Social media firms and the government should step up efforts to counter misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
The call comes after research by the universities of Oxford and Southampton found that people who get their information from social media – and YouTube in particular – are less willing to be vaccinated.
A team led by Professor Melinda Mills from Oxford and Southampton’s Professor Will Jennings found unregulated social media sources pose a particular problem in contributing to vaccine hesitancy.
The article warns social media users can fall prey to an “echo chamber” effect because the channels recommend videos and content based on their watch history.
YouTube was particularly linked to hesitancy, with users of the platform being significantly less willing to be vaccinated. A study of YouTube vaccine content found 65.5% of videos discouraged vaccine and about 45% of users said they would be vaccinated.
Professor Mills said: “Misinformation proliferates on some social media platforms because users receive content suggestions aligned with their fears and watch histories, driving them into deeper rabbit holes. Information is often presented by non-experts, with limited fact checking, making it difficult to gauge the accuracy or balance the information.”
The researchers are now calling for governments, health officials and social media companies to do more to fill the “knowledge voids”.
Professor Jennings also warned that a lack of trust is also causing vaccine hesitancy.
“Misinformation thrives when there is a lack of trust in government, politics and elites with a broader lesson that authorities need to communicate truthfully, clearly and consistently,” he added.
The research team collected data from a survey of 1,476 adults in the UK and five focus groups during the first vaccine roll-out in the country in December 2020.
They found a low personal perceived risk from COVID-19 was linked to vaccine hesitancy and that complacency also emerged from a misunderstanding that “herd immunity” had been reached and only the vulnerable need to be vaccinated.
Distrust of the vaccine was also linked to beliefs that unequal deaths in certain population groups were a form of population control, that herd immunity had been reached, and that the virus was man-made or not as deadly as reported.
Professor Mills added: “There was often a knowledge void in understanding the risks. Although there are some who hold conspiratorial beliefs, many were simply trying to make sense of fragmented, dynamic and confusing information, often accessing social media for clarity.”
Jennings, W., Stoker, G., Bunting, H., Valgarðsson, V.O., Gaskell, J., Devine, D., McKay, L. and M.C.Mills. (2021). Lack of Trust, Conspiracy Beliefs, and Social Media Use Predict COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy. Vaccines 3 June 2021
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