How Vaccination Rumours Spread Online:Tracing the Dissemination of Information Regarding Adverse Events of COVID-19 Vaccines

Objectives: To trace the emergence and dissemination of the most prominent rumours about potential adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: We use a weekly Google Trends search to gather information about what alleged adverse events are being associated with COVID vaccines by the general population. We then use CrowdTangle and Factiva searches to examine how discussions about the five most prominent adverse events have spread through traditional media channels and Facebook. Results: Traditional mass media reporting remains crucial in both promoting and moderating discussions around alleged adverse events. While some cases illustrate that social media networks can synthesise and amplify rumours about adverse events, traditional media coverage remains crucial as a forum for exploring and debunking spurious claims. Conclusion: Traditional media stories still bear signficant responsibility as credibility markers for rumours about vaccine adverse events. Journalists should therefore be encouraged to be particularly earnest when reporting such stories, and the scientific community should aid journalists in this task by clearly responding to any rumours emerging online.</p

The role of ‘non-knowledge’ in crisis policymaking: a proposal and agenda for future research

Background:Recent complex and cross-boundary policy problems, such as climate change, pandemics, and financial crises, have recentred debates about state capacity, democratic discontent and the ‘crisis of expertise’. These problems are contested and open to redefinition, misunderstanding, spin, and deception, challenging the ability of policymakers to locate, discriminate, comprehend, and respond to competing sources of knowledge and expertise. We argue that ‘non-knowledge’ is an under-explored aspect of responses to major policy crises.Key points:While discussed in recent work in sociology and other social sciences, non-knowledge has been given less explicit attention in policy studies, and is not fully captured by orthodox understandings of knowledge and evidence use. We outline three main forms of non-knowledge that challenge public agencies: amnesia, ignorance and misinformation. In each case, ‘non-knowledge’ is not simply the absence of policy-relevant knowledge. Amnesia refers to what is forgotten, reinvented or ‘unlearned’, while claims of ignorance involve obscuring or casting aside of relevant knowledge that could (or even should) be available. To be misinformed is to actively believe false or misleading information. In each instance, non-knowledge may have strategic value for policy actors or aid the pursuit of self-interest.Conclusions and implications:We demonstrate the relevance of non-knowledge through a brief case study, emerging from the inquiry into the COVID-19 hotel quarantine programme in the Australian state of Victoria. We argue that both amnesia and ‘practical’ forms of ignorance contributed to failures during the early part of the programme

US State-Level Legal Interventions Related to COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

This study assesses state-level legal interventions to promote or impede COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the US since the beginning of the pandemic

Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity:communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance

This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country

“Do-it-yourself”: Vaccine rejection and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)

© 2017 Elsevier. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This author accepted manuscript is made available following 24 month embargo from date of publication (Nov 2017) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyIn this article, we elucidate a symbiotic relationship between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and rejection of, or hesitancy towards, vaccination. In Fremantle, Western Australia, and Adelaide, South Australia, we conducted in-depth interviews from September 2013–December 2015 with 29 parents who had refused or delayed some or all of their children's vaccines. Our qualitative analysis found that for many, their do-it-yourself ethic and personal agency was enhanced by self-directed CAM use, alongside (sometimes informal) CAM practitioner instruction. Reifying ‘the natural,’ these parents eschewed vaccines as toxic and adulterating, and embraced CAM as a protective strategy for immune systems before, during and after illness. Users saw CAM as harm-free, and when it came to experiences that non-users might interpret as demonstrating CAM's ineffectiveness, they rationalised to the contrary. They also generally glossed over its profit motive. CAM emerged as part of an expert system countering Western medicine. CAM's faces were trusted and familiar, and its cottage capitalism appeared largely free from the taint of “Big Pharma.” A few parents employed a scientific critique of CAM modalities – and a minority were dubious of its profit motive – but others rejected the epistemology underpinning biomedicine, framing CAM as a knowledge not poisoned by avarice; a wisdom whose very evidence-base (anecdote and history) was demeaned by an arrogant scientific process only permitting belief in that which could be quantified. However, all parents engaged with Western medicine for broken bones and, sometimes, medical diagnoses. Our analysis suggests that pro-vaccination health professionals, policymakers and information-providers seeking to address the role of CAM in vaccine rejection face significant challenges due to the epistemic basis of some parents' decisions. However, we make some suggestions for professional practice and policy to enhance trust in vaccination

Coronavax : preparing community and government for COVID-19 vaccination:: a research protocol for a mixed methods social research project

Introduction Ahead of the implementation of a COVID-19 vaccination programme, the interdisciplinary Coronavax research team developed a multicomponent mixed methods project to support successful roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine in Western Australia. This project seeks to analyse community attitudes about COVID-19 vaccination, vaccine access and information needs. We also study how government incorporates research findings into the vaccination programme. Methods and analysis The Coronavax protocol employs an analytical social media study, and a qualitative study using in-depth interviews with purposively selected community groups. Participant groups currently include healthcare workers, aged care workers, first responders, adults aged 65+ years, adults aged 30-64 years, young adults aged 18-29 years, education workers, parents/guardians of infants and young children (&lt;5 years), parents/guardians of children aged 5-18 years with comorbidities and parents/guardians who are hesitant about routine childhood vaccines. The project also includes two studies that track how Australian state and Commonwealth (federal) governments use the study findings. These are functional dialogues (translation and discussion exercises that are recorded and analysed) and evidence mapping of networks within government (which track how study findings are used). Ethics and dissemination Ethics approval has been granted by the Child and Adolescent Health Service Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) and the University of Western Australia HREC. Study findings will be disseminated by a series of journal articles, reports to funders and stakeholders, and invited and peer-reviewed presentations.</p

Public preferences for vaccination campaigns in the COVID-19 endemic phase:insights from the VaxPref database

Objective: Despite widespread perceptions that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is no longer a significant threat, the virus continues to loom, and new variants may require renewed efforts to control its spread. Understanding how individual preferences and attitudes influence vaccination behaviour and policy compliance in light of the endemic phase is crucial in preparation for this scenario. Method: This paper presents descriptive data from a global stated choice survey conducted in 22 countries across 6 different continents between July 2022 and August 2023, and reports the methodological work developed to address the need for comparable data. Results: This study included 50,242 respondents. Findings indicated significant heterogeneity across countries in terms of vaccination status and willingness to accept boosters. Vaccine hesitancy and refusal were driven by lower trust in public health bodies, younger age, and lower educational levels. Refusers and hesitant people reported lower willingness to take risks compared to those fully vaccinated (p&lt;0.05). Lower mental health levels were found for the hesitant cohort (p&lt;0.05). Conclusions: Insights from this database can help public health authorities to gain a new understanding of the vaccine hesitancy phenomenon, support them in managing the transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase, and favour a new stream of research to maximise behavioural response to vaccination programs in preparation of future pandemics.</p

Public preferences for vaccination campaigns in the COVID-19 endemic phase: insights from the VaxPref database

Objective Despite widespread perceptions that SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is no longer a significant threat, the virus continues to loom, and new variants may require renewed efforts to control its spread. Understanding how individual preferences and attitudes influence vaccination behaviour and policy compliance in light of the endemic phase is crucial in preparation for this scenario. Method This paper presents descriptive data from a global stated choice survey conducted in 22 countries across 6 different continents between July 2022 and August 2023, and reports the methodological work developed to address the need for comparable data. Results This study included 50,242 respondents. Findings indicated significant heterogeneity across countries in terms of vaccination status and willingness to accept boosters. Vaccine hesitancy and refusal were driven by lower trust in public health bodies, younger age, and lower educational levels. Refusers and hesitant people reported lower willingness to take risks compared to those fully vaccinated (p<0.05). Lower mental health levels were found for the hesitant cohort (p<0.05). Conclusions Insights from this database can help public health authorities to gain a new understanding of the vaccine hesitancy phenomenon, support them in managing the transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase, and favour a new stream of research to maximise behavioural response to vaccination programs in preparation of future pandemics