New report warns of misinformation when abortion makes news
Trending topic can cause bad actors to manipulate social media users
A new research report indicates that misinformation will likely rise exponentially when abortion makes headlines.
A Meedan analysis of social media data surrounding the two monumental Supreme Court events in the summer of 2022 found that the May leak and June decision were both associated with increases in misinformation online. Over the course of three months, Meedan sorted through thousands of Twitter posts to identify conversations about abortion in May and June 2022. Researchers closely reviewed the information in 400 of the posts to understand the evolving online narratives. There are a lot of significant implications, according to Jenna Sherman, Program Manager for Meedan's Digital Health Lab.
“Mainly about how platforms need to be more prepared for big news events and be proactive and how they address misinformation and false information,” Sherman said.
Three specific topics associated with abortion misinformation spiked and then dropped in the days following the events of June 2022.4 Two of those three topics also spiked following the May leak. For our work examining these three topics, we analyzed every original tweet we found that contained key phrases. These topics were “herbal abortion”, “abortion pill reversal,” and “chemical abortion.”
The first term that spiked, “herbal abortion,” is a term often used to describe different false and harmful ways to induce abortion using herbs and plants. There are no herbs or tonics that can safely cause an abortion. Their analysis shows that the use of the term—and misinformation using it—increased after the Supreme Court decision.
“Abortion pill reversal,” another high-risk term that includes misinformation online about life-threatening methods for reversing an abortion, also increased after the decision.
“Chemical abortion” is a proxy for abortion misinformation because of its association with false claims that put people at risk of avoiding the use of medication abortion when they might otherwise want or need it.
A lot of the posts were about how abortion is never lifesaving, a medically inaccurate statement. Many dealt with beliefs about controlling the population of poor and black people.
Sherman and her fellow staff didn’t differentiate between those who spread the information intentionally and those who did it unwittingly. Sherman suspects that much of it comes from people seeking to undermine the abortion rights movement.
“A lot of people are spreading this substandard and false information unintentionally,” Sherman said. “But many of the narratives are being started by and spread by anti-abortion bad actors who have a stake in spreading these myths, fear-mongering and putting out confusing and in many cases, factually inaccurate content about abortion.”