When we complain that "social media" are the root cause of the new wave of dis/misinformation, we usually mean Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and so on. Pushed by social outrage, most of these are belatedly making at least some moves to deal with misinformation. However, currently the most significant purveyor of vaccine misinformation
promoting vaccine hesitancy is Amazon. When you type "Vaccine" into the search field, the first ten books that come up are antivaxx. And what is Amazon doing about it? Apparently nothing.
It is therefore imperative that the world's largest bookstore gets the message as well. Someone reading and accepting as true a book of vaccine imisinformation is likely to turn into an antivaxx super-spreader. The damage to public health is therefore likely to be worse than that caused by a simple rumour. It's time to get a petition going.
Chris
Chris Zielinski
chris@chriszielinski.com
Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and
http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com
Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net
HIFA profile: Chris Zielinski: As a Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Global Health, Chris leads the Partnerships in Health Information (Phi) programme at the University of Winchester. Formerly an NGO, Phi supports knowledge development and brokers healthcare information exchanges of all kinds. Chris has held senior positions in publishing and knowledge management with WHO in Brazzaville, Geneva, Cairo and New Delhi, with FAO in Rome, ILO in Geneva, and UNIDO in Vienna. Chris also spent three years in London as Chief Executive of the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. He was the founder of the ExtraMED project (Third World biomedical journals on CD-ROM), and managed the Gates Foundation-supported Health Information Resource Centres project. He served on WHO’s Ethical Review Committee, and was an originator of the African Health Observatory. Chris has been a director of the World Association of Medical Editors, UK Copyright Licensing Agency, Educational Recording Agency, and International Association of Audiovisual Writers and Directors. He has served on the boards of several NGOs and ethics groupings (information and computer ethics and bioethics). UK-based, he is also building houses in Zambia. chris AT chriszielinski.com
His publications are at www.ResearchGate.net and https://winchester.academia.edu/ChrisZielinski/ and his blogs are http://ziggytheblue.wordrpress.com and https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ziggytheblue
