Truth in the Age of Viral Misinformation: The "Disinformation Dozen" Case Study
The CCDH's "Disinformation Dozen": How a Flawed Report Became a Dangerous Academic Myth
In the realm of academic publishing, a 1300-fold error should raise more than eyebrows—it should sound alarms. Yet, at the 14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022, sponsored by SIGWEB, such a colossal miscalculation found its way into the proceedings, calling into question the very foundations of academic integrity in the digital age.
Introduction
The journey of misinformation from a flawed report to peer-reviewed academic literature is a cautionary tale that underscores the vulnerabilities in our systems of knowledge production and dissemination. This article examines how the controversial "Disinformation Dozen" report, despite its significant methodological flaws, managed to infiltrate academic discourse and spawn a series of studies that further entrenched its dubious claims.
The Origin: The CCDH Report
On March 24, 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) released a 40-page report titled "The Disinformation Dozen," which claimed that just 12 individuals were responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on social media platforms.[^1] The report named:
1. Dr. Joseph Mercola
2. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
4. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny
5. Rizza Islam
6. Dr. Rashid Buttar
7. Erin Elizabeth
8. Sayer Ji
9. Dr. Kelly Brogan
10. Dr. Christiane Northrup
11. Dr. Ben Tapper
12. Kevin Jenkins
The Flaws Emerge: Meta's Rebuttal
On August 18, 2021, Meta (formerly Facebook) released a statement disputing the CCDH's findings. According to Meta, there was no evidence to support the claim that the "Disinformation Dozen" were responsible for such a significant portion of anti-vaccine content on their platforms. In fact, Meta revealed that these 12 individuals were actually responsible for only about 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook, including both accurate and inaccurate posts.[^2]
This revelation exposed a staggering 1300-fold discrepancy between the CCDH's assertions and the actual data, calling into question the entire premise of the "Disinformation Dozen" narrative.
Methodological Shortcomings
A closer examination of the CCDH report reveals several critical flaws in its methodology:
1. Limited Sample Size: The report analyzed only 483 pieces of content over six weeks.
2. Narrow Focus: The content was drawn from just 30 groups, some with as few as 2,500 members.
3. Lack of Representativeness: This sample is not representative of the billions of posts about COVID-19 vaccines shared on Facebook and Instagram.
4. Unclear Criteria: The CCDH failed to provide clear explanations for how they identified content as "anti-vax" or chose the groups they included in their analysis.
5. Disregard for Platform Efforts: The report failed to acknowledge the steps Meta had taken to combat what it called 'vaccine misinformation,' including removing over three dozen pages, groups, and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to the "Disinformation Dozen."
From Flawed Report to Academic Paper: The Swiss Connection
Despite these glaring issues, the "Disinformation Dozen" narrative found its way into academic research. At the 14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022 (WebSci '22), sponsored by SIGWEB (Special Interest Group on Hypertext and the Web), a paper titled "The Disinformation Dozen: An Exploratory Analysis of Covid-19 Disinformation Proliferation on Twitter" was presented and published in the proceedings.[^3]
This research was not conducted in isolation. It was funded by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), raising questions about the role of public funding in potentially flawed research.
Grant Details:
- Grant number: 195707
- Funding scheme: Spark
- Call: Spark 2020 March
- Approved amount: 96,450 CHF
- Status: Completed
- Research institution: University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI)
- Institute: NetLab ISIN - DTI SUPSI
Principal Investigator:
Silvia Giordano, Thermo-Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Department of Innovative Technologies, SUPSI, Switzerland
The Ripple Effect: Proliferation in Academic Literature
The inclusion of this flawed research in a reputable academic conference has had far-reaching consequences. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have since cited and built upon the "Disinformation Dozen" narrative, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of misinformation within academic literature. Here's a comprehensive list of studies that have referenced or built upon this concept:
Ng, L., Kloo, I., Clark, S., & Carley, K. (2024). An exploratory analysis of COVID bot vs human disinformation dissemination stemming from the Disinformation Dozen on Telegram. Journal of Computational Social Science, 7(1), 695-720.
Sharma, S., Sharma, R., & Datta, A. (2024). (Mis)leading the COVID-19 Vaccination Discourse on Twitter: An Exploratory Study of Infodemic Around the Pandemic. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, 11(1), 352-362.
Bârgăoanu, A., Buturoiu, R., & Durach, F. (2024). Predictors of COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance: The Role of Trust and the Influence of Social Media. Social Work in Public Health, 39(1), 20-35.
Ahmed, W., Önkal, D., Das, R., Krishnan, S., Olan, F., Hardey, M., & Fenton, A. (2024). Developing Techniques to Support Technological Solutions to Disinformation by Analyzing Four Conspiracy Networks During COVID-19. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 71, 13327-13344.
Pierri, F., DeVerna, M., Yang, K., Axelrod, D., Bryden, J., & Menczer, F. (2023). One Year of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation on Twitter: Longitudinal Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e42227.
Kareklas, I., Bhattacharya, D., Muehling, D., & Kisekka, V. (2023). Reexamining health messages in the political age: The politicization of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its detrimental effects on vaccine hesitancy. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 57(3), 1120-1150.
McKenzie, A., Avshman, E., Shegog, R., Savas, L., & Shay, L. (2024). Facebook's shared articles on HPV vaccination: analysis of persuasive strategies. BMC Public Health, 24(1).
Hassoun, A., Borenstein, G., Osborn, K., McAuliffe, J., & Goldberg, B. (2024). Sowing "seeds of doubt": Cottage industries of election and medical misinformation in Brazil and the United States. New Media & Society.
DeVerna, M., Aiyappa, R., Pacheco, D., Bryden, J., Menczer, F., & Guarino, S. (2024). Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of low-credibility content on Twitter. PLOS ONE, 19(5), e0302201.
Lyall, B., & Marple, P. (2024). Parliament, petitions and pandemic: Conspiracism in Australia's federal e‐petitions system, 2020−2021. Policy & Internet.
Panizza, F., Ronzani, P., Morisseau, T., Mattavelli, S., & Martini, C. (2023). How do online users respond to crowdsourced fact-checking?. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1).
Ezzeddine, F., Ayoub, O., Giordano, S., Nogara, G., Sbeity, I., Ferrara, E., & Luceri, L. (2023). Exposing influence campaigns in the age of LLMs: a behavioral-based AI approach to detecting state-sponsored trolls. EPJ Data Science, 12(1).
Pierri, F., Luceri, L., Chen, E., & Ferrara, E. (2023). How does Twitter account moderation work? Dynamics of account creation and suspension on Twitter during major geopolitical events. EPJ Data Science, 12(1).
Rathje, S., Robertson, C., Brady, W., & Van Bavel, J. (2023). People Think That Social Media Platforms Do (but Should Not) Amplify Divisive Content. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
Gatta, V., Luceri, L., Fabbri, F., & Ferrara, E. (2023). The Interconnected Nature of Online Harm and Moderation. Proceedings of the 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 1-10.
Schafer, J., Starbird, K., & Rosner, D. (2023). Participatory Design and Power in Misinformation, Disinformation, and Online Hate Research. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, 1724-1739.
This extensive yet non-exhaustive list demonstrates how deeply the flawed "Disinformation Dozen" concept has permeated various fields of research, from computational social science to public health and media studies.
