According to a recent Pew Research Center report, nearly half of adults in the U.S. use Instagram. The social media platform is also popular with influencers who amass a large online following around a particular interest, like health and wellness. They can then leverage that popularity to profit from the sale of products and services they promote through their accounts.
But some influencers on Instagram are also profiting from the spread of misinformation, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Washington. The study looked at three Instagram influencers who spread vaccine misinformation with messaging that appealed to users with varying interests, from fashion to homeschooling. Those influencers posted content that linked to products such as essential oils they falsely claimed would cure colds, viruses and other ailments. Rachel Moran is the lead author of the study, a senior research scientist and an affiliate assistant professor at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. She joins us to share her findings.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Nearly half of adults in the U.S. are on Instagram these days, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. Many of them follow influencers with massive audiences, who leverage their popularity to make money by getting people to buy products or services. Some of those influencers are profiting as they spread misinformation. That is what researchers at the University of Washington looked into recently. They focused on three people who all pedal products connected to false information about COVID vaccines. Rachel Moran is the lead author of the study and a senior research scientist at UW’s Center for an Informed Public. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Rachel Moran: Thank you for having me.
Miller: What sparked your interest in studying the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation by influencers on Instagram?
Moran: We do a lot of research at the Center for an Informed Public about how people get their news and use this news information to make important decisions like getting vaccinated. And we’re particularly interested in alternative news sources like social media, that are becoming a part of everyone’s sort of daily informational habit. So that really sort of sparked our interest in looking in that direction. And we’ve spent a lot of time looking at anti-vaccine related misinformation. It happens that a lot of that is being spread on platforms like Instagram.
Miller: Not to hijack this conversation, but when you call them ‘alternative news sources,’ is that even the way that some of the users that are so heavily online, the way they would think about it? Or for them, is Instagram a primary news source or at least the primary place they would go to interact with news?
Moran: I think we consider it as sort of a primary source of many in our daily information diet. I mean, I’m sure we’ve had a similar experience when we’ve chatted with someone and say, ‘oh, I read this news article’ but really we’ve seen an Instagram post or a TikTok story and maybe pretended or forgotten the source of where it came from.
Miller: Yeah, some combination of pretending and forgetting.
For the study, you focused on three actual accounts and so as to not boost them even more, you did not tell the public what they were but you describe them with catchy titles. Can you describe the three genres that they represent?
Moran: Yeah, so the first one we call our ‘Conspiratorial Fashionista.’ She shares a lot of content around clothes and fashion as well as more conspiratorial content, whether that’s about vaccines, but also political conspiracies as well.
The second of our accounts we focused on, we nicknamed ‘the Wellness Homesteader,’ which is an increasingly popular type of content you see online about homesteading, owning your own small farm, and making your own food. And they really engage in conspiracy theories around government overreach, one of the reasons why they pull away and invest in homesteading.
And the third, we call that ‘Evangelical Mother,’ focusing a lot of content on motherhood and raising children, but also religious sharing around mostly Christianity.
Miller: How popular are the actual accounts that these nicknames refer to?
Moran: Each of them have followings in over the hundreds of thousands. And it’s also interesting that they operate multiple different accounts. Some of them are what they call backup accounts. So they feel like they’re going to get their main account taken down for contravening some of the rules of Instagram. And so they create these back ahead of time. Or others, they have these secondary accounts that might focus on a specific thing, for example, their daily farm life. So across all those different constellation of accounts, they usually have hundreds and thousands of followers.
Miller: Why did you focus on three women?
Moran: A lot of the vaccine-related misinformation that we had been following in a previous study had been focused particularly on women using tropes around motherhood and the responsibility of a parent in making decisions about vaccines. And because of that, a lot of the influencer accounts that we were focusing on were women themselves or identified as women. So for this particular study, we decided to take a deep dive on these three that we saw as operating in the same area, in terms of anti-vaccine content, but representing sort of different sides of Instagram with the other types of content they shared.
Miller: Was anti-vaccine messaging still a potent organizing theme for a brand or a social media fire hose in 2023? It’s a couple years, at this point, past the arrival of COVID vaccines?
Moran: Yes, we still see it as being a particularly persistent topic of conversation for these types of influencers. A lot of them are still interested in uncovering the origins of COVID and conspiracies around that. And as we continue to have these looking back, retrospective governmental investigations into the government response and other health organizations responses to the pandemic, it provides fodder for a lot of these influences to continue thinking and talking about vaccines on their accounts.
Miller: Can you help us understand the mechanism here? How do these three different accounts, which are examples of countless others, connect misinformation about the COVID vaccine with making money?
Moran: Yeah, so obviously they’re sharing a lot of content in a single day, especially using Instagram stories - the stories that disappear across 24 hours. So we might see someone sharing a whole array of content about their day, and the breakfast that they’re eating, and the new recipe that they have to share. And then potentially one of their kids is maybe getting ready for school and they’re sick and they say, ‘I’m not going to treat this with medicine. I’m going to treat it with this essential oil.’ And lo and behold on the next Instagram story, they’ll have a link that you can swipe up and go to a different website or a multilevel marketing company, where they’ll get a cut of the profit. If you also buy that essential oil. And a lot of the time then they’ll also attach that to alternative wellness values that are anti-vaccination. So you shouldn’t choose to get a vaccination for your child when you can just buy this product instead. ‘And luckily, I also offer a discount on this product if you buy it through my Amazon link,’ or something of the sort.
Miller: So essential oils are one example of a product. What are other products that you’ve seen?
Moran: A big one is this anti-metal antitoxin spray, which has not got any sort of scientific backing as to whether or not it works or what, to be honest, it concretely does. But that is a popular one. A big narrative within these communities is the importance of detoxifying your body from dangerous metals. And so the spray has been a particularly popular one of linking out towards that. And it’s also sold by a lot of these multilevel marketing companies where these influencers can act as representatives and get a cut of the profit when they advertise the anti-metal toxin spray.
Miller: What kinds of FDA rules, if any, govern what people can say on social media in terms of medical claims?
Moran: Not many. And it’s really hard to enforce such rules. So at the beginning of the pandemic the FDA did come out and say that these essential oil companies, especially, were not allowed to advertise their product as being a cure or a preventative for COVID. However, because of the multilevel sort of structure of a lot of these companies, the people who advertise them on social media are not employees of that company but independent contractors. So they’re not really subject to the same sorts of rules. So there exists then this loophole where people can take advantage of being able to say whatever they want, regardless of whether or not there are rules around it, and link it to anti-vaccine or to health related misinformation more broadly.
Miller: Quacks sold what were known as patent medicines more than 100 years ago. Celebrities have made money from endorsing dubious products or services for a very long time. Is there something different, do you think, about people using social media to do the same thing?
Moran: I think it’s just a new iteration of generations old snake oil. Now anyone can build a following on social media and leverage it in order to make money. And it’s not really attached to any sort of credibility that’s based on training or a job that they have. And instead we link a lot of it to what we call ‘parasocial trust.’ So para- social trust is this idea that we can build a one-sided relationship with the people that we follow online because we have such access to them, because they’re putting out much content every day, means that when they advertise a pair of leggings, we want to buy those leggings.
But also if they say something that is misinformation, we’re less likely to question it because we’ve built up that relationship. So I think that that is the newness to it. This idea that you can use technology to build trust on such a huge scale. And that trust is not really linked to your professional credibility or experience, but just to the fact that you’re online and very accessible.
Miller: What do you see as a craft here of the more successful influencers? I mean, what do they actively do to strengthen that sense of a parasocial relationship?
Moran: At least for the ones that we focus on, because as we talked about, they’re mostly women and mostly mothers. They use that as a way to leverage credibility, in that they are mothers, this is what they do, they care deeply about their children. And obviously you, as a parent, do too so we have that in common. So there’s rapport building just based on the fact that they are mothers and care deeply about the health and safety of their children.
Miller: How much time do you think you personally spent watching videos or taking in the content created by these three women?
Moran: I would hate to add it up. I think it would be extremely concerning. We spent about four months at the beginning of the year and then four months at the end of the year, a team of us watching this content every single day. And as professional influencers, these accounts put out a lot of content. So hours and hours of videos and Instagram posts we’re viewing just for this one study.
Miller: So I ask because apropos of that, the question about their skill in fostering a parasocial relationship - meaning a relationship, as you said, where it’s truly one sided, but it feels like it’s an actual relationship. I’m wondering to what extent you felt like you were sucked in yourself? Not necessarily saying, you know what, I’m going to buy this anti metal spray because I believe it’s going to work, but sucked into the overall world that they were creating and the sense that this is just a cool woman who was a part of your life. Did you feel that ever?
Moran: Yeah, absolutely. We talk about it a lot in this research space because we spend so much time consuming this content. And no one person is uniquely vulnerable or protected from misinformation. We’re all exposed to it in similar ways. And I have to say myself, consuming this content day in and day out, I do end up questioning particularly. My research expertise is not in vaccines themselves, but in the information around vaccines.
I’m very lucky that I have access to fantastic researchers here at the UW that I can do a check on things if I see something and it has a red flag around it. I can ask someone with that scientific expertise. We don’t all have access to that. So I can absolutely understand why it is so compelling. And I do have to every so often sort of take a step back and talk to my colleagues who are also doing this research about things I’ve seen and how I might be questioning whether or not it’s true or not.
Miller: I don’t know that the answer to this question matters, but I am curious about it. Do you think that these influencers are true believers, in other words, believe what they’re saying, believe in what they’re selling? Or do you see them as cynical hucksters?
Moran: It’s so hard to disentangle, you know. I think there has got to be a lot of genuine belief behind it in order to be able to spend so much time. And even though there is this economic pull with the ability to make money, people do end up losing a lot of relationships because of their belief in this more extreme or conspiratorial rhetoric. So it does require, I think, a sense of commitment that it does show us that there must be some genuine belief.
I think as I spend a lot more time here and in the space and become more cynical, I am also aware of the fact that there is a way to make money. And as the influencer economy grows even bigger and the amount of products we can sell grows even more plentiful, sometimes it might just be someone who’s out to make a quick buck.
Miller: What about the platforms themselves? Do you have a sense for the extent to which Instagram, in particular in this case, is aware of the misinformation that is being spread and promoted by their account holders?
Moran: I think they’re obviously aware. During the pandemic, there were a lot more community guidelines that platforms like Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, put out around the kind of content you’re allowed to share around COVID and COVID related vaccines. However, they’ve been rolling that back in the past year or so. And so we’re not seeing content moderation around conspiracy theories. And we’re not seeing as many of those flags that were once put on content around COVID-19 related information. So they’re aware that it’s out there. Whether or not there is a motivation for them to act on it is a different question.
Miller: Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court held oral arguments in a case that’s very tied to what we’re talking about here. The question was complicated but it was, in a sense, whether or not the federal government should be able to ask, to suggest, to tech companies that they restrict the different kinds of misinformation on social media. We don’t know yet how the justices will respond. But they seem to have been skeptical of some of the states saying ‘no, the federal government cannot do this.’ What’s it about to you from those oral arguments?
Moran: It’s such a complicated debate and there is very real concern of the potential for censorship if we allow collaboration like that to occur. But in a time of national crisis, in the time of a pandemic, it is in the interest of the government to make sure that good information is getting out there, and that dangerous conspiracy theories are at least labeled as such. So people can make informed decisions about what they need to do for the health of themselves and the health of their community. So I think there’s very strong arguments on both sides. But I think it does speak to an overall need to consider the power and the strength that these platforms have and whether or not we need to be addressing more comprehensive reform when it comes to social media.
Miller: The stakes of political misinformation are obviously really high. It is the future of our democracy. What do you see as what’s at stake in snake oil sales?
Moran: I think in general it’s trust in our institutions and trust in our ability to detect whether information is true or not. As we come into an election year, in particular, we want to make sure that we have faith in the results of our election being fair. And if we don’t have that trust in those election systems, if that’s undermined by the spread of misinformation, then that is really dangerous for our democracy.
And on an individual level, it’s really disheartening and it really leads people to despondency to think that they have no idea whether the information they read is true or not, and no skills to be able to detect between the two of them. So there is a lot at stake generally. But there’s particularly a lot this year as we head into the election.
Miller: What are you expecting the next eight months of online life to be like?
Moran: Chaos, as usual. I think we’re expecting a lot of the same sort of misinformation threads that we see every election, whether that’s around people voting twice or dead people or people with dogs voting, these usual conspiracy theories and pieces of misinformation and rumor that crop up. But there’s also a lot of doubt over how the platforms will respond in this election cycle. They’re hopefully going to be under scrutiny, whether that’s public scrutiny from journalists and the general public or governmental scrutiny to make sure that they’re doing everything they can to keep that faith in the election and spread good information about how voting is happening, how you can vote and the results of the election when they come out.
Miller: Just before we say goodbye, to go back to the central challenge here. With these parasocial relationships and with really effective communicators who become a version of a trusted friend or family member, and assuming that Meta and Instagram are not all of a sudden going to crack down on content that they’re also benefiting from financially, what is your message to people who are happily following these influencers?
Moran: In many ways, these parasocial relationships can be incredibly powerful and a positive force for people in their lives. There’s things that you can learn on social media and learn from others that you wouldn’t be able to, if you didn’t build those relationships, if you didn’t follow these accounts. But I think we tend to look to Instagram at the pace of entertainment, even though we know increasingly people are using it as a source of news and a place to share news themselves.
So I think we just need to enter that space with a bit more of a critical mindset and just question. I like this person’s content because they share great recipes that I like to try myself. But do they have the right credibility to share this information about what’s in vaccines? [Let’s] make sure that we’re not just blindly trusting someone, as a whole, because we like their vibe or what they’ve curated as their vibe on Instagram.
Miller: Rachel Moran, thanks very much.
Moran: Thank you.
Miller: Rachel Moran is a senior research scientist at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington.
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