• A new report conducted by digital advocacy group Reset Australia reveals how online misinformation has helped spread vaccine hesitancy in Australia.
• It found public anti-vax groups based in Australia increased their memberships by almost 300% over the course of the past year.
• There’s evidence the explosion in content has translated to vaccine hesitancy in Australia, executive director of Reset Australia Chris Cooper said.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

A new report exposes how anti-vax content spread on Australian social platforms and the impact it’s had on public sentiment.

Conducted by digital advocacy group Reset Australia, the report reveals that the number of Australians following public anti-vax Facebook groups grew nearly 300% during the pandemic, with the group highlighting the increase directly correlates with rising vaccine hesitancy rates in the country.

To measure the emergence and growth of the content, Reset Australia identified 13 public Facebook groups that contained users based in Australia and tracked their growth between January 2020 and March 2021.

The 13 groups covered included anti-lockdown sentiment such as ‘End the Lockdown in Australia, ‘ Digital Warfare’, and ‘Australia Freedom Alliance’, along with already existing and more established anti-vax groups, such as ‘Australians for Safe Technology’.

Members of the group ‘Wake Up Australia’, for example, frequently shared links, photos, videos and statuses with false and misleading information about the pandemic, with common themes including the safety and efficacy of vaccines, threats to civil liberties and personal freedoms that lockdowns pose, and mandatory vaccination programs.

The report found that during the year and three months covered in the research period, signups to the groups exploded, growing by 280% to more than 115,000 combined members. Overall the groups generated over 2.66 million interactions.

Chris Cooper, executive director of the Australian branch of the organisation, said the findings show the clear correlation between the growth of social content promoting anti-vax sentiment and Australian opinions surrounding the vaccines.

“Social media has supercharged conspiracy theories and misinformation, pushing some people into echo chambers where false information is all they see,” Cooper said.

The findings come as Australia struggles to vaccinate its population, with only 2.7 million doses administered nationwide as of mid-May.

Delays of vaccine shipments into the country, the slow vaccination of vulnerable groups including the aged care sector, and related criticisms have increased scrutiny around the government’s approach to protecting the population.

Separate research out of ZEISS, a global medical technology firm, confirms an uptick in vaccine hesitancy. Its national survey suggests that one in three Australians lack confidence around receiving a vaccination, expressing little faith in proper testing, and citing a lack of clear information from the Australian government.

Reset Australia meanwhile cites a University of Melbourne survey that found that between October 2020 and February this year the percentage of Australians willing to get the COVID-19 jab fell from 74% to 66%.

Cooper said the research follows mounting evidence that the rise of misinformation online is having a measurable impact on global and local attitudes towards getting the jab.

He added that public groups like those monitored were often gateways to private groups which shared more radical and extreme content, suggesting the research captured just a small snapshot of the true extent of misinformation on Facebook.

“Public Facebook groups are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to track and tracing anti-vaxx and COVID-19 misinformation,” Cooper said.

“The real danger of rampant vaccine hesitancy and scientific scepticism is tucked away in algorithm-created bubbles of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, where ideas fester and spread, unseen and unchecked by mainstream conversation.”

Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.