Anti-vaccine Disinformation in Latin America and the Caribbean: Mapping 175 Alleged Harms and 80 False Antidotes in Conspiracy Theory Communities on Telegram
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Vaccine disinformation is acknowledged as a critical public-health challenge. Despite growing evidence associating disinformation and vaccine hesitancy, we lack a comprehensive panorama of the anti-vaccine narratives circulating across Latin America and the Caribbean. As such, the question guiding this study is: What are the main vaccine-related narratives in conspiracy-theory communities on Telegram in Latin America and the Caribbean? Our research design examines 1,785 open Telegram conspiracy communities across the region (2016-2025), comprising 5.8 million active users and 81 million posts. We analyze a corpus of vaccine-related content using mixed-methods, including computational text mining, network-aware content coding, and qualitative analysis. We find that anti-vaccine content in conspiracy-theory communities surged after the pandemic, growing by 689.4 times from 2019 to 2021. We map 175 alleged harms, ranging from sudden death and DNA alteration to poisoning and cancer, and 80 false antidotes that leverage pseudoscience and spirituality. Each alleged harm is paired with a marketable “antidote”. Anti-vaccine claims in conspiracy communities are found to function as conversion funnels: they attract through fear and then sell products, courses, and therapies as “solutions”.
Authors: Silva, Ergon Cugler de Moraes, Ricard, Julie C., Alves, Mario Aquino, Rocha, Gabriel, Vitória, Stefanny
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7092297778
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