Anti-Vaxxers: A Misinformation Community: The anti-vaccine community exhibits a number of unique characteristics that make it an important “misinformation community” to study from the lens of LIS. Members of this community tend to distrust mainstream medical professionals, leading them to seek out alternative information sources. They are enabled in doing so by emerging technologies, and there is a robust body of scholarship examining the anti-vaccine community’s use of the Internet and social media. This community’s tendency toward selective exposure and avoidance of credible sources present challenges for LIS professionals. Library programming geared toward the anti-vaccine community will need to take into account its distrust of conventional sources, as well as the importance of digital literacy in a largely online misinformation environment.

Aimee Lim is a first-year MLIS student and library page from Arcadia, California. From August 2020 to February 2022, she worked in COVID-19 contact tracing as a Disaster Service Worker for the LA County Department of Public Health. She is also a writer of Middle Grade fiction and volunteers at 826LA, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering children’s creative and essay writing skills.