Virtual Town Hall

Questions and Answers 

 

Question: Are there interventions developed to combat misinformation for future pandemics? There needs to be a way to address public concerns with scientific experts while tampering down on widespread speculation on social media. How do we share relatively advanced scientific knowledge while maintaining nuance inherent to scientific debate?

Answer: Thanks for this question! The good news is that many researchers specialize in studying how we can stop or slow the spread of misinformation and they have identified a lot of strategies that work. Some strategies focus on stopping misinformation from spreading to begin with. Social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter can remove posts or accounts that are spreading misinformation or make it harder to find posts from accounts known to spread false information (sometimes called “shadow banning”). These interventions have been shown to reduce the overall volume of misinformation on platforms, at least for a little while. 

 

There are also things we can do to keep people from believing and spreading misinformation. Simply warning people that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the early days of a pandemic and any claims may be false can make them more receptive to corrections later on. Specific warnings about false content that is circulating – a technique called “prebunking” – can help people resist falling for false claims by preemptively refuting them. And content warnings such as the fact checks or links to counter arguments that some platforms have implemented have also proven to be quite effective for stopping the spread of misinformation. 

 

Increasing media literacy is our most effective tool for combating misinformation. Teaching people where to find credible and trustworthy information, how to validate claims by checking multiple sources, understanding the motives for different sources and platforms, and slowing down and thinking about the plausibility of claims are all important strategies for increasing people’s abilities to spot misinformation. 

 

Finally, creating infrastructure so people have access to low-cost, high quality health information is key for spreading true information and stopping false information during a pandemic. People need access to doctors, nurses, and community health providers that they trust. They need reliable news sources, including local and culturally-relevant news. And they need access to libraries and good schools where children and adults can learn about science, health, and the media. Healthcare, news, schools, and libraries are critical infrastructure for keeping people safe, healthy, and informed. 

 

Your question about communicating nuance is such an important one and we answer it below – keep reading! 

 

If you’d like to learn more about strategies for stopping misinformation, the Debunking Handbook has a great overview and it is available for free online: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/245

 

Question: How do changes in scientific understanding of a new disease contribute to misinformation? Can this be counteracted? (For example, in the early days of the COVID pandemic, scientists thought the virus couldn’t be spread without symptoms, but now we know that isn’t true.)

Answer: Despite many of us learning the scientific process in grade school, actual scientific deliberation has been occurring behind the closed doors of the academy for most of modern history. The only insights the public gets are those things which are published and reported on in the mainstream news. The way science is reported and written about in publications leads many to understand these things as some sort of ‘verified truth.’ Working scientists know that this is far from the case in just about any discipline, even though papers and pre-prints often use language that make it seem that it is. Nevertheless, by the time science gets to the public, there is usually some degree of consensus and validation of the results and that is what has built and maintained public trust in science. 

 

However, the early COVID pandemic was one of the first instances in which the general public was being updated on science in real-time. Especially in the era of pre-prints, this meant that instead of just seeing the end results, the public was seeing all the uncertainties along the way. Those uncertainties are normal and healthy in science, but only because scientists acknowledge and accept such uncertainty as being ever-present. At the beginning of the pandemic, however, there was a great deal of uncertainty which was not communicated to the public, and so the words of scientists were taken as truth. When those things turned out not to be true, many lost faith in “mainstream” science, leaving the door open for dis-/misinformation. 

 

At the workshop we recently held, panelists and attendees rallied around the idea that science should be more willing to say “we don’t know yet.” Instead of making shaky claims, saying “we don’t know” not only shows humility and prevents mistrust, it also closes the door on the possibility of misinformation by expressing that there is not enough data for anyone to make claims. 

 

Question: What are the most important ways you, as health professionals, and we, the public, can lay groundwork to improve health and vaccine science literacy, so that when the next pandemic rolls around, we have a populace with better foundational understanding to fight misinformation?

Answer: Answering this question as a communication scholar (and not necessarily a health expert!), I see two strategies that can work together to produce better science and health literacy: 

 

First, we need to prioritize health and science education in schools. Things like vaccines and epidemics are rarely covered in K-12 health and science classes, so it is no wonder that the general population has few tools to begin to understand things like epidemic spreading models and vaccine efficacy. These topics could easily be incorporated into classes, starting as young as kindergarten with basic concepts like how things spread from person to person, and how vaccines “teach” your body how to fight diseases. Kids experience these things every day - most kids have been sick and they have received vaccines. Building literacy from these common experiences is a great place to start. 

 

Second, we need to train science and health researchers and professionals to be better communicators. The truth is, for many of us in research jobs, there is not much incentive to communicate with the public. This is wrong, taxpayer dollars pay for most of our research and we need to do better! I think we should be offering training in public communication to all junior scientists, recognize public communication in hiring and promotion decisions, and give awards for outstanding health and science communication. 

 

I would also love to see scientists and regular people coming together around these topics in ways that are fun and engaging. Unless you’re really interested in science, it can be pretty boring to learn about epidemics and vaccines by reading science books and articles. But these things are amazing – vaccines literally save lives, they’re superheroes! There is no reason we could not have games and blockbuster movies about vaccines. Why do rockets and dinosaurs get to have all the fun in Hollywood?! 

 

Question: How can every day people identify medical misinformation when confronted with it in real life?

Answer: This is a great question! It is not an easy task! Fact-checking companies often hire experts or conduct lengthy reviews over individual facts, so for us everyday people who aren’t keeping up with every new publication coming out, it can be hard to spot. 

 

The best thing to do when confronted with any medical information is to search for the source material and supporting publications, but this isn’t really feasible for many of us that aren’t used to the jargon, don’t have access to the necessary journals, or simply have other things to be doing! In a pinch, doing a quick online search about the statement in question and considering the expertise of its author can be an effective strategy. There are reliable and free sources of medical information online such as https://www.mayoclinic.org/

 

All of this, however, is still a bit of work! And considering the sheer volume of information, even the simplest strategies for every day people don’t scale all too well. We can’t be doing a deep-dive into every post we see online. Thus, it seems worthwhile to think about the problem of misinformation. The harm comes not from simply seeing misinformation, it comes from believing, amplifying, or acting upon that misinformation. So, perhaps the best advice is simply to only believe, share, or act upon health information after you have tried some combination of the strategies above! 

 

Question: Has vaccine hesitancy worsened because of the COVID-19 pandemic? What can be done to combat it?

Answer: Unfortunately, it does look like vaccine hesitancy increased during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. There are a lot of reasons why this may be true – people went months or years without seeing a healthcare provider and many missed routine vaccines, vaccines became a politically polarized issue in some countries, trust in medical institutions declined in general, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists spread false and frightening information about vaccines during the pandemic. 

 

Getting people back to see their healthcare providers is of the utmost importance for reversing vaccine hesitancy. Trusted medical providers can help people understand the benefits of vaccines and discuss the merits of any particular concerns a patient might have. Making vaccines affordable and accessible is also a high priority, including funding community health clinics and outreach efforts in schools, churches, and other places where the public gathers. And working with media platforms to amplify accurate information and remove misinformation is key. Unlike in some areas of health research, vaccine efficacy and safety are settled science – we can identify claims about vaccines that are true and false, and most scientists and medical professionals will agree. This is one area where prebunking, fact checking, and removing false information may be especially effective.  

 

You can read more on this topic in this press release from UNICEF: https://www.unicef.org/rosa/press-releases/new-data-indicates-declining-confidence-childhood-vaccines-44-percentage-points-some

 

Question: Does most misinformation find its origins on the internet today? Can free speech be balanced with preventing the spread of misinformation?

Answer: Misinformation and disinformation are not new, people have been spreading lies and propaganda to manipulate, control, and gain power for as long as the media has existed (and probably before!) But, the Internet has made it easier and faster to spread misinformation, and recent advances in AI-generated content, including realistic fake photos and videos, will make it harder to determine what is real and what is fake. 

 

I think there are plenty of ways to balance the harm of misinformation against the right to free speech. Free speech rights already have limits in the United States. Some forms of speech are already not covered by free speech protections (e.g. libel, slander, threats, etc.). Other speech is limited in certain situations. For example, an adult can watch pornography in the privacy of their home, but they cannot broadcast it in a school. Similar blanket or situational restrictions could be placed on misinformation, limiting the most dangerous health misinformation during the most vulnerable times, such as a state of emergency during a pandemic.

 

But perhaps more to the point, we could compel platforms and content creators, by law or mutual agreement, to label or remove misinformation. My favorite everyday example of how this could work is the rating system on movies. It is not illegal to make movies with violent or sexual content, nor is it against the law to put that content in G movies. But, there is an industry standard based on social norms that movies are assigned ratings that more-or-less tell us whether we can expect to see violence, curse words, or sexual content. Movies designed for general audiences (G-rated) do not have that sort of content. We could similarly require platforms to make and enforce standards on misinformation. We could expect them to label or remove misinformation once it is identified, offer fact checking and community standards to identify misinformation before it spreads, and create an independent auditing board to monitor and report on the levels and types of misinformation that are circulating. We could also require safeguards and warnings for AI-generated content, including ethics reviews attached to research on new AI technologies. None of these restrictions infringe on freedom of speech. People may have the right to create whatever health mis- and disinformation they want, but we certainly do not need to guarantee them a broad and uninformed audience. 

 

Question: What happens when trusted authorities become sources of misinformation because of failure to keep up with the science? Can this be prevented? This seemed to happen during the COVID pandemic and now the trust is gone.

Answer: This is such a tricky problem. One major challenge with something like a pandemic is that information about public health and effective intervention strategies changes so quickly, it is hard to keep up. It is even harder for medical providers and public health officials, who are in charge of managing care and communicating pandemic responses at the same time. 

 

One strategy that has been shown to help is to simply acknowledge uncertainty. Saying “we don’t know yet, but we will know more in the future,” is a great way to be honest with the public and also avoid creating the impression that we will never know what to do. The more specific you can be about when more information will be available, and what is happening to produce that information, the better. 

 

Similarly, there is a tricky balance between getting people excited about an intervention, such as a vaccine, and being realistic about what it can do. The COVID vaccine is a marvel, in both its effectiveness and in how quickly it was developed, but it is not a silver bullet. People still catch COVID and it is still possible to spread COVID even if you are vaccinated. I think building vaccine literacy, bolstering the medical system so people have access to trusted providers who can provide realistic assessments, and using communication tools to paint a picture of the long-term vision of a world with COVID could all help people accept interventions while understanding their limits. 

 

Finally, I would also love to see the US and other countries invest in a “Health Communication Corps,” similar to the Army Medical Corps, that can be called up and deployed during a health crisis. There could be communication professionals, specifically trained in science and health communication, who can help track up-to-date health and science research during a crisis and work with public health officials, medical providers and journalists to communicate changing information to the general public.