Opponents of vaccinations are using YouTube, FaceBook and other internet social networks to promote their views that vaccines are dangerous, says a research letter published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Public health officials need to understand the impact these efforts can have on universal vaccination campaigns and find ways to counter this dangerous trend, said researchers from the University of Toronto and York University in Canada, the CP reported.
"This is their new strategy for communicating," said senior author Dr. Kumanan Wilson, an internal medicine specialist and public health policy researcher.
"These people believe their viewpoint is not being aired in public. They believe that they are being shut out of the discourse and they want to get their viewpoint out. And this is their way of creating commercials for their viewpoints."
Wilson said vaccination opponents are putting a lot of effort into using internet social networks to promote their opinions.
"And other people ... just from the view counts and the ratings, are coming on and wanting to find out more about these viewpoints. Their videos are being viewed and rated highly," Wilson said.
Editors opinion:
"Instead of criticizing this phenomenon, the healthcare industry should cease the opportunity to start promoting social networks among their peers themselves. The industry can really benefit from the more efficient, more targeted and better accessible forms of communication.
Also, if they want to grab the attention of many for certain important health care related messages to the public, social networks are one of the better and fastest ways of doing that.
It's about time that the industry moves away from their good old ancient faxes and starts adopting today's ways of communication"
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