Anti-vax truthiness: How social media echo chambers reinforce anti-vax beliefs in parents

In what are increasingly called ‘post truth’ times, it is suggested people are unable to separate fact from fiction. Where newspaper articles are lamenting ‘fake news’ (Smith, 2016) and suggesting ‘Facebook is Radicalizing You’ (Boderick, 2016), there is an emphasis on the ways new media and web 2.0 act as echo-chambers, reinforcing already held biases. In this chapter, I explore a social media post from an open, anti- vax Facebook group. Using a version of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1992), I explore how these posts construct subject positions and social identities for the families who vaccinate and those who do not. Further, I examine how these sites construct social relationships and systems of knowledge and belief. The chapter’s findings suggest that, in order to engage positively with vaccine refusers, public health officials need to understand how these sites’ posts reinforce the echo-chamber of parents’ fears of vaccinations.