The Drum Beat 817 - Social Listening: Polio, Immunisation, and Vaccines

• 1.Vaccination Demand Observatory
  Launched in April 2021, the Vaccination Demand Observatory offers tools, training, technical support, and research to equip in-country teams to mitigate the impact of misinformation and mistrust on all vaccines. The effort to combat vaccine hesitancy worldwide is a collaborative project of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), PGP (The Public Good Projects), and the Yale Institute for Global Health.
  
   
• 2.Vaccination Demand Hub
  This global network of partner organisations works to understand why people miss out on vaccination, to improve acceptance and uptake of vaccines, and to ensure that people everywhere are protected against vaccine-preventable diseases. Co-chaired by UNICEF and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Demand Hub offers a knowledge base of resources from organisations and experts across many disciplines. One of its 4 workstreams develops and shares tools and approaches that are designed to address misinformation and to strengthen digital engagement, including through the establishment of social listening systems and dashboards.
  
   
• 3.Social Data in the Polio Programme: Webinar
  This webinar drew on UNICEF's experience in collecting and using social data to strengthen social and behaviour change (SBC) in polio outbreak responses around the world. It provides examples from UNICEF country offices (COs) that have recently responded to polio outbreaks, as well as an overview of a set of rapid social data collection tools that can be used by COs and others. [Apr 2022]
  
   
• 4.Social Data and Polio Eradication: A Reference Guide
  This document from UNICEF gives an overview of the different types of data that can be collected for polio campaigns around the world and explains how these forms of data can be used for SBC work. It is a practical tool designed to help the practitioner go beyond immunisation data that highlight gaps in coverage, awareness, and refusals, toward a nuanced understanding of why children are being missed. [2022]
  
   
• 5.KAP Polls for Immunization and Polio Programmes: A Guide to Higher Quality In-person KAP Polls for C4D Managers
  This guide is built on the real-world experience of a knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) polling collaboration between UNICEF and the Harvard Opinion Research Program. Over the course of that collaboration, teams conducted more than a dozen polls across 8 polio- and immunisation-priority countries, the findings of which ultimately formed the backbone of the communication for development (C4D) strategies in polio. [2022]
  
   
• See also:
  Lessons from COVID-19 Response: The Importance of Using Community-based Data in Emergency Response
  

• 6.Finding the Signal through the Noise: A Landscape and Framework to Enhance the Effective Use of Digital Social Listening for Immunisation Demand Generation
  by Sarah Cunard Chaney, Peter Benjamin, and Patricia Mechael
  Listening to people's perspectives on and concerns about immunisation can inform strategies to tackle vaccine hesitancy and encourage more people to get vaccinated. Social listening data collection tools range from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning platforms to telephone hotlines, broadcast radio talk shows, and documentation of community dialogues. This report provides an overview of digital approaches to social listening for immunisation and proposes a framework with practical guidance for those seeking to use this approach to strengthen vaccine demand. The work was led by HealthEnabled in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF, and the Vaccination Demand Hub. [Jun 2021]
  
   
• 7.Social Media Listening for Improved Vaccine Acceptance
  Organised by the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, and the Alliance for Advancing Health Online, this dialogue featured global health and communications experts sharing their experience using social media listening to drive programming decisions for improved vaccine uptake, specifically focused on minority and vulnerable populations. They discussed how they have used data from social listening to improve efforts to drive vaccine confidence and access. For example, Angus Thomson of the Vaccine Demand Observatory talked about the need to view social listening data through a behavioural and social science lens to understand what might be driving people's decisions. [Feb 2022]
  
   
• 8.Vaccines and the Social Amplification of Risk
  by Heidi J. Larson, Leesa Lin, and Rob Goble
  Vaccines provide fertile ground for questions, anxieties, concerns, and rumours, which appear in globalised hyperconnected communication landscapes and in the context of complex human (social, economic, and political) systems that exhibit evolving concerns about authority. This paper looks at the drivers, impacts, and implications of this landscape for vaccine initiatives, drawing on several historical and recent examples to provide a window for viewing new forms of social amplification of risk. Findings and insights were drawn from the Vaccine Confidence Project's decade-long monitoring of media and social media and its related research efforts. [May 2022]
  
   
• See also:
  Social Media - Building Positive Narratives by Social Listening: Learning Brief 4
  

• 9.Social Listening in Eastern and Southern Africa, a UNICEF Risk Communication and Community Engagement Strategy to Address the COVID-19 Infodemic
  by Silvia Sommariva, Jenna Mote, Helena Ballester Bon, et al.
  The characterisation of the COVID-19 pandemic as an "infodemic" has led institutions working on the response to further refine risk communication and engagement (RCCE) strategic plans and guidance to meet the challenge of a harmful overflow of information that can hinder risk perception and affect individual health decision-making. One such institution is UNICEF, which has been working in the Eastern and Southern Africa region with partners to gather insights on people's information needs to better inform and engage with local communities. This article describes the digital and nondigital social listening undertaken in the region and 5 of its countries to guide COVID-19 RCCE, including around vaccines. The analysis explores channels leveraged, types of data monitored, examples of social listening data use, and early challenges and lessons learned. [Feb 2021]
  
   
• 10.From Coverage to Empowerment: Integrating Gender in Immunization Demand
  by Ami Sengupta
  From UNICEF, this document features case studies from 6 countries that outline good practices in applying gender-responsive and -transformative approaches to boost demand and support vaccine uptake. For example, UNICEF Sudan used the Talkwalker application as a monitoring tool to capture the response to COVID-19 vaccine demand creation and service delivery efforts. Social listening highlighted that fewer women compared to men were engaged in online conversations regarding vaccines. In response, UNICEF produced tailored messages that responded to women's concerns about vaccine safety during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menstruation and disseminated them through social media. UNICEF asserts that social listening informed gender-responsive messaging, provided a space for women's and men's concerns to be voiced, addressed vaccine hesitancy, and resulted in enhanced female engagement on social media. [2022]
  
   
• 11.Social Listening to Strengthen Vaccine Programmes through Chipatala cha pa Foni (CCPF) in Malawi
  To help boost COVID-19 vaccination rates in Malawi, VillageReach is working with the Ministry of Health to listen to the concerns of citizens, compile data about misinformation and information gaps, and inform data-driven response strategies to close those gaps. This approach to social listening is conducted through CCPF, a toll-free national health hotline that provides information and referrals through calls by trained health workers or recorded messages. The social listening analysis helps health systems prioritise responses to address information needs, gaps, and emerging misinformation and rumours.
  
   
• 12.Infodemic Management Using Digital Information and Knowledge Cocreation to Address COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Case Study From Ghana
  by Anna-Leena Lohiniva, Anastasiya Nurzhynska, Al-hassan Hudi, et al.
  Ghana Health Service together with UNICEF Ghana CO developed a systematic process to identify, analyse, and respond to COVID-19 and vaccine-related misinformation in Ghana. This paper describes the methodology of the infodemic management system in Ghana, which combines digital and human-centred approaches. Some concrete examples are given to demonstrate the operation of the system, which could help guide other countries that plan to conduct social listening. [Jul 2022]
  
   
• 13.Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy, Confidence, and Public Engagement: A Global Social Listening Study
  by Zhiyuan Hou, Yixin Tong, Fanxing Du, Linyao Lu, Sihong Zhao, Kexin Yu, Simon J Piatek, Heidi J Larson, and Leesa Lin
  Social media listening (infoveillance) can not only monitor public attitudes on COVID-19 vaccines but also assess the dissemination of and public engagement with these opinions. The researchers collected 7,032 social media posts mentioning the COVID-19 vaccine between June 13 and July 31 2020, when 5 COVID-19 vaccines started their Phase III clinical trials worldwide, from 5 global metropolises with high COVID-19 burdens. This process revealed a lack of confidence in vaccine safety, distrust in governments and experts, and widespread misinformation or rumours, especially in high-income countries. "More efforts are needed to build a more proactive public health presence on social media, and health systems should listen to tweets from the public to help inform policies related to public health response." [Jun 2021]
  
   
• See also:
  Real-Time Tracking of COVID-19 Rumors Using Community-Based Methods in Côte d'Ivoire
  

• 
  The Drum Beat 814 - Misinformation and Polio
  The Drum Beat 811 - Eradicating Polio in Humanitarian and Crisis Contexts
  The Drum Beat 799 - Polio, Vaccines, and Social Media
  

• 14.Inoculation Theory in the Post-truth Era: Extant Findings and New Frontiers for Contested Science, Misinformation, and Conspiracy Theories
  by Josh Compton, Sander van der Linden, John Cook, and Melisa Basol
  In the present "post-truth" era, inoculation theory may have a role to play in addressing contested science beliefs that can foment vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and other harms. Inoculation theory explains how an attitude or belief can be made resistant to persuasion or manipulation through pre-exposure to weakened forms of challenges. This paper considers the findings of work to date on inoculation theory in the face of threats posed by "alternative facts" and proposes new directions for inoculation theory research. [May 2021]
  
   
• 15.Ingraining Polio Vaccine Acceptance through Public Service Advertisements in the Digital Era: The Moderating Role of Misinformation, Disinformation, Fake News and Religious Fatalism
  by Qiang Jin, Syed Hassan Raza, Muhammad Yousaf, et al.
  There are many challenges associated with eradicating polio in Pakistan, including disinformation emanating from religious beliefs and the social-media-driven overabundance of misinformation and fake news based on myths about the polio vaccine in Pakistan. This research provides empirical evidence on the efficacy of risk communication strategies to address polio vaccine reluctance in the digital age. In short, the study finds that public service advertisements (in this case, on TV) are an effective tool to counter the inverse impacts of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, and religious fatalism. [Oct 2022]
  
   
• 16.How to Counter the Anti-vaccine Rhetoric: Filling Information Voids and Building Resilience
  by Federico Germani and Nikola Biller-Andorno
  This article discusses strategies to mitigate negative effects of online anti-vaccine content on public health, including by filling information voids and building resilience to vaccine misinformation through strengthened public health and digital literacy. For example, health organisations could work with trusted amplifiers, providing guidance on (i) how to communicate more efficiently - for instance, by using people-centred and emotional messages about vaccines; (ii) how to make the most efficient use of social media to increase outreach; and (iii) how create a network of influencers able to help each other address haters and bots. [Jul 2022]
  
   
• 17.Psychological Inoculation Improves Resilience against Misinformation on Social Media
  by Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, Beth Goldberg, et al.
  Online misinformation continues to have adverse consequences for society. This group of researchers developed 5 short videos that inoculate people against manipulation techniques commonly used in misinformation and conducted 7 studies to test them. The videos were found to improve manipulation technique recognition, boost confidence in spotting these techniques, increase people's ability to discern trustworthy from untrustworthy content, and improve the quality of their sharing decisions. These effects are robust across the political spectrum and a wide variety of covariates, providing "evidence that these videos are effective not only in a laboratory setting but also 'in the wild' on a video sharing platform and can therefore be easily implemented at scale to improve resilience against misinformation..." [Aug 2022]
  
   
• See also:
  The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook: A Practical Guide for Improving Vaccine Communication and Fighting Misinformation
  

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