Empathic Engagement with the Vaccine Hesitant in Online Spaces
Open AccessConcerns about health misinformation and vaccine hesitancy are escalating worldwide.Despite various strategies proposed to tackle these issues, we have much to learn about combating them effectively. This research aimed to evaluate the efficacy of a social media intervention designedto promote vaccine uptake during the Omicron wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2022. Subjects were exposed to empathic, gist-based messages in a study in which participants were randomly assigned to COVID-19 Facebook discussion groups (intervention) or referred to Facebook’s COVID-19 Information Center (control). We hypothesized that our intervention would be relatively more effective because social media groups provide opportunities to listen to concerns, express empathy, and promote dialogue between health experts and vaccine-hesitant individuals. Second, our messaging strategy was motivated by an empirically-validated theory of medical decision-making, fuzzy-trace theory (FTT). Our specific aims were to test the efficacy of our intervention in promoting vaccination, to identify groups of people more likely to benefit from our interventions, and to examine the relationship between vaccination intentions and gist perceptions of vaccination risks and benefits. Our research is novel because it represents one of the first studies to explore how private social media groups can be used to promote COVID-19 vaccine uptake.Our results demonstrate that exposing people to empathic, gist-based messages in Facebookdiscussion groups can improve vaccination intentions and beliefs. Our intervention was most effective for people who trusted public health institutions. However, it also positively affected Republicans, conservatives, and people who professed distrust of government institutions. Although these subjects were not more likely to intend to get vaccinated, they were more likely to encourage others to do so. Last, we found that gist endorsements were associated with higher vaccination intentions, with control for theoretically-motivated covariates.This research provides support for the importance of social media-based interventionsin promoting vaccination. Future studies should explore tailoring messages to account for differences in individuals’ trust views, examine the impact of group size and moderation settings on program efficacy, and include manipulations and measures assessing the impacts of health communication on how people perceive the risks and benefits of vaccination.
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EmpathinEngagementWithTheVaccineHesitantInOnlineSpaces.pdf | 2023-11-14 | Open Access |
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