Over at Wired, Renee Diresta and Gilad Lotan have posted an excellent bit of data visualization revealing patterns in the online anti-vaccine campaign against California’s SB-277, legislation designed to tamp down a resurgence of avoidable outbreaks by eliminating the “philosophical opt-out” provision from state law.
The visualization allows us to see several distinct communities based on strength of interconnectivity, emegent clusters which the authors have labeled “autism,” “antivax,” and “vaccine choice.” Most disturbingly of all, “there is no offsetting pro-vaccine Twitter machine,” presumably because the scientific skeptic community is busy trolling itself.
Probably now is a good time to get involved, especially if you live in California.
