Anti-vaccines, anti-5G… the French more exposed to skeptical speeches since Covid-19

"An information pandemic has spread," warns this study by the communications agency Majorelle, carried out during the Covid-19 crisis. According to her, beyond the virus itself, the so-called “skeptical” groups already very active on Twitter, manage to “capture an audience 5 to 10 times greater than their original weight”.

It is thanks to an analysis tool called Lucy that the agency was able to compare on a sample of 100,000 French social network users the proportion of users speaking on subjects such as chloroquine, 5G or nuclear power and that of users exposed to it.

Anti-big pharma🔬, anti-vaccines💉, anti-5G📞, anti-tech👁️… made their market during the Covid-19 pandemic. Lucy reveals their real weight, their audience and the perception bias that carries them. "The great contagion" 🔽 https://t.co/GGP42POtQg

Result, in May, 13.6% of twittos were exposed once a month to "anti-5G" messages, at the rate of more than eight messages per day on average, while these only represent 2.6% of the sample on Twitter.

Another observation: only 1.8% of the sample spoke of chloroquine during the month of May, but 26% of users saw these messages at least once during the period.

The Covid-19, an amplifier?

According to Majorelle, the explosion in the audience for these speeches on Twitter is linked to the coronavirus which “brought a large part of French public opinion into contact with“ skeptical communities ”. "We observed how these groups attracted the crowd of doubters," the agency said in a statement.

In addition, the debate around hydroxychloroquine federated these groups. Thus, 22% of "anti-5G" spoke of chloroquine in May 2020, a share which rose to 37% among "anti-vaccines", according to the study.

The agency has identified seven main skeptical communities, which it describes as "militant": "anti-big pharma" or "anti-big laboratories", "anti-vaccines", "anti-5G", " anti-nuclear ”,“ radical ”ecology, anti-technology conspiracies and unscientific followers of the use of hydroxychloroquine.