JUDY WOODRUFF: Tonight, we examine a social media phenomenon that's having a real-world impact. Some
influencers in wellness communities are using their platform to promote conspiracy theories.
Stephanie Sy takes a closer look at how one mother was pulled into
this world of disinformation and how she got out.
STEPHANIE SY: In her home yoga studio in Topanga Canyon, west of Los Angeles,
Seane Corn can breathe deeply and tune out the noise.
But when she logs on to her Instagram, it's impossible to avoid it.
A yoga instructor for nearly 30 years, Corn has more than 100,000 Instagram followers.
but,a few years ago, she began noticing a dark change in tone on her social media.
SEANE CORN, Yoga Teacher: I started to receive a lot of information from my friends just via text,
online, sending me all this propaganda, Pizzagate and their talk of drinking the blood of children.
STEPHANIE SY: The look of the posts blended in with the other content on her feed.
SEANE CORN: They'd be beautifully curated, the font, the colors, the layout, the photography.
STEPHANIE SY: Corn saw that those carefully curated facades were being used to peddle
conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine and QAnon, the belief that child sex traffickers
and pedophiles have infiltrated the government and that President Trump was sent to stop them.
What's more, QAnon's online recruiters were specifically co-opting yoga language.
You bring up this yogic idea of, I can't be free unless my community is free.
SEANE CORN: Yes.
STEPHANIE SY: QAnon's motto is, where we go one, we go all.
SEANE CORN: Mm-hmm. And when I first heard that statement, it
caught me in my throat. They also talk about the Great Awakening and the Great Reset. Language
like this is also very much in alignment with spiritual principles. We are here to wake up.
STEPHANIE SY: And this was other yoga teachers and wellness influencers?
SEANE CORN: Yes. Yes. Yes.
STEPHANIE SY: Was it the majority of them?
SEANE CORN: If I was just to look at my tight-knit group of colleagues, 50/50.
STEPHANIE SY: Fifty percent of your inner circle
of wellness teachers and influencers believe that Donald Trump was sent here for cosmic good?
SEANE CORN: Yes, I would have to say.
DEREK BERES, Co-Host, "Conspirituality": OK, let me hit record.
STEPHANIE SY: Derek Beres is a co-host of the podcast "Conspirituality,"
which examines why the wellness industry is such fertile ground for counternarratives.
DEREK BERES: The intersection between the New Age and the right-wing conspiratorial thinking,
I believe, is rooted in individualism. America is an individualist culture.
Everything we produce and promote is all about the sovereignty of the self,
and sovereignty is one of those words that crosses over between those two communities.
STEPHANIE SY: And it intensified during the pandemic.
DEREK BERES: So you start looking on Instagram,
and then there's your favorite yoga instructor talking about child sex trafficking, and 5G
causing cancer, and the vaccine that's coming is going to give you cancer or is going to kill you.
And some people looked in horror, but some people were like, wait a second,
I'm going to go this route and explore this and do my research.
STEPHANIE SY: That phrase, "Do your own research," is rampant on anti-vaccine forums,
as well as QAnon spaces. The research often leads people to
what the Center for Countering Digital Hate calls the Disinformation Dozen,
responsible for some 65 percent of all vaccine disinformation spread online.
They have reached tens of millions of users.
JOSEPH MERCOLA, Influencer: Hi. This is Dr. Mercola, helping you take control of your health.
STEPHANIE SY: They include Dr. Joseph Mercola, who peddles dietary supplements to his 3.6 million
followers, and has claimed that hydrogen peroxide can cure COVID-19, Sherri Tenpenny,
an osteopath physician who claims that wearing a mask has negative health effects,
and Sayer Ji, who runs a popular alternative health Web site and shares false claims,
like that the Pfizer vaccine has killed more elderly people than COVID-19.
Heather Simpson spent years under the influence of the Disinformation Dozen.
She recalls how she was drawn in.
HEATHER SIMPSON, Former Anti-Vaccine Influencer: It all started when I kind
of looked into the wellness community when I was trying to get pregnant, and it was like
ads started popping up for anti-vaccine issues. It was like one and the same. Like,
look up wellness stuff, anti-vax stuff pops up.
STEPHANIE SY: Simpson soon found herself watching videos about the
dangers of vaccines and approached her doctor.
HEATHER SIMPSON: He was like:
"You're not one of those crazy anti-vaxxers, are you?" and like conversation dead.
All of the, I feel, gaslighting by the medical community
and then them just brushing me away, like, was completely opposite from
what I would find on the Internet with the holistic world. They welcomed me.
STEPHANIE SY: Conspiracy theories gain traction when people lose trust in institutions.
Alternative theories take root, espoused by authentic and relatable influencers
masquerading as truth-tellers, says researcher Stephanie Baker.
DR. STEPHANIE ALICE BAKER, City, University of London: Really, what's at play here,
rather than social media being the cause of this kind of anti-vaccine sentiment,
is that, actually, social media creates the conditions
for these trust relationships and for intimacy to be fostered to a different degree.
We have got to move away from seeing misinformation as an information problem
to really seeing it as a relationship problem.
STEPHANIE SY: Baker has examined how social media influencers may manipulate mothers like Simpson.
DR. STEPHANIE ALICE BAKER: What we have found is that a lot of that content was dedicated towards
actually specifically targeting mothers, and trying to encourage them to refuse vaccination,
and really playing on this idea that a mother's intuition is superior to the
abstract professional knowledge.
STEPHANIE SY: Mother Heather Simpson soon became an influencer herself.
HEATHER SIMPSON: Looking back, I feel like I got reported enough for
misinformation that Facebook could have and perhaps should have taken that stuff down.
But it was racking up so many comments and just user engagement that, why would they?
STEPHANIE SY: She had discovered the magic formula that makes so many wellness influencers rich.
Social media algorithms are known to push more provocative content, because it
increases engagement, great for the social media companies, and for people selling false promises.
HEATHER SIMPSON: Almost everyone in the wellness community that I knew was involved in a multilevel
marketing company. A lot of them are stay-at-home moms or single moms. Some of them are making
$20,000 a month at this point. Some are making $100,000. And so, naturally, I fell into that.
And so I sold a product that claimed basically to detox your body.
STEPHANIE SY: At the time, Simpson saw the scheme as a way to gain
financial freedom from her husband, whom she's now separated from.
HEATHER SIMPSON: I was just doing anything I could just to get out,
just be independent and be strong for my daughter and do everything I could to
make an income and get out there and get out -- out of there.
STEPHANIE SY: Simpson eventually grew disillusioned with the wellness community,
a feeling that only increased during the pandemic,
and led her to publicly denounce the persona she'd cultivated.
HEATHER SIMPSON: I realized, if you're not 100 percent brainwashed,
you're not -- yes, you are the enemy.
COVID hit the next month, and they changed their tune to: Don't mask me. I have freedom.
And I was like: Why not? Just wear a mask. Like, it could save an entire life.
STEPHANIE SY: She's now not only fully vaccinated. She runs a group encouraging
others to get the COVID vaccine.
Seane Corn is also fighting against the tide of conspiracy theories that
have gripped her yoga community, but it hasn't been easy to take a stand. When
she posted a statement against QAnon, the backlash came quick.
SEANE CORN: The vitriol was intense. The messages that I received privately were definitely violent.
STEPHANIE SY: Her tactic for helping fellow yogis find their way back from the conspiracy brink
goes back to a basic yogic principle, engaging the student in their own healing.
SEANE CORN: I want to ask questions. Like, tell me more. Why do you believe that? And then see
if we can get to the root, because the root is always going to come down to fear.
STEPHANIE SY: It's a process, she says, and, like the practice of yoga, a slow one.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy.