The most common explanation for the current surge of Vaccine Hesitancy is that the Internet helps vaccine science deniers reach a wide audience. This explanation is challenged by the growing success of critics who present themselves as different from antivaccinationists, using phrases such as “I’m not antivaccine but$\dots$” and promoting so-called “alternative vaccination schedules”. This could mean that antivaccinationists strive to appear more moderate than they are. But it could also mean that vaccines are being taken on by less radical activists. We compare these two explanations using the contents of a large sample of French-speaking websites. We qualitatively coded the contents of these websites, analysed their citation patterns and assessed their presence in mainstream media. We found that this milieu is fragmented. The most prominent activists only criticize some vaccines and disassociate themselves from the tightly-knit community of radical antivaccinationists. We also found that some appear as moderate while being deeply embedded in the community of radicals, indicating that their “moderate” stance is a communication strategy. These results suggest both explanations are simultaneously true. They apply to different activists, highlighting the importance of exploring the diversity of contemporary vaccine criticism to understand vaccine hesitancy.

当前疫苗犹豫激增的最常见解释是，互联网可以帮助疫苗科学的拒绝者获得广泛的关注。评论家日益增长的成功挑战了这一解释，他们使用“我不是抗疫苗而是$\dots$”，并推广所谓的“替代疫苗接种时间表”。这可能意味着抗疫苗接种者会努力显得比他们温和。但这也可能意味着不太激进的激进主义者正在使用疫苗。我们使用大量法语网站样本的内容来比较这两种解释。我们对这些网站的内容进行了质量编码，分析了它们的引用方式并评估了它们在主流媒体中的存在。我们发现这个环境是零散的。最杰出的活动家仅批评某些疫苗，而与激进的抗疫苗接种者紧密联系的社区脱离联系。我们还发现，有些人看起来很温和，但深深地融入了激进分子的群体，这表明他们的“适度”立场是一种交流策略。这些结果表明，两种解释都是正确的。它们适用于不同的活动家，强调了探索当代疫苗批评的多样性以了解疫苗犹豫的重要性。