Building Vaccine Disinformation Resilience in Partnership with Latino Social Media Influencers

Challenge

Latino communities have become targets for social media-based disinformation campaigns related to COVID-19 and vaccination. Latinos are more likely to use social media, especially Facebook, as a primary source of information about COVID-19 than non-Latinos. While many social media sites have committed to flagging misinformation, their systems focus on English-language misinformation, leaving Spanish speakers susceptible. Recent research finds that 37% of Latinos reported having seen material that makes them think COVID-19 vaccines are not safe or effective, with 67% of those whose primary language is Spanish stating they do not trust that the vaccine is safe. Disinformation on social media platforms has exacerbated existing disparities in health and vaccine uptake among Latino populations in Maryland, contributing to higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death in this population. Equipping Latinos with skills to identify and combat misinformation within their virtual communities is an important strategy in mitigating disinformation and its impact.

Approach

Our project aims to collaborate with approximately 20 Spanish-speaking Latino social media influencers (e.g. local Facebook personalities, youth, day labor organizers) to culturally adapt an existing online training that utilizes inoculation theory, a behavioral science approach to effectively building resilience against disinformation. By exposing individuals to weakened doses of disinformation tactics, people learn to recognize and resist disinformation online across multiple topics. We will culturally adapt the existing training through focus group discussions with Latino influencers and test how our pilot training impacts influencers’ abilities to recognize and mitigate disinformation through interviews, pre- and post-testing, and social media content analysis.