Conventional wisdom about vaccine misinformation has disproportionately focused on the lurid fringe. Scientists and journalists studying viral misinformation suggest a different strategy. Our target audience is the middle-of-the-pack, to prevent progression to the fringe at a specific moment of vulnerability. It is the interaction between undecided populations and anti-vaccination clusters that leads to wild misinformation spread.
Instead of the undecided population being passively persuaded by the anti- or pro-vaccination populations, undecided individuals are highly active: the undecided clusters have the highest growth of new out-links, followed by anti-vaccination clusters. Moreover, it is the undecided clusters who are entangled with the anti-vaccination clusters in the main network patch that tend to show this high out-link growth. These findings challenge our current thinking that undecided individuals are a passive background population in the battle for ‘hearts and minds’.
Johnson et al. in Nature
All the more so for COVID vaccines. We expect that minor side effects are a priming experience for online searches that are likely to return misinformation. Our previous work has shown that professional dismissal of technically "minor" side effects is interpreted as a lack of compassion that drives patients to online communities for empathy. We hypothesize that while a patient is convalescing with minor vaccine side effects, they will search for and be more likely to entertain conspiracy theories about why they feel sick. Imagine the live steam of a patient lying in a darkened bedroom, miserable with fever and muscle aches (already happening), the ideal clickbait for in-network sharing during early mass vaccination. A pro-public health framing would norm the experience and encourage others to get vaccinated despite. Alternatively, even middle-of-the-pack patients may lace their livestream with fringe theories, even while saying they dismiss them, but the powerful visual of the darkened bedroom and audio cues of the shaky voice will have more saliency than their words. Audiences will draw their own conclusions.
These are the most dangerous types of videos, we feel, because they are shared to people within their own networks with whom they have pre-established credibility, and can be easily remixed out of context for intents more nefarious.
- At vaccination: What to expect - Overburdened medical service providers will have to set expectations in person. Even though these expectations are required and repeated disclosures in COVID vaccine RCTs, some patients do not recall having been told what to expect. In higher throughput primary care, this problem will be worse. More tools and resources will be dedicated to this obvious point of message failure as the vaccine is deployed, and those efforts are welcomed.
- Side effect onset: What is normal - Less recognized are the cognitively vulnerable "poor-me" hours as side effects manifest. The onset of side effects is likely to prompt digital sleuthing and reaching out to trusted family and friends. A Google search is predictable, and our efforts are to pre-empt entry into conspiracy-laden networks. Psychology of conspiracy theories reveals that people are likely to turn to conspiracy theories when they are anxious and feel powerless. Therefore, our fundamental proposition is to provide reliable choice-oriented information and comfort suggestions at side effect onset.
Our team has experience in crafting messages and visuals to address misinformation online. We have also developed a behavioral model for soliciting side effect information on mobile platforms. We will combine this expertise, and that of future collaborators, to craft and test chatbot interactions that are more salient than the demo. The October 2020 issue of American Journal of Public Health was dedicated to this topic. It's worth a read. Some relevant findings:.
Notably, exposure to misinformation cannot simply be undone through fact checking, correcting, or debunking efforts: a large body of research has shown that retractions are rarely successful at eliminating reliance on misinformation, a phenomenon known as the “continued influence” effect. Mitigating the effects of exposure to vaccine misinformation requires the development and testing of novel strategies beyond traditional vaccine education efforts.
Vanderpool, Gaysynsky, and Chou
Southwell, Wood, and Nevar point out the traditional misplacement of emphasis by health professionals in addressing vaccine misinformation.
Leask et al. developed a guide for health professionals to consider in addressing parental vaccination concerns. They emphasize a stance that offers parents assistance in decision-making rather than attempting to persuade parents directly or discredit specific information sources. Such an approach prioritizes offering informed advice on how to think about vaccine decisions rather than discrediting specific information sources.
Further insights from these authors quantifies what we may have personally observed:
The longitudinal analysis of antivaccine Facebook pages in Broniatowski et al. points to... the “freedom of choice” framing of vaccine decisions. The increased focus on civil liberties since 2015 suggests that attempts to counter vaccine misinformation will need to address political arguments, rather than solely providing facts about vaccine safety and efficacy.
Another insight is that pro-vaccination efforts remain peripheral to online social discourse because they are monothematic. Therefore, wider array of content generation is a key responsibility of this project.
Our qualitative analysis of cluster content shows that anti-vaccination clusters offer a wide range of potentially attractive narratives that blend topics such as safety concerns, conspiracy theories and alternative health and medicine, and also now the cause and cure of the COVID-19 virus... By contrast, pro-vaccination views are far more monothematic.
Johnson et al. in Nature