MENA Monitor: Arabic COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Online

Authors: Ciarán O’Connor and Moustafa Ayad
Published: 9 April 2021

This report is part of an ongoing series examining COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on Facebook in countries and regions across the world. This edition, focusing on Arabic-language communities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) throughout January and February 2021, represents a landmark report in the series.

By tracing a handful of anti-vaccination pages on Facebook, researchers found an elaborate network of non-exisent think tanks, vaccination watchdogs, and antisemitic, conspiracy-laden YouTube channels with hundreds of thousands of followers.

This report builds on previous reports examining COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, which you can find on the Digital Dispatches section of the ISD website.