The viral spread of misinformationHow one tweet started an...

The viral spread of misinformation

How one tweet started an avalanche of rumour and fake news

Nicholls regrets making the post. She posted an explanation on Twitter saying the original tweet would remain down until she had “further info.”

It was all too little too late. By then Nicholls’ original post had found its way to some of the most rabid anti-vax activists in the country.

This has become a textbook case of how misinformation is created and how it becomes conflated and established as fact in the anti-vax world. Nicholls’ qualifying tweet was virtually ignored.

The drums were beating in the anti-vax social media sphere. There would be no let up for Tom’s family, for his mates, and for the school.

Any qualification that Nicholls had made initially had disappeared in the anti-vax world. A Sydney based anti-lockdown and anti-vax activist showed no circumspection. According to him Tom had died from Pfizer vaccine as had the other two unknown teens.

His followers who number in the thousands demanded answers, undertook intrusive internet searches and finally as of Wednesday morning, started calling the school, sending emails to Mr Couani, including some faux legal nonsense insisting the principal and the school “cease and desist” from making any claim that Tom had not been vaccinated.

Tom Van Dijk’s death has been seized on by anti-vaxxers.

Other anti-vaxxers linked to a former Melbourne based solicitor, struck off earlier this year, did the same. Facebook accounts of anti-vaxxers went into overdrive, exhorting followers to contact the school to badger and harass people already shocked and grieving.

As I write this, I am unaware of any direct contact from anti-vaxxers with the family, but if it hasn’t yet happened, it almost certainly will.

The sense of entitlement is almost unimaginable, the amorality staggering. This is a form of emotional terrorism, and it speaks of a new battleground in anti-vax activism.

By the way, those two phantom deaths almost mentioned as an afterthought were a concoction, another fabrication. As best I can tell those awful lies came from Info-Wars, the American far right conspiracy theory fake news web site run by Alex Jones.