[hiou]

Is there any research anyone is aware of about a possible connection between movements like these and how Facebook promotes and displays certain types of articles to certain people?

Scaring people is a fantastic way to create and emotional connection and increase engagement do to the fear of missing out on new information. The type of thing that will get you to check your phone every couple minutes all day.

In the back of my head I've always felt(without any information to back it up) that the anti vaccination movement was one of the first real big public health impacts to come out of Facebook and other social applications that serve content designed to cause emotional reactions to increase engagement.

I should add that I do not believe any of this is intentional as opposed to simply optimizing for engagement over time.