Finding a way for health experts and institutions to connect with those questioning Covid-19 vaccines without validating or amplifying concerns will be a fundamental component of rebuilding. “We need to build bridges between health experts and institutions and vaccine-hesitant populations. The political nature of the most dominant vaccine narratives on West African social media highlights the importance of rebuilding trust in vaccine institutions and depoliticizing them,” they continued. “Messaging that can address deep-seated issues of trust with actors and institutions connected to vaccines is key.
Be vaccine misinformation undermine efforts immunize verification#
They urged that fact-checking efforts should be applied consistently across regions and languages, noting that Facebook’s third-party verification programme did not regulate a lot of the misinformation identified during the study. By refocusing moderation efforts on tracking suspicious behavior and implementing measures to curb bad actors’ dissemination tactics, platforms may be able to limit the reach of disinformation in the long run,” they explained. They will continue to employ sophisticated tactics to spread their harmful content. But disinformation networks are resilient and adaptive. “Content moderation can reduce the visibility of harmful misinformation in the short run. The researchers advised that identifying problematic social media behaviour should be prioritised above moderating individual contents. “Mistrust in institutions continues to be strongly associated with vaccine refusal in many African countries,” the study concluded. The conspiracy theories typically present organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO) and people like Bill Gates as “corrupt and ill-intended.” “These include conspiracy theories about depopulation programs, a totalitarian, one-world government known as the New World Order, and even certain elements of QAnon, such as the idea that former US President Donald Trump was secretly fighting a corrupt political and financial establishment.” “North American and European conspiracy theories are reaching both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa on social media and are a key feature of online vaccine misinformation in the region,” the report said. Source: First Draftįirst Draft warned that the messages “are amplifying wider narratives that could erode trust in key actors and institutions connected to vaccines.” These contents enjoy a wide readership on Facebook and other social networks. The report traced anti-vaccine contents being spread in the sub-region to American anti-science websites, Pro-Russian disinformation networks, French disinformation websites, European conspiracy theorists, among others.
“If there are going to be travel restrictions and people can’t go anywhere unless they have got this vaccine passport, I think people will change their mind quite quickly about whether they want this vaccine or not.“The use of disinformation tactics to spread anti-vaccine messages underlines the need for platforms to not only focus their efforts on fact-checking, but also to identify the use of specific methods to more effectively prevent harmful content from being spread,” they recommended. Prof Beate Kampmann, director of the vaccine centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine agreed that as the number of those who have been vaccinated grows, many of those wavering may decide to have the jab.īut, she added, other factors may also play a role. “How younger people will fare is a bit unknown but they will be far down the list and millions will have had the vaccine already, so the hope is that the worries about the newness and speed of development will decrease.”īut Vanderslott added that more effort is needed to underscore the importance of vaccination in younger people, and offer clear and tailored messages to groups with particular conditions or situations. “The acceptance in older ages has been higher in surveys and vaccination seems to have been going quite smoothly,” said Vanderslott.
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