may be vaccine misinformation undermine immunize

MAY BE VACCINE MISINFORMATION UNDERMINE IMMUNIZE PROFESSIONAL

Since March 2020, it has verified hundreds of Covid-19 experts globally, including scientists and academics.Īnd starting in December, Twitter expanded its policy specifically related to vaccine information. We focused on Twitter, which not only started labeling misleading tweets about Covid-19, but also started amplifying medical voices. We decided to conduct another study to see to what extent social media’s latest efforts to curb vaccine misinformation have been successful. The study also found that while pro-vaccine pages tended to have more followers, anti-vaccine pages were faster-growing, exploiting in-built community spaces such as fan pages.

Because most of the content on social media feeds and timelines is sorted according to its likelihood to generate engagement (as opposed to, say, its likelihood to be true), users are exposed primarily to information they are likely to agree with.Ī recent study published in the science journal Nature suggested that there were nearly three times as many active anti-vaccination communities on Facebook as pro-vaccination communities. Researchers have claimed that social media algorithms nurture closed-mindedness or prejudice by amplifying cognitive biases such as confirmation bias, the tendency to process information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. In 2019, a year before the pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) ranked “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the top 10 global health threats, alongside climate change and HIV. Social media in particular is to blame for giving a platform toĪbout links between vaccination and autism.Ī report by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), sponsored by US pharmaceutical company Merck, concluded that up to half of parents are exposed to negative messages about vaccines on social media. It comes to vaccination hesitancy, social media platforms are byĭefault framed as the bad guys. Social media takes the blame for vaccination hesitancy Some of the most popular hoaxes speculated that the coronavirus was manufactured so that investors in vaccine research and development could profit. It has tailored some old claims about vaccine safety to fit the current outbreak and has joined forces with movements protesting the lockdown measures. The anti-vaccination movement has reached new peaks in 2020.

MAY BE VACCINE MISINFORMATION UNDERMINE IMMUNIZE PROFESSIONAL

We suggest that Twitter’s new policies might pave the way for social media companies to advance their low-trust public image and perhaps gain a position of institutional authority themselves if scientists, policy-makers, professional journalists and the general public start to rely more heavily on them to conduct productive discussions at scale.

Our research demonstrates that Twitter’s new policy has accelerated the move from an institutional model of science communication to a networked model where social media propel information flows circulating between all stakeholders.Our social media analysis shows that Twitter’s latest policy to remove false vaccination narratives and amplify expert voices has been successful: the most influential accounts in the recent vaccination debate now include high-profile media outlets, journalists, doctors and experts.When it comes to vaccination hesitancy, social media platforms are by default framed as the bad guys, as their algorithms facilitated the emergence of echo-chambers.

May be vaccine misinformation undermine immunize