How Trust in Experts and Media Use Affect Acceptance of Common Anti-Vaccination Claims (original) (raw)
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Political dimensions of misinformation, trust, and vaccine confidence in a digital age
BMJ, 2024
Political dimensions of misinformation, trust, and vaccine confidence in a digital age Global health leaders often dismiss politics as antithetical to the aims of public health, but Luisa Enria and colleagues argue that political analysis can offer new ways to build trust in vaccination in the context of growing online misinformation http://www.bmj.com/
Trust in science, social consensus and vaccine confidence
Nature Human Behavior, 2021
While scholarly attention to date has focused almost entirely on individual-level drivers of vaccine confidence, we show that macro-level factors play an important role in understanding individual propensity to be confident about vaccination. We analyse data from the 2018 Wellcome Global Monitor survey covering over 120,000 respondents in 126 countries to assess how societal-level trust in science is related to vaccine confidence. In countries with a high aggregate level of trust in science, people are more likely to be confident about vaccination, over and above their individual-level scientific trust. Additionally, we show that societal consensus around trust in science moderates these individual-level and country-level relationships. In countries with a high level of consensus regarding the trustworthiness of science and scientists, the positive correlation between trust in science and vaccine confidence is stronger than it is in comparable countries where the level of social consensus is weaker.
Lack of Trust, Conspiracy Beliefs, and Social Media Use Predict COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
Vaccines
As COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out across the world, there are growing concerns about the roles that trust, belief in conspiracy theories, and spread of misinformation through social media play in impacting vaccine hesitancy. We use a nationally representative survey of 1476 adults in the UK between 12 and 18 December 2020, along with 5 focus groups conducted during the same period. Trust is a core predictor, with distrust in vaccines in general and mistrust in government raising vaccine hesitancy. Trust in health institutions and experts and perceived personal threat are vital, with focus groups revealing that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is driven by a misunderstanding of herd immunity as providing protection, fear of rapid vaccine development and side effects, and beliefs that the virus is man-made and used for population control. In particular, those who obtain information from relatively unregulated social media sources—such as YouTube—that have recommendations tailored by watch...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
The COVID-19 vaccine has become a strategic vehicle for reducing the spread of the pandemic. However, the uptake of the vaccine by the public is more complicated than simply making it available. Based on social learning theory, this study examines the role of communication sources and institutional trust as barriers and incentives as motivators of people’s attitudes toward vaccination and actual vaccination. Data were collected via an online panel survey among Israelis aged 18–55 and then analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings show that social media trust negatively mediates the effect of exposure to information on the vaccine on attitudes toward vaccination. However, mass media trust and institutional trust positively mediate this relationship. Incentives were effective motivators for forming positive attitudes and moderating the effect of institutional trust on attitude toward vaccination. This study facilitates a deeper understanding of health communication t...
Misinformation on the Internet?: A Study of Vaccine Safety Beliefs
2015
Author(s): Doty, Colin | Advisor(s): Lievrouw, Leah A | Abstract: Concerns about misinformation on the Internet usually focus on the amount of misinformation available, the ease of retrieving it, the speed with which it spreads, or the lack of editorial oversight. Yet none of these would be cause for concern if no one was misinformed. Indeed, what constitutes misinformation is often determined by who believes it. Hence the most important consideration may be a focus on why people believe. To explore this, this study reports results from a qualitative content analysis of online information about vaccine safety—with a particular focus on user comments—supplemented by exploratory interviews. The study examines how people on all sides of the debate use evidence to support their beliefs about vaccine safety. It also reflects upon the relationship between the Internet and those beliefs. The most common beliefs about vaccine safety are beliefs about toxicity, beliefs about the cumulative e...
Vaccines
Background: The research focused on the relationships between attitudes towards vaccination and the trust placed in different sources of information (science, experts and the information available on the Internet) before and during COVID-19. Method: A longitudinal design was applied with the first measurement in February 2018 (N = 1039). The second measurement (N = 400) was carried out in December 2020 to test if the pandemic influenced the trust in different sources of information. Results: The final analyses carried out on final sample of 400 participants showed that there has been no change in trust in the Internet as a source of knowledge about health during the pandemic. However, the trust in science, physicians, subjective health knowledge, as well as the attitude towards the vaccination has declined. Regression analysis also showed that changes in the level of trust in physicians and science were associated with analogous (in the same direction) changes in attitudes toward va...
Social Epistemology and Cognitive Authority in Online Comments about Vaccine Safety
An attempt to understand misinformation, and particularly the role the internet might play in it, suggests an emphasis on how individual internet users decide what to believe. Given the social nature of the internet, an essential component of belief formation must be an evaluation of cognitive authority and the means by which any knowledge source claims to have it. A content analysis of user comments about vaccine safety reveals the evaluation of cognitive authority to be a rich and complex set of negotiations among internet users. Certain characteristics of the internet seem to enhance the experience of evidence evaluation in ways that complicate underlying assumptions about how people believe. While the internet would seem to be a collection of secondhand knowledge, it is also rife with exaltation of firsthand knowledge as a superior, and uniquely accessible, means of knowing.
Zeljko Pavic - Internet and Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs
Knowledge and social development, 2019
Despite the scientifi c consensus that vaccination against infec-tious diseases represents one of the most successful medial interventions in the entire human history, recent decades have seen renewed skepticism about vaccination and its effects. Among various reasons for the surge in skepticism, such as postmodern delegitimisation of science and objective knowledge and crisis of institutional trust, the advent of new media (the In-ternet) and social media are often selected as one of the important causes of the skepticism. The Internet and social media enable the spread of false information and create echo chambers wherein attitudes are strengthened in the interaction with like-minded individuals. By employing structural equation modelling the author attempts to compare the effects of the old (television) and new (social media and the Internet in general) media on vaccination conspiracy beliefs. The direct effects, as well as indirect ef-fect (mediation through institutional and generalised trust) are compared against each other. The pilot study was based on a convenience sample of the general population of the Republic of Croatia, whereas the data were collected through the use of an online questionnaire
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many conspiracy theories have spread widely, which has the potential to reduce adherence to recommended preventive measures. Specifically, anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs can have a strong negative impact on COVID-19 vaccination attitude and intention. The present study aimed to clarify how such beliefs can reduce vaccination intention, exploring the possible mediating roles of attitude toward vaccination, trust in science, and trust in government, among a sample of 822 unvaccinated Italian adults (Women = 67.4%; M age = 38.1). Path analysis showed that anti-vaccine conspiracy beliefs influenced intention to get vaccinated both directly and indirectly through the mediating effects of attitude, trust in science, and trust in government. In particular, the simple mediating effect of attitude was the strongest one, followed by the serial mediating effect of trust in science and attitude itself. Findings provide insights into the design of interventions aimed at reducing misinformation and subsequent vaccine hesitancy.
Lack of trust and social media echo chambers predict COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
2021
As COVID-19 vaccines are rolled out across the world, there are growing concerns about the role that trust, belief in conspiracy theories and spread of misinformation through social media impact vaccine hesitancy. We use a nationally representative survey of 1,476 adults in the UK between December 12 to 18, 2020 and five focus groups conducted in the same period. Trust is a core predictor, with distrust in vaccines in general and mistrust in government raising vaccine hesitancy. Trust in health institutions and experts and perceived personal threat are vital, with focus groups revealing that COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is driven by a misunderstanding of herd immunity as providing protection, fear of rapid vaccine development and side effects, belief the virus is man- made and related to population control. Particularly those who obtain information from relatively unregulated social media sources such as YouTube that have recommendations tailored by watch history are less likely to be...