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dc.contributor.authorFreeman, Daniel
dc.contributor.authorLambe, Sinead
dc.contributor.authorWaite, Felicity
dc.contributor.authorRosebrock, Laina
dc.contributor.authorJenner, Lucy
dc.contributor.authorPetit, Ariane
dc.date.accessioned2021-05-24T17:25:51Z
dc.date.available2021-05-24T17:25:51Z
dc.date.issued2021-04
dc.identifier.citationAndrew Chadwick, Johannes Kaiser, Cristian Vaccari , Daniel Freeman, Sinéad Lambe, Bao S. Loe, Samantha Vanderslott, Stephan Lewandowsky, Meghan Conroy, Andrew R. N. Ross, Stefania Innocenti, Andrew J. Pollard, Felicity Waite, Michael Larkin, Laina Rosebrock, Lucy Jenner, Helen McShane, Alberto Giubilini, Ariane Petit, and Ly-Mee Yu. Online Social Endorsement and Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in the United Kingdom. Social Media + Society April-June 2021: 1–17en
dc.identifier.urihttps://oxfordhealth-nhs.archive.knowledgearc.net/handle/123456789/815
dc.descriptionCreative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).en
dc.description.abstractWe explore the implications of online social endorsement for the Covid-19 vaccination program in the United Kingdom. Vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing problem, but it has assumed great urgency due to the pandemic. By early 2021, the United Kingdom had the world’s highest Covid-19 mortality per million of population. Our survey of a nationally representative sample of UK adults (N=5,114) measured socio-demographics, social and political attitudes, media diet for getting news about Covid-19, and intention to use social media and personal messaging apps to encourage or discourage vaccination against Covid-19. Cluster analysis identified six distinct media diet groups: news avoiders, mainstream/official news samplers, super seekers, omnivores, the social media dependent, and the TV dependent. We assessed whether these media diets, together with key attitudes, including Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, conspiracy mentality, and the news-finds-me attitude (meaning giving less priority to active monitoring of news and relying more on one’s online networks of friends for information), predict the intention to encourage or discourage vaccination. Overall, super-seeker and omnivorous media diets are more likely than other media diets to be associated with the online encouragement of vaccination. Combinations of (a) news avoidance and high levels of the news-finds-me attitude and (b) social media dependence and high levels of conspiracy mentality are most likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination. In the direct statistical model, a TVdependent media diet is more likely to be associated with online discouragement of vaccination, but the moderation model shows that a TV-dependent diet most strongly attenuates the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and discouraging vaccination. Our findings support public health communication based on four main methods. First, direct contact, through the post, workplace, or community structures, and through phone counseling via local health services, could reach the news avoiders. Second, TV public information advertisements should point to authoritative information sources, such as National Health Service (NHS) and other public health websites, which should then feature clear and simple ways for people to share material among their online social networks. Third, informative social media campaigns will provide super seekers with good resources to share, while also encouraging the social media dependent to browse away from social media platforms and visit reliable and authoritative online sources. Fourth, social media companies should expand and intensify their removal of vaccine disinformation and anti-vax accounts, and such efforts should be monitored by well-resourced, independent organizationsen
dc.description.sponsorshipSupported by the NIHRen
dc.description.urihttps://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211008817en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.subjectSocial Mediaen
dc.subjectCOVID-19en
dc.subjectVaccine Hesitancyen
dc.titleOnline Social Endorsement and Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in the United Kingdomen
dc.typeArticleen


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