{"id":55036,"date":"2020-04-15T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T20:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=55036"},"modified":"2020-04-14T17:54:01","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T07:54:01","slug":"coronavirus-denial-spreading-on-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/coronavirus-denial-spreading-on-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus denial spreading on social media"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

As the Covid-19 crisis plays out across the world, a disturbing new form of denialism is emerging which seeks to sow doubt not just about the seriousness of the pandemic or the response to it, but about whether the virus exists at all.<\/p>\n

Spurred on by conspiracy theorists and some right-wing media pundits<\/a>, people using hashtags like \u2018#filmyourhospitals\u2019 and \u2018#emptyhospitals\u2019 are actively encouraging individuals to film hospitals and medical facilities\u2014the implication being that, if hospitals appear quiet and calm from the outside, this \u2018proves\u2019 that the coronavirus crisis is being faked as part of a conspiracy to achieve some nefarious goal.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s search trend data<\/a> shows clearly the day the \u2018empty hospitals\u2019 narrative took off. The #filmyourhospitals hashtag was first tweeted<\/a> on 29 March by a QAnon conspiracy theorist on Twitter. It was then amplified by others with large numbers of followers, including former congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine Tesoriero (whose Twitter account was recently retweeted<\/a> by President Donald Trump).<\/p>\n

\u2018Let\u2019s get #FilmYourHospital trending\u2019, Tesoriero wrote on 30 March in a Facebook post<\/a> in which she questioned why two Los Angeles hospitals she\u2019d visited appeared quiet. The post had been viewed more than 118,000 times as of 14 April.<\/p>\n

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The trend may have started with US-based QAnon conspiracy theorists, but its reach is growing by the day. Although most of the activity is still in the US, variants of the trend now exist in multiple countries and in multiple languages. Even when hospitals are clearly busy and filming captures people being wheeled in on stretchers<\/a>, patients are dismissed as \u2018crisis actors\u2019 staging the scene for the media.<\/p>\n

What sets #filmyourhospitals and #emptyhospitals apart from other conspiracy hashtags is that they are actively seeking to encourage real-world action\u2014people have indeed been going out and filming hospitals<\/a>. A multitude of videos across Twitter<\/a>, Facebook<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> show individuals driving by hospitals, sitting in carparks and even walking into facilities and hassling medical workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is worrying for a range of reasons. It poses significant concerns for the physical safety and privacy of both patients and healthcare workers. Many of the individuals participating in this growing social movement may not be especially well-adjusted, to put it mildly, and any trend which encourages suspicious and in some cases potentially aggressive individuals to hang around filming medical facilities and harassing staff during a pandemic is troubling.<\/p>\n

The trend also risks undermining the effectiveness of health responses on several levels. Having people moving between multiple medical facilities to film them, as some individuals are, obviously carries a direct risk that those individuals will themselves spread Covid-19, especially if they don\u2019t believe the virus exists and aren\u2019t following social-distancing practices.<\/p>\n

Their actions pose a much broader risk to achieving the kind of widespread compliance with regulations which is crucial to containing the virus. People who don\u2019t believe the virus is real won\u2019t support or accept the kind of radical changes to daily life and social interactions which we are all now having to come to terms with.<\/p>\n

Parsing exactly what these individuals believe and why they believe it will be a complex process (there is never just one version of a conspiracy theory), and it\u2019s likely that multiple strains of QAnon, anti-vaxxer and anti-New World Order conspiracy groups are active on these hashtags. Understanding the variations of the conspiracy is probably less important in the short term than simply getting on top of this trend before it spreads further and causes real damage.<\/p>\n

Social media platforms could make a major contribution by removing any content containing the hashtags #emptyhospitals and #filmyourhospitals. This would not be enough to quash it entirely\u2014as is always the case, some users would find ways around the ban\u2014but it would at least help to reduce the spread.<\/p>\n

More broadly, governments and health authorities need to be aware that there are growing pockets of coronavirus denialism within their communities. The fight against Covid-19 has often been referred to as a war with an invisible enemy; as bizarre as it may seem, part of the battle, at least when it comes to some groups, may be simply convincing them that there even is an enemy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Covid-19 crisis plays out across the world, a disturbing new form of denialism is emerging which seeks to sow doubt not just about the seriousness of the pandemic or the response to it, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":899,"featured_media":55038,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2658,692,983,224],"class_list":["post-55036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coronavirus","tag-internet","tag-pandemic","tag-social-media","dinkus-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCoronavirus denial spreading on social media | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/coronavirus-denial-spreading-on-social-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coronavirus denial spreading on social media | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the Covid-19 crisis plays out across the world, a disturbing new form of denialism is emerging which seeks to sow doubt not just about the seriousness of the pandemic or the response to it, ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/coronavirus-denial-spreading-on-social-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-04-14T20:00:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-14T07:54:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/GettyImages-1217404246.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elise Thomas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elise Thomas\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/coronavirus-denial-spreading-on-social-media\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/GettyImages-1217404246.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/GettyImages-1217404246.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 07: Medical workers take in patients at a special coronavirus intake area at Maimonides Medical Center on April 07, 2020 in the Borough Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City. 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