage, and I’m very concerned they’re going to go after that as a form of political posturing. We have to be ready to stand up for those policies that protect all kids, and safe workplaces. I’ve been a little bit nervous. I’ve been disappointed that I don’t see people standing up to that. Even UAA...very cautious about a vaccine requirement. And I find that astonishing.

Can you discuss an example encounter with those who spread misinformation?

This is the Anchorage Health Department. They posted something about COVID and I read the comments, and I said... “Let’s bring some science back.” I use a lot of gifs that are kind of fun, like dancing or glittery, just to catch attention. This person decided to say, “If you know the science, you know there’s virtually nothing to fear from COVID.” That’s been a big common claim. It’s selling fear. And then this other person weighed in and said, “You have no proof that the vaccine works.” So I addressed that by saying, “Fact! We have really good data about how effective the vaccine is, and you can learn more about it here [linking to a Centers for Disease Control page].” So that’s kind of a classic sort of exchange. It’s not confrontational, it’s not ugly or unpleasant.

What are some of the difficult issues you and your team members grapple with regarding how you relate to anti-vaxxers and their ilk? 

So trying to think through, “What am I going to do here? And how am I going to reply empathetically and not in a judgmental or shaming way,” and sort of walk through that. In the beginning it’s kind of hard to do that. But as you practice, it does get a lot easier -- just how to start, how to speak up without getting in a showdown with someone. I think that our public health students and healthcare professionals are going to have to get these skills because we know that you can’t stay on the sidelines with this. Everyone needs to know how they’re going to deal with this, and what they’re going to do when they come up against misinformation, and figure that out beforehand. 

Twenty years ago I was a lot more generous about this stuff. I was like, “Well, there’s probably room for a few folks to have these misguided ideas.” But it’s so dominant now. It’s become so pervasive that that we have to respond. And we’re learning that responding works. it makes a difference. 

Originally published in Anchorage Press.