A Community-Engaged Approach to Addressing Vaccine Information Integrity: An Examination of the Role of Social Media Influencers

National Opinion Research Center, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy is a top threat to global health and people’s personal health and well-being. Social media is a fertile breeding ground for inaccurate or misleading health-related information, which often disproportionately affects communities of color. The approval of a new vaccine in 2023 to protect pregnant persons and their newborns from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) represents an opportunity to study the emergence and diffusion of such discussions on social media in near real-time; begin to explore and address racial and socioeconomic disparities in RSV vaccine knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs; and contribute to the science of effective science communication. By collaborating with influencers to frame and create messages to address misconceptions and inaccurate information related to this new vaccine, this community-based participatory design intervention study explores how peer-to-peer messages can address vaccine hesitancy and understand the impact of social media influencers of color as opinion leaders in their communities in addressing the integrity of vaccine information. This study contributes to the science of health communication by identifying effective methods for engaging influencers as novel messengers and disseminating credible, evidence-based vaccine information that can advance health equity. The findings contribute to the knowledge base about supporting vaccine information integrity and public health and well-being and provide actionable strategies for researchers, practitioners, and decision makers. The researchers use social listening tools collect, code, and analyze posts and comments from social media platforms to identify and analyze emerging narratives about the RSV vaccine on social media. They use quantitative results (e.g. frequency of various themes) to identify key narratives and qualitative descriptions of the content and inform the development of message frames to address concerns articulated in those narratives. Eight lifestyle influencers to collaborate with the research team to co-develop a set of message frames and social media posts based on the narratives identified through social listening. Influencers recruit a sample of their followers ages 18-45 who are planning to or able to become pregnant (n=30 each, total N=240) to complete a baseline survey. Surveys track the effects of influencer posts over time and explore outcomes related to susceptibility, knowledge, risk perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and vaccination intentions. Results include a communications protocol with a set of recommendations and best practices for engaging social media influencers and developing messages that support vaccine information integrity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.