In theory, universities should offer an environment for robust scholarly debates on scientific controversies. In contrast, dissident scholars experience scientific suppression driven by the overlapping interests of orthodox academics, embedded media and their business funders. Their collaboration creates the negative phenomenon of ‘undone science’, where research into promising interventions is prevented or suppressed.

This is evident in the lack of debate in universities around Insulin Resistance versus the orthodox “cholesterol” model of chronic disease development. It is also obvious in how effective, but inexpensive, COVID-19 preventative treatments have been ignored in favor of costly, but largely ineffective, mRNA inoculations.

Increased public visibility on social media has many risks. This theme tackles two major concerns:

1. Professor Noakes and Travis have defined how Higher Education scholars negotiate ‘online academic bullying’ when they face ‘excessive, one-sided critiques online, surpassing the confines of typical scholarly debate and accepted standards within their respective fields’ (2021). In response to the gravity of this negative phenomenon, TNF supports research into a definitive OAB framework’s development. It is hoped that this can assist decision makers with reducing academic cyberbullying.

2. Well-known health experts’ identities are also stolen for fake celebrity endorsement of “keto gummies” and other scams. In response to the identity jacking of Professor Noakes, TNF launched reportfakeendorsement.com to grow awareness of this decade-long cybercrime. Scholars are currently researching what makes fake celebrity endorsements a seemingly intractable problem, and how the biggest social media companies have responded to celebrities’ complaints.

The Noakes Foundation is a founder sponsor of the Social Media and Internet Lab for Research (SMILR), which is based at Younglings Africa (YA). SMILR supports the post-graduate research pipeline with affordable data extraction by YA interns learning to do this via X (formerly Twitter), for Masters and PhD research projects. SMILR is being used by CPUT PhD candidate, Pinky Motshware, who is researching the historic cyber harassment of black male South African celebrities on Twitter (now X).

Each experienced a life-changing outcome as a consequence of such harassment. In the long term, this theme intends to develop a case study for a successful sustainable site that supports small data research projects for the digital humanities and it was founded in 2021

A blind spot exists in scholarship regarding the use of non-consensual persuasion techniques for promoting experimental treatments. Drawing upon a conceptual framework that distinguishes between consensual and non-consensual organisation persuasive communication (OPC) this paper shows how deceptive messaging, incentivization and coercion meant that consent to take the COVID-19 vaccine was not fully informed nor freely given. Specifically, in South Africa, people were incentivized through financial inducements, coerced by employment policies involving mandatory testing and, in the case of pregnant women, misled by inaccurate claims regarding mRNA vaccine safety. In addition, key definitional changes to what was meant by a ‘vaccine’ and a ‘pandemic’ enabled the rapid roll out and promotion of genetic vaccines, including Pfizer’s BioNTech Comirnaty®. The case study findings highlight how health campaigns can involve persuasion strategies that are non-consensual. It is particularly concerning that strategies involving incentivization ran alongside misleading claims regarding vaccine safety for pregnant women. The wider question raised by the study relates to whether non-consensual strategies emerged due to overzealous drives to protect the wider public good or are more accurately understood to have been influenced by political and economic interests. More research is needed into this important question.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has established a public research agenda to address infodemics. In these, ‘an overflow of information of varying quality surges across digital and physical environments’. The WHO’s expert panel has raised concerns that this can result in negative health behaviours and erosion of trust in health authorities and public health responses. In sponsoring this agenda, the WHO positioned itself as a custodian that can flag illegitimate

narratives (misinformation), the spread of which can potentially result in societal harm. Such ‘post-truth’ moments are rife with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health emergency. It provides an opportunity for researchers to analyse divisions in knowledge labour, which can help explain when ‘post-truth’ moments arrive. The first COVID-19 example for this division foregrounds the development of knowledge in an academic context. Added to this is the infodemic or disinfodemic research agenda and personal health responsibility, whose academic contributors are similar. In contrast, the division of labour for messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine research foregrounds the role of vaccine manufacturing pharmaceutical companies in driving and promoting related knowledge production. 

Transdisciplinary Contribution: This analysis focuses on intergroup contradictions between the interests of agencies and their contrasting goals and across different types of knowledge division. Many intergroup contradictions exist, and a few intergroup examples are also described. An overarching contradiction was identified where rushed guidance based on weak evidence from international health organisations may well perpetuate negative health and other societal outcomes rather than ameliorate them.

Big Data communication researchers have highlighted the need for qualitative analysis of online science conversations to better understand their meaning. However, a scholarly gap exists in exploring how qualitative methods can be applied to small data regarding micro-bloggers’ communications about science articles. While social media attention assists with article dissemination, qualitative research into the associated microblogging practices remains limited. To address these gaps, this study explores how qualitative analysis can enhance science communication studies on microblogging articles. Calls for such qualitative approaches are supported by a practical example: an interdisciplinary team applied mixed methods to better understand the promotion of an unorthodox but popular science article on Twitter over a 2-year period.

While Big Data studies typically identify patterns in microbloggers’ activities from large data sets, this study demonstrates the value of integrating qualitative analysis to deepen understanding of these interactions. In this study, a small data set was analyzed using NVivo™ by a pragmatist and MAXQDA™ by a statistician. The pragmatist’s multimodal content analysis found that health professionals shared links to the article, with its popularity tied to its role as a communication event within a longstanding debate in the health sciences. Dissident professionals used this article to support an emergent paradigm. The analysis also uncovered practices, such as language localization, where a title was translated from English to Spanish to reach broader audiences. A semantic network analysis confirmed that terms used by the article’s tweeters strongly aligned with its content, and the discussion was notably pro-social. Meta-inferences were then drawn by integrating the findings from the two methods. These flagged the significance of contextualizing the sharing of a health science article in relation to tweeters’ professional identities and their stances on health-related issues.

In addition, meta-critiques highlighted challenges in preparing accurate tweet data and analyzing them using qualitative data analysis software. These findings highlight the valuable contributions that qualitative research can make to research involving microblogging data in science communication. Future research could critique this approach or further explore the microblogging of key articles within important scientific debates.

Qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) packages that support live data extraction are a relatively recent innovation. Little has been written concerning the research implications of differences in such QDAS packages’ functionalities, and how such disparities might contribute to contrasting analytical opportunities. Consequently, early-stage researchers may experience difficulties in choosing an apt QDAS for Twitter analysis. In response to both methodological gaps, this paper presents a software comparison across the four QDAS tools that support live Twitter data imports, namely, ATLAS.ti™, NVivo™, MAXQDA™ and QDA Miner™. The authors’ QDAS features checklist for these tools spotlights many differences in their functionalities. These disparities were tested through data imports and thematic coding that was derived from the same queries and codebook. The authors’ resultant QDAS experiences were compared during the first activity of a broad qualitative analysis process, ‘organising data’. Notwithstanding large difference in QDAS pricing, it was surprising how much the tools varied for aspects of qualitative research organisation. Notably, the quantum of data extracted for the same query differed, largely due to contrasts in the types and amount of data that the four QDAS could extract. Variations in how each supported visual organisation also shaped researchers’ opportunities for becoming familiar with Twitter users and their tweet content. Such disparities suggest that choosing a suitable QDAS for organising live Twitter data must dovetail with a researcher’s focus: ATLAS.ti accommodates scholars focused on wrangling unstructured data for personal meaning-making, while MAXQDA suits the mixed-methods researcher. QDA Miner’s easy-to-learn user interface suits a highly efficient implementation of methods, whilst NVivo supports relatively rapid analysis of tweet content. Such findings may help guide Twitter social science researchers and others in QDAS tool selection. Future research can explore disparities in other qualitative research phases, or contrast data extraction routes for a variety of microblogging services.

The shift of academic discourse to an online space without guardians gives motivated academic cyberbullies an opportunity to harass susceptible recipients. Cyberbullying by higher education employees is a neglected phenomenon; despite the dangers it poses to academic free speech as well as other negative outcomes. In the absence of an adequate definition for Online Academic Bullying (OAB) as a surfacing threat, its’ targets cannot readily gauge its severity or confidently report that they are victims. Nor do their attackers have a reference point for understanding and, perhaps, correcting their own incivility. To remedy this, we propose an analytical framework grounded in Routine Activity Theory (RAT) that can serve as an appropriate reporting instrument. The OABRAT framework is illustrated with an Emeritus Professor’s case and the varied examples of cyber harassment that he experienced. This scientific influencer was relentlessly attacked on social media platforms by varied academics for expressing contrarian, but evidence-based, opinions. Spotlighting OAB’s distinctive attacks should raise awareness amongst researchers and institutional policy makers. The reporting instrument may further assist with identifying and confronting this threat. This article also flags ethical concerns related to dissident scholars’ usage of online platforms for informal, public debates. Such scholars may face an asymmetrical challenge in confronting cyber harassment from hypercritical academics and cybermobs on poorly moderated platforms. Universities should therefor consider appropriate countermeasures to protect both the public and their employees against victimisation by academic cyberbullies.

Globally, social media has seen a significant rise in online impersonation and advertising fraud; yet research on the experiences of cybervictims directly impacted by these digital crimes remains underdeveloped. In a global Southern context, such as South Africa, characterised by the rapidly evolving presence of celebrity influencers in digital spaces, understanding the meanings and ‘risk’ attached to cybervictimisation is paramount. To develop this neglected body of scholarship, this paper spotlights the cybervictimisation experiences of three South Africans celebrity influencers whose reputations were brandjacked for fake endorsements in social media adverts. The paper offers in-depth engagement with their lived experiences as cybervictims of identity and brand fraud, and the victimisation of followers scammed by fake endorsements. Following an interpretative phenomenological approach, three semi-structured interviews with celebrity influencers and their brand representatives were conducted. This supported dynamic insights into the cybervictimisation experiences of a fashion influencer, a medical doctor, and a health science expert. The analysis traces how they unanimously describe fake celebrity endorsements as rampant and uncontrollable. The celebrities’ efforts to stop digital crimes were thwarted by the anonymity of scammers, their invisibility, and minimal options for meaningful recourse and legal support. The findings furthermore trace how the participants experience prolonged trauma from their own and their followers’ victimisations. Such “brand-denting” reputational damage shaped their subjective worlds as unsafe and ‘at risk’. This paper highlights the need for further scholarly and legal engagement on the profound impact of digital crime victimisation and its countermeasures, which is currently a neglected area of concern locally, and globally.