It is an Information War

What started last Monday as a protest by construction workers against the policy of mandatory vaccination has changed into daily continued demonstrations by anti-vaccination and anti-lockdown activists.

On Monday, it was construction workers gathered outside the CFMEU building. It was later replaced by men who marched through the city and shut down a major Melbourne bridge on Tuesday. On Wednesday, it was the Shrine of Remembrance becoming the centre of protest with criticism by RSL veterans and society over the disrespect towards the memorial shown by protesters.

Protesters through online live streams saw their actions to be outright tyranny on the unvaccinated being deprived of the right to live. Viewers of these live streams, however, were not Melburnians but anti-vaccination believers from all parts of the world who were fuelling energy to the protesters.

It is clear that protesters are not receiving information from mainstream media. They believed that they were the ones who knew the “truth” and were eager to break the law to fight for the “truth” that they believed. They felt sorry for the majority in the society who were worried about protesters being infected, for being unable to receive “correct” information about Covid-19 as they were “controlled” by mainstream media.

We have seen this phenomenon when people chose social media to be their main source of information. People sharing similar opinions will reinforce their own views when they receive information from limited sources shared only among those with similar views. People simply start to believe a myth that they have created.

Many of these anti-vaccination activists have targeted the CALD migrants to promote their theories as they knew that few migrants were receiving information through mainstream media. Their success will mean disasters to the CALD communities. At the beginning of this pandemic, we had seen that CALD communities were slow in responding to restrictions and social distancing measures. Recently we found a low vaccination rate and high infection cases in suburbs with lots of new CALD migrants.

The governments must make sure that correct Covid-19 information is transmitted and continuously circulated among CALD communities.

Regards,

Raymond Chow

Publisher, BlessingCALD