A Twitter campaign against pseudoscience: The sceptical discourse on complementary therapies in Spain

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyse the sceptical movement’s discourse on complementary therapies in Spain, as well as comprehend its mobilisation against these therapies. Over the past 2 years, the Spanish sceptical movement, constituted by citizen’s associations against unconventional therapies and in favour of evidence-based medicine, has increased its activism which, as a result, is now more familiar to the public. To perform this study, three sources of information were selected: (a) the #StopPseudociencias campaign, with a corpus of 6252 tweets; (b) 153 news articles published during the study timeline and (c) 7 interviews with members of the sceptical movement, journalists and politicians. The results of the content and discourse analyses have shown that the sceptical movement occupies a dominant discursive position on Twitter, while the perspective is more balanced in digital dailies.

Political citizens, consumers, or passive patients? Imagined audiences in the complementary medicine debate

“…Furthermore, FSM problematised the role of CAM as a purveyor of commercialised products with vested interests within an under-regulated marketplace. Similar patterns of negative media reporting on CAM have been documented in Spain (Cano-Orón, 2019), the US and the UK (Caldwell, 2017;MacArtney & Wahlberg, 2014).…”

Integrative Oncology: An International Perspective from Six Countries

“…It should be recognized that providing IO services has been hindered or curtailed due to pressure from anti-CIM lobbies; indeed, there remains increasing public hostility toward CIM within Spain. 45 The principal professional organization advocating CIM is the Spanish Society for Integrative Medicine and Health (SESMI; www.sesmi.es) which also has an IO workgroup, which has recently published a textbook of IO for HCPs. 46 Postgraduate education in CIM is available in Spain, where SESMI has also developed a Masters program on integrative medicine for HCPs, with a module on IO.…”

“…It should be recognized that providing IO services has been hindered or curtailed due to pressure from anti-CIM lobbies; indeed, there remains increasing public hostility toward CIM within Spain. 45…”

The explanation-polarisation model: Pseudoscience spreads through explanatory satisfaction and group polarisation

“…For example, previous results have shown that the information shared in social media is more radical and partisan than that of open websites (Faris, Roberts, Etling, Bourassa, Zuckerman, & Benkler, 2017), thus facilitating the spread of appealing falsehoods (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018). Due to its high prevalence in the public sphere and its alarming implications, the struggle between groups of pseudoscientific believers and EPIDEMIOLOGY OF PSEUDOSCIENCE 13 critical thinkers is increasingly polarised, establishing an intergroup relationship dominated by an imaginary of distrust, competition, and mutual derogation (e.g., Cano-Orón, 2019).…”