A “disorder that exacerbates all other crises” or “a word we use to shut you up”? A critical policy analysis of NGOs’ discourses on COVID-19 misinformation

2.1 Defining misinformation, discourse, and discourses

Before delving into our research, some clarifications are in order. Multiple terms are currently used, for instance misinformation, disinformation, fake news, infodemics, and conspiracy theory, to refer to all forms of expression – written, verbal, visual, and so on – that obfuscate rather than communicate the truth about an issue. While the concept behind these terms is not new [8], “misinformation” per se was popularized in political discourse in 2018 when the Associated Press reported that according to “linguist-in-residence” Jane Solomon, the declaration of “misinformation” as “word of the year” would serve as a “call to action” […] in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers” [9]. The following year, the US Department of Homeland Security convened an expert team from the intelligence sector, academia, and the private sector that concluded that a kindred term, “disinformation” – misinformation intended to mislead – had become a “whole-of-society issue” since the 2016 US presidential elections [10] (p. 2), further elaborating that it had exploded with the “unprecedented challenge” of COVID-19 and that “like a virus,” it “infect[ed] consumers with contempt for democratic norms” [10] (p. 2).

Subsequently, a little-known body within the Department of Homeland Security, the Cyber Security & Infrastructure Security Agency, added a third term, malinformation, defining it as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate” [11]. This agency then announced that misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation – MDM for short – would become the focus of a specialized team that would develop policies to protect the public from “foreign and domestic threat actors [who] use MDM to cause chaos, confusion, and division,” threatening to undermine “[US] democratic institutions and national cohesiveness” in electoral, and more recently, COVID matters [11].

In this study, we adopt the acronym MDM to refer to all forms of expression framed as obfuscating rather than communicating, regardless of their truth value (in the case of assertions) or intentionality of claim-makers. Finally, we use “discourse” to refer to a system of knowledge and power that shapes what can be said, by whom, and with what authority, as well as the mechanisms involved in its emergence and reproduction [12]. We take “narrative” to mean stories, ways of making sense of the world by organizing human experiences into a meaningful sequence of events that reflect the intentions, desires, and actions of individuals over time [13]. Because of the overlap between both terms, we will often use them indistinctly.

2.2 A background on NGOs

The terms NGOs and “nonprofit organizations” (hereafter NPOs) are often used interchangeably, because even if specific legal definitions vary by country, both types of organizations resemble each other in that they are expected to pursue the public good, neither operate for profit, and both are independent from government control, despite differences in the scope and scale of their operations, their degree of political involvement and policy influence, and their funding [14,15]. In this study, we use the term NGO to refer to both, except for when quoting from sources, for three reasons: NGO funding often comes from governments, foundations, and international donors, rather than membership fees or local fundraising efforts (as with NPOs); the scope of their activities is often national or international rather than local (as with NPOs); and most importantly, because unlike NPOs, NGOs tend to be less involved in community or service delivery programs and more in political activities such as lobbying and advocacy, so their policy influence tends to be greater [14].

NGOs are integral parts of civil society and as such often draw from the positive connotation of this concept to present themselves as challenging corporate or political interests (hereafter “elite” interests), therefore occupying a unique space in counter-MDM efforts. However, critics have observed that, as noted in the introduction, given the dependence of NGO funding on corporations, foundations, or government agencies, NGOs may in fact advance elite power, by helping to sway public opinion in the direction of their donors’ agendas [16]. Finally, critics have observed that the benign façade of NGOs effectively conceals the power that private interests exert on these organizations, and have therefore conceived them not as independent actors but as components of a “nonprofit corporate complex,” calling attention to the increasing blurring of the boundaries between NGOs and the corporate sector [17]; other critics have proposed the label “nonprofit state corporate complex” [18] to highlight the role of the state in creating, legitimizing, and maintaining the legal and regulatory frames that make the existence of NGOs possible [19]. Details aside, this “complex” builds on the seminal notions of “military industrial complex” and “medical industrial complex,” coined to underscore the co-optation of the state by elite interests that eventually override those of the public [20]. Governments then become unable to formulate public policy independently from those industries – weapons manufacturers in the case of military policy, or drug or insurance companies in the case of health policy.

This of necessity incomplete list of potential conflicts of interests within NGOs suggests that these organizations may be less independent from elite interests than meets the eye, and so are likely to be their contributions to the public debate around the perceived problem of COVID MDM, especially as more funding – private and public – becomes available to support MDM research and policy initiatives [21], a largesse that has been welcome by social actors in the business. As compellingly noted by the Associate Director of the International Fact-Checking Network at Poynter, a non-profit journalism school and research organization: “We are getting money […] to do projects that were in our drawers for […] years […] but we didn’t have money, and now we do” [22]. As NGOs like Poynter become the beneficiaries of major donors – governments, social media companies, and so on – that regularly, and increasingly, fund “fact checking” organizations, the power of NGOs to shape the public discourse around MDM has increased. Taken together, these considerations underscore why a critical investigation of NGOs’ discourses on COVID-19 MDM is warranted. The next section outlines the framework and methods guiding our analysis.

4.1 What is the (policy) problem of COVID-19 misinformation represented to be in the NGO literature?

Across the data, we identified the problem representation from within the proposed policy solutions, which consisted of identifying, tracking, managing, and suppressing any COVID-relevant expression perceived as undermining the position of dominant social institutions, groups, and individuals (hereafter “the establishment”). It followed that the “problem” was represented to be not the content of the claims themselves, but the individuals producing them, whose expressions were discursively framed as threats to science, democracy, and even human survival. NGOs also positioned themselves as experts in an “emerging” scientific field, “infodemiology,” thus equipped to evaluate all forms of communication according to their own or similar experts’ standards. The leading theme was that, given its magnitude and rapid dissemination through insufficiently monitored social media spaces, the problem of MDM warranted no less than a “whole of society” approach that required surveilling all forms of communication, especially social media platforms. Other proposed approaches included educating the public about MDM, recruiting “trusted leaders” to the cause, and fostering collaboration among health authorities, fact-checkers, traditional and social media, community organizations, civil society, and government. Along with the framing of social media as the most powerful social actor in the dissemination of MDM was the imperative that social media platforms become proactive in neutralizing MDM spread. Indeed, authors were unanimous in their perception of social media as an increasingly dangerous place for users and condemned the presumed reluctance of companies to “do their bit” about MDM, this inaction attributed to the profits that MDM helps them to generate. The CCDH was the most vocal in its condemnation of social media, arguing it its report Will to Act that “Social media companies have profited lavishly from this crisis and yet, when the time came for them to do their bit, they issued PR-driven claims, yet failed to act…we are judged…on our deeds…their deeds have just not been good enough” [47]. The CCDH also proposed “deplatforming the most highly visible repeat offenders” as one of the best ways to stop the spread of MDM, asserting that deplatforming “should also include the organizations these individuals control or fund, as well as any backup accounts they have established to evade removal.” Similarly, authors affiliated with the Public Good Projects recommended “that [MDM], harassment and unhinged conspiracy theories” be, if not deplatformed, at least “demonetized” [48]. Thus, across multiple documents, the sheer existence of “unmonitored” virtual spaces was presented as responsible for the spread of COVID MDM and justified calls for stronger surveillance.

A related theme was that due to the existential threat represented by MDM, along with the perceived inaction of social media platforms, government intervention was crucial to respond to MDM. Using emotional appeals, the CCDH stressed the severity of the situation, cautioning that “social media’s failure to act in the pandemic [by facilitating the spread of MDM] has cost us lives, government’s failure to act in the pandemic’s wake could cost us our society” [49] (emphasis added). In another report, the CCDH alerted readers that “should social media companies continue their pattern of negligence, governments must use every power – including new legislation, fines and criminal prosecutions – to stop the harms being created” [50] (emphasis added). While the CCDH was the most vocal among selected NGOs in calling for swift government action, it was not alone: the EU Disinfo Lab also advocated for government legislation to address MDM, with one EU Disinfo Lab researcher citing its benefits, and reporting that with the “[EU Digital Services Act]… new conditions, along with more specific Codes of Conduct, would give platforms clearer guidance on when and how to deal with content like disinformation” [51]. Similarly, an article authored by another EU Disinfo Lab researcher argued for collaboration between government and “multiple sectors of society,” because “responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the related infodemic require swift, regular, systematic, and coordinated action [52] (p. 6).”

Another salient theme across multiple documents was that, in addition to the need for more social media platforms and government intervention, health care professionals and the public should do more to prevent the spread of MDM. Suggestions included to encourage the public not only to not share MDM – for instance, by always fact checking information they intend to share against “trusted sources” – but also to embrace efforts to neutralize it, by becoming spokespersons of the “scientific consensus” to help counter the “fringe,” but vocal and dangerous, minority of “anti-vaxxers” [41]. In a similar spirit, other authors proposed that, given the perceived lack of will of social media companies to embrace the fight against MDM, the second best approach was to rally the public around the cause, and urge users to ignore, block, report, and “drown out” MDM by amplifying “advice from the government, the [National Health Services], and other experts,” so that as more people do not encounter MDM, “more will see the correct information rather than the false advice” [53]. Yet other authors called for a “middle ground” that included the general public, who they proposed had been “silent lurkers,” to express their position, hinted by the authors to be in support of COVID orthodoxy [54].

An intriguing theme across the data was that of the need to inoculate the masses against MDM, a theme that resonated with notions of its “viral spread” [48], and an approach where health professionals were framed as the most qualified to lead. As compellingly put by CCDH Director, “every anti-vaxx message can be boiled down to a master narrative of three parts, namely, “COVID-19 isn’t dangerous; vaccines are dangerous; you can’t trust doctors or scientists” [55] (p. 366). Therefore, “instead of attempting to rebut every silly conspiracy theory,” proposed the author, this “master narrative” unexpectedly made it easier for health professionals to participate in the global crusade against MDM: they could simply “inoculate against those three central claims […] in every corner of the internet” (ibid)(emphasis added). Likewise, in urging health professionals “to advocate…passionately for vaccines, and to help all other evidence-based public health measures go viral,” Wolynn et al. (2021) argued that “If [health care providers] truly want to honor the Hippocratic Oath, [they] must first do no harm. And [they] must go online.” Authors also promoted greater advocacy of vaccines by physicians, proposing that physicians, “steeped in science…deeply trusted [and with] direct, intimate access to…patients…are the ideal antidote…to clarify both the current public health crisis and the current health communication crisis” [48] (emphasis added).

Related to the theme of the role of health professionals in preventing the spread of MDM was that of the need for expert-led interventions to support various forms of literacy, with authors essentially framing literacy as the ability to identify, and not be persuaded by, MDM [54]. Many authors, especially from Meedan, also advocated for interventions in non-Western countries, portraying non-Westerners as more vulnerable to MDM because of insufficient literacy, greater religiosity, and “anti-science” beliefs, meaning beliefs contrary to COVID orthodoxy. Examples of Meedan reports discussing problematic beliefs leading to non-compliance with this orthodoxy included one about an Iranian community resisting to “closing down religious shrines …, a contributing factor to the spread of the disease” [56], one about a South Korean community where “church members were told not to be afraid of [COVID]” [57], or one about claims that “the [African] continent would be used for trials” of COVID vaccines sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation [58], the implication being that none of these beliefs had legitimate grounds. We return to the grounds of these and similar beliefs shortly. For now, suffice it to note that in May 2021, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded COVID vaccine trial, launched in June 2020 and involving 2,020 participants, which indicated limited efficacy against the B.1.351 variant, leading to the suspension and redistribution of one million doses [59], which shows that at least some of these “anti-science/religious” beliefs should not be dismissed outright.

4.2 What assumptions inform the conceptualization of MDM as a problem?

As shown so far, the theme running through the data was that COVID MDM, and anyone spreading it, were the problem. But the question remains: what counts as COVID MDM and how can ordinary people identify it so as to join in the struggle to neutralize it? Once again, the answer was captured by a theme running through the data: MDM was any expression that called into question assertions from “trusted sources” about, or could conceivably lead to distrust in, the “scientific consensus” on COVID, especially vaccination. These “sources” were in turn identified as “trusted” because they were recognized as such by other “trusted sources,” including NGOs with expertise in MDM and their affiliated researchers. The circularity of the argument was apparent in quotations like the following: “vaccine opposition was determined [by us, the MDM experts] to be information that contradicted the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office” [41] or “some [social media] companies [like] Pinterest limited the results of any search for “vaccines” to what the “consensus” determined to be “ trusted sources,” like the WHO” [60].

The circularity was also apparent when NGO MDM experts relied on one another to ground the legitimacy of their work. So, for example, in their report on COVID-19 vaccine confidence among racialized communities, the Public Goods Project, an NGO with MDM expertise, relied on fact-checking groups like First Draft, another NGO with MDM expertise, and on their own tool, Project VCTR (Vaccine Communication Tracking and Response), to track COVID vaccine MDM [43]. Marzi and collaborators, also MDM experts, relied on the work of First Draft founder, specifically Wardle’s 2017 framework – developed by Wardle to analyse MDM vis-à-vis the 2016 US elections – “to understand how [MDM] spreads and the types of inaccuracies involved” [61]. Similarly, the EU Disinfo Lab, a centre of MDM expertise, relied on Agence France Press (AFP) Factuel and on the International Fact Checking Network CoronaVirusFacts Alliance to track “false information” on COVID-19. Of note, by “false” the EU Disinfo Lab meant identified as having violated You Tube “community guidelines” [62] – defined by You Tube as “content that promotes information that contradicts health authority guidance on the prevention or transmission of specific health conditions, or on the safety, efficacy or ingredients of currently approved and administered vaccines” [63]. Put another way, sources assumed that self-identified MDM experts, including MDM fact checkers, were uniquely qualified to distinguish myth from fact on COVID matters.

Conversely, discourses advanced by these NGOs tended to frame any expression casting doubt on “trusted sources” – regardless of its truth value – as MDM. Even “personal anecdotes linking vaccines to negative outcomes” were framed as problematic because, as per one MDM expert, while they “may not be outright false…they can still mislead or create fear” and lead to “hesitancy” about public health policy, especially vaccination [60]. The implication was clear: MDM is not about whether an expression communicates something factually accurate, for instance, a negative personal experience upon receiving a medical intervention, but rather about how the communication may impact public perception of, and response to, official COVID policy. It was also clear that even those who had received COVID vaccines could be “antivaxxers” spreading MDM if they share negative experiences that undermine the “consensus.” Related to this theme, loss of trust in establishment sources was framed as especially undesirable – and presumably never justified – because, as per one DRD: “decreasing trust in government advice [becomes dangerous] at a time when it is vital for us to listen to official recommendations on how we can reduce the spread of coronavirus” [53]. It followed that if only alignment with the “consensus” is able to reduce the threat of COVID, distrust can have no rational/empirical grounds, thus must be driven by special interests, such as a coherent group of professional propagandists… running multi-million-dollar organizations…far better equipped to reach people than the UK National Health Services and the WHO ([53], p. 366).

Clearly, that losing trust in expert claims was dangerous was contingent on the assumption that “trusted sources” could never be wrong, not because they had ever reliably communicated the facts about important public health issues, or had a track record of trustworthiness – issues that were never discussed – but because they were uniquely qualified to identify MDM. Notably, relevant qualifications appeared to have no connection with subject matter expertise – as with math, astrophysics, or English literature – but were rather qualifications in an “emerging” discipline, “infodemiology,” facilitated by credentials in the behavioural sciences, risk communication, graphic design, and marketing, among others [54]. So, for example, Bonnevie et al. identified as MDM “themes” within “vaccine opposition” tweets that referred to “ingredients or contaminants found within vaccines, such as toxins, mercury, or lead,” or “questions around the safety of vaccines,” proposing that they indicated that “vaccine opponents…are leveraging the pandemic as an opportunity to promote their resistance to a COVID-19 vaccine” [64] (p. 15). It was not evident, however, at least from the authors’ credentials – for instance, a lead author with a Master's in Human Rights and Social Justice – that the team had qualifications directly relevant to vaccine safety. Nevertheless, their work expressed confidence in their expertise to address vaccine MDM.

Within the broader theme of the imperative to support “the consensus,” a salient assumption was that it was imperative to support vaccination as the best, and even only, approach to end the perceived threat of COVID. As a result, expressions deviating from the official narrative that COVID-19 vaccines were/are safe, effective, and necessary were characterized as MDM, and anyone expressing reservations was framed as experiencing a sort of mental health dysfunction – from mild, acceptable, and amenable to change (meaning accepting vaccination), i.e., “vaccine hesitancy,” to strong, malicious and morally objectionable rejection of COVID vaccines, dubbed “anti-vaxxer.” “Anti-vaxxers” so defined were perceived as especially dangerous because they could recruit “vaccine-hesitant” persons from within “unmonitored” social media spaces. As stated by one author, “the more that uncertainty…about risk is made public, the more it is weaponized by bad actors in the information sphere” [65], a sentiment shared by the DRD of CCDH, who proposed that “anti-vaxxers” have used COVID-19 as an “opportunity to create hesitancy for the [COVID] vaccine and, indeed, for all vaccines,” thereby subverting the work of public health authorities and endangering humanity [55] (p. 366).

Yet another assumption was that the spread of COVID MDM via social media is a threat because of its potential to “radicalize” the public, not just about COVID vaccines, but also about political matters. For example, authors described how social actors seemingly motivated by profit or personal power have exploited the versatility of social media to “breathe new life into several forms of extremism, as extremists of different shades recognized its potential to drive social change” [55]. Authors also identified linkages between various types of MDM, such as COVID vaccines and the 2016 US elections, stating that “if a user follows anti-vaxxers, they are fed Q-Anon conspiracism and antisemitic hate; if they engage with conspiracies, they are fed electoral and anti-vaxx misinformation” [50]. Some document authors also appeared to assume a causal relationship between COVID MDM and politics at large, albeit seemingly only “right wing/conservative” politics, and proposed that politicians of this ideological orientation could deploy MDM to polarize the electorate, discredit their adversaries, and advance their radical and extremist political objectives [61,66].

Other authors proposed that the rise of anti-China sentiment during 2020 was “linked to the spread of COVID-19 health-related misinformation,” which may “reinforce each other, making online spaces deeply unpleasant and potentially even dangerous” [40]; interestingly, authors failed to notice during that same period the relentless framing of China by Western leaders as an existential threat to the “free world” [67,68,69,70], which could have well fuelled the observed anti-China sentiment [71]. Finally, MDM was also assumed to have the potential to undermine trust not only in science and health authorities but in democracy itself, as “the sociopolitical ramifications of the widespread distrust of health authorities and scientific expertise [could] represent the tip of a much larger iceberg” [41] that “can threaten contemporary democracies by the political exploitation of post-truths, alternative facts, and conspiracy theories” [72].

Another salient assumption, mirror image of the unique qualifications MDM experts were perceived to have, was the unique vulnerability of ordinary people to MDM, and their incapacity to identify it without relying on MDM experts. For example, some authors framed ordinary people as vulnerable to MDM due to the lack of “health literacy” – implied to be the ability to identify and reject MDM – such that large sectors of the population were unable to “make informed decisions about their health when they are constantly inundated by disinformation” [61]. Others discussed how individuals with “heightened cognitive abilities” can better identify and resist MDM [73], implying that said abilities involved the ability to identify MDM as defined by MDM experts. Similarly, some authors proposed that counter MDM initiatives should partner with community organizations and local influencers to focus on “empowerment, community development, and trust building” [42,43], assuming that “empowerment” via “culturally meaningful health information” would lead to higher rates of vaccination [42].

Yet other authors assumed that the history of bioethical violations that some racialized communities have experienced could be “weaponized,” not only by outsiders but even by members of those communities, because, either way, in the case of COVID, racialized communities should “trust the science” to protect themselves from a lethal threat. For example, a report by First Draft proposed that histories of medical experimentation and abuse “have not only been weaponized by…non-Black anti-vaccine activists as ways to prey on or even coerce Black communities into rejecting the COVID-19 vaccines [but also by] anti-vaccine members of Black communities” [45], thus the importance of sparing no effort to persuade these communities to accept the “consensus.” Finally, authors discussed “gendered” MDM, meaning MDM concerning COVID-19 vaccines’ impact on “fertility, menstruation and pregnancy,” proposing that MDM reinforced “gender stereotypes” [74] and promoted “invalid science” (Dodson et al., 2021), the assumption being that there have never existed reasons or evidence for concern about the effects of COVID vaccination on pregnant women or women more generally. We elaborate on this and other assumptions in the following section.

4.3 What is left unproblematic by the dominant problem representation?

Multiple issues were left unproblematic by the dominant problem representation and its underlying assumptions. In this section, we elaborate on the three most salient ones. First, overall and across the body of data, there was no recognition of the abundant scientific evidence that supports challenges to mainstream COVID policy. This evidence was already available in 2020, yet authors ignored it, downplayed it, or disparaged it by labelling it MDM. An illustrative example was an article in Nature Immunology, in which authors asserted that at the onset of COVID “people around the globe bore witness in real time to the horror of the world with a highly infectious lethal disease and no herd immunity,” that COVID-19 vaccines had already demonstrated “robust and jaw-dropping effectiveness,” and that contrarian views were “science denialism” and “fraudulent” [48]. The authors appeared uninformed about the exceedingly low infection fatality rate for most of the population in the pre-vaccine era [75,76], the evidence in support of natural immunity – specifically an early systematic review of the literature that identified a weighted average risk reduction against reinfection among unvaccinated individuals of 90.4%, with protection against reinfection of up to 10 months [77], and the poor record of “vaccine effectiveness” – specifically early evidence of “breakthrough infections,” i.e., vaccine failures [78] and a large study of over 51,000 individuals reporting that those with more than three doses of COVID vaccines had about a 2.5 times higher risk of contracting COVID-19 compared to those who had received zero doses [79]. As to readers, they were not informed that the lead author of the article had received no less than USD 230,000 from several pharmaceutical companies, including vaccine producers like Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, Sanofi, and Merck [80], nevertheless declaring in his refereed publication “no conflicts of interest” [48].

Another notable example was a First Draft report, which dismissed as MDM assertions that “challenge the safety, efficacy, and necessity of vaccines, suggesting vaccines could cause infertility, harm children, or be unnecessary for the general population” [81]. The authors appeared unaware of the considerable evidence challenging their assertions. For instance, as late as November 2022, the UK government had admitted to the absence of animal studies testing the reproductive toxicity of the Pfizer vaccine, acknowledging that “sufficient reassurance of the safe use of the vaccine in pregnant [or breast-feeding] women [cannot] be provided at the present time” [82]. They also seemed unaware of research reporting on multiple negative impacts of COVID vaccines on fertility [83] and on the menstrual cycle [84,85], as well as on myopericarditis as one very concerning adverse event post COVID vaccination among not only children and youth [86,87], but also adults [88]. Finally, as mentioned earlier, significant evidence showed early on that the infection fatality rate for the vast majority of population was exceedingly low, calling into question the benefit of mass vaccination on both scientific and ethical grounds [89] – not to mention the existence, also early on, of multiple, sound alternatives to mass vaccination [90,91,92], although we were unable to find any document that engaged or even reported on these publications.

Second, left unproblematic was that across the data authors appeared less concerned with the veracity of the information than with reliance on a perceived “(scientific) consensus,” thus the call to train the public to identify that “consensus” and persuade it to “trust” it, not based on the evidence produced by the authorities but on their claims. This was the case even though the authority of scientists comes from the authority of science and not the other way around, even though scientific inquiry thrives on debate, scepticism, and honest attempts to falsify hypotheses [93], and even though a critically thinking and engaged citizenry is essential in democratic societies to keep authorities accountable [94]. Instead, authors across-the-board insisted on framing “distrust” as an emotional response that could not possibly have rational or empirical grounds; therefore, rather than focusing on how to better provide evidence-based information for people to evaluate the balance of risks and benefits of proposed medical/public health recommendations and make autonomous, informed decisions, authors redirected the public to the very institutions responsible for the widespread distrust. Thus, one refereed article underscored the importance of persuading the masses to seek information from “long trusted scientific institutions” [60], while one report underscored the importance of encouraging the public to trust “accounts that spread trustworthy information about Covid and vaccines” – such as the National Health Service (NHS), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), WHO, Gates Foundation, Public Health England, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), UNICEF, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine [50]. The authors seemed unaware of the multiple reasons – shifting goalposts, lack of transparency, lack of democratic input, and multiple conflicts of interests – that had given and continue to give the public many reasons to not trust these institutions [95,96,97,98].

Third and last, left unproblematic were the multiple logical fallacies across the body of data seemingly having escaped the rigour of reviewers and editors. For instance, authors generally failed to provide evidence supporting their “true” claims, or to refute the “false” claims of presumed MDM spreaders, relying almost entirely on appeals to authority, ad populum, and ad hominem fallacies when framing support for COVID vaccines as the “pro-science” stance held by the majority, and opposition as the “fringe” views of a minority. So, for instance, in a clear case of authority and ad populum fallacies, Bonnevie, Sittig & Smyser proffered that the “pro-science, pro-vaccination majority of the general public has historically been comparatively silent on the importance of immunizations [especially compared to vaccine opponents], and largely disengaged from the work of debunking vaccine-related misinformation” [99]. Therefore, document authors proposed empowering the public to become more vocal in their (assumed) support of vaccination. Similarly, in two textbook examples of ad hominem fallacies, a CCDH report proffered that “despite scientific consensus, vaccines are opposed by…Counter- Enlightenment actors, snake oil salesmen and the misinformed […]” [100] (emphasis added), while a peer-reviewed article labelled opponents of the establishment narrative “science deniers,” emboldened by the growing lack of trust in experts [101].