Vaccination opponents on the net: public opinion campaigns with online surveys

research by tagesschau.de show how online surveys should be manipulated. Opponents of vaccination specifically call for mass voting in surveys by major media. Apparently with great success.

At the end of January, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ) started a survey on a possible vaccination requirement in Germany for an online article. “No, absolutely not” answered more than 65 percent of the participants – a result that differs significantly from representative surveys, according to which the majority supports compulsory vaccination for adults.

Many online media use surveys to get an impression of the mood of their readership on current topics. But the results should be treated with caution. On Telegram and Facebook, there are daily calls to influence surveys in their own interest in order to simulate a majority. Calls to participate in certain surveys can give the impression that a large majority of the population rejects Covid-19 vaccinations.

Mobilization via Telegram

On Telegram, vaccination-critical channels call for participation in the “FAZ” survey mentioned. The call for participation was viewed more than 8,000 times on just one channel that “publishes all known surveys from the mainstream media,” as the self-description says.

The channel provides the almost 6,000 subscribers with surveys via a link – mostly on corona topics – from “Bild”, “Spiegel”, “Stern”, “FAZ”, “tagesspiegel”, “t-online”, “Frankfurter Rundschau” among others. , RTL, n-tv and various regional newspapers.

Views seem to have an effect

The views in the channel look for evaluations by tagesschau.de up to 500,000 users on Telegram; the reach depends on whether major channels spread it further. The views sometimes lead to surveys being taken offline. This is what happened with the “Münchner Merkur” in March had started a survey on a “conference lockdown”. and took her offline after alleged interference.

A federal executive of the “lateral thinker” party “Die Basis” shared the survey with the instructions “please all participate” and “share very diligently”. Within a few hours, more than 440,000 people had seen his call, and more than 50,000 voted against the ban on assemblies. However, it is not possible to determine how many of them can be traced back to this and other calls to the survey on other Telegram channels.

The results of an online survey also surprised “stern tv”. The January 19 show discussed compulsory vaccination while asking viewers to give their opinion online. Within a very short time, several references to the survey were posted in a Telegram group.

With around 88,000 participants, more than 60 percent were against compulsory vaccination. The moderator pointed out that the shares had changed massively over the course of the voting period and expressed the suspicion of manipulation. The survey was then deleted and a new one started. But that didn’t go unnoticed by Telegram either – again it came to the conclusion that two-thirds reject compulsory vaccination.

Surveys are not only carried out on websites, but also in social networks such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, mood pictures are queried in tweets or stories, which in turn are shared in Telegram channels. For example, there are calls “for everyone with an Instagram account” to surveys on compulsory vaccination in stories daily News or to participate in the SPD.

System should sound the alarm

Most of the major online media use a provider for their surveys that provides the tools – many of them the Berlin tech start-up “opinary”. Co-founder Pia Frey explains that the system “filters out an average of around 500 votes per day that are classified as ‘fraud’ – i.e. there is a confirmed suspicion of manipulation”.

The system raises the alarm if “multiple votes are registered from an IP address, a noticeable change in the mood takes place in a relatively short period of time, or we record an above-average number of votes in a survey”.

“Extreme opinions often overrepresented”

Although it is also pointed out that some online surveys are not representative, the results are sometimes taken up in editorial articles.

“A key feature of high-quality samples is that self-recruitment is ruled out,” explains Nico Siegel, Managing Director of the opinion research institute infratest dimap. However, if this possibility is given, for example if you can take part in the survey via a link, this leads to “uncorrectable distortions of the results”. On the one hand, this could be a gateway for manipulation, on the other hand, according to Siegel, participation is often based on a special motive – for example, a particularly strong interest in a topic. As a result, extreme opinions are often overrepresented.

“Presentation of an outraged public”

Online media face a dilemma here, since the lively participation in the surveys naturally gives them plenty of clicks, which is “good for advertisers and the publisher, but bad for society,” explains Josef Holnburger from the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS).

By influencing the results, it is suggested that this is the opinion of the majority of society, even if this does not correspond to reality, warns the political scientist. Holnburger speaks of an attempt to “stag an outraged public”.