The spread of misinformation online is a devastating problem all around the world. The anti-vaccine movement is an interesting place to dig in to understand how this problem operates. We’ve put together a reading list to help educate so you are better equipped to spot misinformation online - on any issue - and fight back against it.

Here is our reading list:

How Does Misinformation Spread?

• Of virality and viruses: The anti-vaccine movement and social media
  Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
• How Facebook and YouTube help spread anti-vaxxer propaganda
  The Guardian
• Fake News: What is it and how to spot it
  World Economic Forum
• The spread of true and false news online
  Science

Who Is Spreading Misinformation and Why?

• The Complexity of Simply Searching for Medical Advice
  Wired
• When Vaccines Go Viral: An Analysis of HPV Vaccine Coverage on YouTube
  Journal Health Communications
• Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Why Is It so Hard to Stop the Spread of Misinformation?

• The biggest pandemic risk? Viral Misinformation
  Nature
• Instagram will begin blocking hashtags that return anti-vaccination misinformation
  The Verge
• Fake news works because we yearn to conform
  Pacific Standard

What Can We All Do About It?

• How to Inoculate Against Anti-Vaxxers
  New York Times
• Tips for Spotting Misinformation
  Harvard University
• Could this be the solution to stop the spread of fake news?
  MIT News

Ask Renée DiResta--Mozilla Fellow on Misinformation--Your Misinformation Questions:

If you have any more questions about misinformation online, Renée DiResta has agreed to answer questions submitted. Please submit a question. We will share her answers to your question back out in the next couple of weeks.

As internet citizens, we all bear some responsibility to learn how to spot misinformation, report it, and make sure we, ourselves, aren’t spreading it. However, as Renée DiResta, Wired writer, Mozilla Fellow and expert on the spread of misinformation in the anti-vaccination movement points out, responsibility for deterring the spread of misinformation online also lies at the feet of the internet platforms--Facebook, YouTube, Google, Twitter, etc--that allow misinformation to spread so far and wide. We should all educate ourselves on this issue.