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An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion

BACKGROUND: The rise of social media proved to be a fertile ground for the expansion of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-denialist movement (in the form of online communities). While there is substantial literature devoted to disproving AIDS-denialist views, there is a lack of studies...

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Autores principales: Meylakhs, Peter, Rykov, Yuri, Koltsova, Olessia, Koltsov, Sergey
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications Inc. 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4260080/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25403351
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.3338
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author Meylakhs, Peter
Rykov, Yuri
Koltsova, Olessia
Koltsov, Sergey
author_facet Meylakhs, Peter
Rykov, Yuri
Koltsova, Olessia
Koltsov, Sergey
author_sort Meylakhs, Peter
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The rise of social media proved to be a fertile ground for the expansion of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-denialist movement (in the form of online communities). While there is substantial literature devoted to disproving AIDS-denialist views, there is a lack of studies exploring AIDS-denialists online communities that interact with an external environment. OBJECTIVE: We explored three research areas: (1) reasons for newcomers to come to an AIDS-denialist community, (2) the patterns of interactions of the community with the newcomers, and (3) rhetorical strategies that denialists use for persuasion in the veracity of their views. METHODS: We studied the largest AIDS-denialist community on one of the most popular social networking services in Russia. We used netnography as a method for collecting data for qualitative analysis and observed the community for 9 months (at least 2-3 times a week). While doing netnography, we periodically downloaded community discussions. In total, we downloaded 4821 posts and comments for analysis. Grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. RESULTS: Most users came to the community for the following reasons: their stories did not fit the unitary picture of AIDS disease progression translated by popular medical discourse, health problems, concern about HIV-positive tests, and desire to dissuade community members from false AIDS beliefs. On the basis of strength in AIDS-denialist beliefs, we constructed a typology of the newcomers consisting of three ideal-typical groups: (1) convinced: those who already had become denialists before coming to the group, (2) doubters: those who were undecided about the truth of either human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) science theory or AIDS-denialist theory, and (3) orthodox: those who openly held HIV science views. Reception of a newcomer mainly depended on the newcomer’s belief status. Reception was very warm for the convinced, cold or slightly hostile for the doubters, and extremely hostile or derisive for the orthodox. We identified seven main rhetorical strategies of persuasion used by the denialists on the “undecided”. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to the widespread public health depiction of AIDS denialists as totally irrational, our study suggests that some of those who become AIDS denialists have sufficiently reasonable grounds to suspect that “something is wrong” with scientific theory, because their personal experience contradicts the unitary picture of AIDS disease progression. Odd and inexplicable practices of some AIDS centers only fuel these people’s suspicions. We can conclude that public health practitioners’ practices may play a role in generating AIDS-denialist sentiments. In interactions with the newcomers, the experienced community members highlighted the importance of personal autonomy and freedom of choice in decision making consistent with the consumerist ideology of health care. The study findings suggest that health care workers should change a one-size-fits-all mode of counseling for a more complex and patient-tailored approach, allowing for diversity of disease progression scenarios and scientific uncertainty.
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spelling pubmed-42600802014-12-10 An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion Meylakhs, Peter Rykov, Yuri Koltsova, Olessia Koltsov, Sergey J Med Internet Res Original Paper BACKGROUND: The rise of social media proved to be a fertile ground for the expansion of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-denialist movement (in the form of online communities). While there is substantial literature devoted to disproving AIDS-denialist views, there is a lack of studies exploring AIDS-denialists online communities that interact with an external environment. OBJECTIVE: We explored three research areas: (1) reasons for newcomers to come to an AIDS-denialist community, (2) the patterns of interactions of the community with the newcomers, and (3) rhetorical strategies that denialists use for persuasion in the veracity of their views. METHODS: We studied the largest AIDS-denialist community on one of the most popular social networking services in Russia. We used netnography as a method for collecting data for qualitative analysis and observed the community for 9 months (at least 2-3 times a week). While doing netnography, we periodically downloaded community discussions. In total, we downloaded 4821 posts and comments for analysis. Grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. RESULTS: Most users came to the community for the following reasons: their stories did not fit the unitary picture of AIDS disease progression translated by popular medical discourse, health problems, concern about HIV-positive tests, and desire to dissuade community members from false AIDS beliefs. On the basis of strength in AIDS-denialist beliefs, we constructed a typology of the newcomers consisting of three ideal-typical groups: (1) convinced: those who already had become denialists before coming to the group, (2) doubters: those who were undecided about the truth of either human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) science theory or AIDS-denialist theory, and (3) orthodox: those who openly held HIV science views. Reception of a newcomer mainly depended on the newcomer’s belief status. Reception was very warm for the convinced, cold or slightly hostile for the doubters, and extremely hostile or derisive for the orthodox. We identified seven main rhetorical strategies of persuasion used by the denialists on the “undecided”. CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to the widespread public health depiction of AIDS denialists as totally irrational, our study suggests that some of those who become AIDS denialists have sufficiently reasonable grounds to suspect that “something is wrong” with scientific theory, because their personal experience contradicts the unitary picture of AIDS disease progression. Odd and inexplicable practices of some AIDS centers only fuel these people’s suspicions. We can conclude that public health practitioners’ practices may play a role in generating AIDS-denialist sentiments. In interactions with the newcomers, the experienced community members highlighted the importance of personal autonomy and freedom of choice in decision making consistent with the consumerist ideology of health care. The study findings suggest that health care workers should change a one-size-fits-all mode of counseling for a more complex and patient-tailored approach, allowing for diversity of disease progression scenarios and scientific uncertainty. JMIR Publications Inc. 2014-11-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4260080/ /pubmed/25403351 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.3338 Text en ©Peter Meylakhs, Yuri Rykov, Olessia Koltsova, Sergey Koltsov. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 17.11.2014. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Meylakhs, Peter
Rykov, Yuri
Koltsova, Olessia
Koltsov, Sergey
An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion
title An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion
title_full An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion
title_fullStr An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion
title_full_unstemmed An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion
title_short An AIDS-Denialist Online Community on a Russian Social Networking Service: Patterns of Interactions With Newcomers and Rhetorical Strategies of Persuasion
title_sort aids-denialist online community on a russian social networking service: patterns of interactions with newcomers and rhetorical strategies of persuasion
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4260080/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25403351
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/jmir.3338
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