Vaccine Communication Online: Counteracting Misinformation, Rumors and Lies

Communication about vaccination has become a public battleground. The global adoption of social media has increased the visibility and influence of groups that were previously considered fringe. With the goal of understanding vaccination-related misinformation’s online spread and ways of effectively countering it, this book explores its reception, resistance, and reproduction by a range of stakeholders around the globe. Chapters cover a rich array of topics, including vaccine misinformation’s history, its use as political propaganda, and its manipulation by both pro- and anti-vaccine groups. They apply a wide range of research methods, including historical literature and scoping reviews; advanced computational analysis, including machine learning; and reviews that incorporate the authors’ personal, professional, and practice-based experiences. Chapter authors include leading US and international scholars as well as practitioners of Communication, Computer Science, Health and Science Education, Political Communication, Public Health, Sociology, and other fields, making this book the most comprehensive and diverse collection of studies on vaccine misinformation—online and offline—currently available.