FAKEOLOGY · Fake news and pseudo-science as post-modern mythology: The case of the anti-vaccination movement
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-06-01 → 2023-01-06
- EU contribution
- €278,841
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Fake news and pseudo-science as post-modern mythology: The case of the anti-vaccination movement
FAKEOLOGY is a project designed to understand how pseudo-scientific news is diffused within social networks and how it affects human judgement and behaviour. Using the example case of the COVID-19 vaccination, its goal is to draw links between pseudoscience, populism and health literacy and focus on the anti-vaccination movement to provide a key venue wherein mis- and dis-information can be studied. Fluid and conflicting information on COVID-19 vaccination has eroded trust in public health messaging and exacerbated the spread of misinformation. This has caused many people to feel overwhelmed by inconsistent public health messaging which can feel distant and imposed. In this project, we introduce a deep listening framework to public health communication with the purpose of surfacing peoples’ perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines and identifying trust deficits and resources. Our process can be applied to support public health messaging by tuning communication efforts to people’s perceptions and lived experiences at a deeper level. It pursues the following scientific objectives: O1: Identify diffusion patterns of scientific and pseudoscientific discourses on vaccines within social and news media content. O2: Identify human behaviour and decision-making patterns upon exposure to scientific mis- and dis-information. O3: Improve dissemination strategies of scientific news that are employed by journalists, scientists, and policy makers.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
FAKEOLOGY draws links between pseudoscience, populism and health literacy and focuses on the anti-vaccination movement to provide a key venue wherein mis- and dis-information can be studied. Specifically, the project studies how pseudo-scientific news is diffused within social networks and how it affects human judgement and behaviour. FAKEOLOGY aims at enhancing the efficiency of science communication and at empowering public health policy makers to introduce fake-proof health literacy initiatives. Bridging large-scale social media data with news media (network analysis, content and discourse analysis) and behavioural data (focus groups, expert interviews, lab experiment), the project focuses on how pseudo-science propagates within the digital media ecosystem. Pseudoscience, and, specifically, the anti-vaccination movement, demonstrate a unique case study that indicates the longevity of the ‘fake news phenomenon’ as anti-vaccine myths started spreading decades ago and still feed the movement’s narrative. The popularity of vaccine hesitancy is growing, in spite of the scientific data that systematically debunk its claims, resulting in the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases. Within the digital terrain, anti-vaccination groups have even grown in visibility and volume and research demonstrates that Twitter constitutes a popular platform for anti-vaccination supporters. Using state-of-the-art media analytics technologies developed by the MIT Media Lab and building on science communication developed at the University of Zurich, the project contributes to cutting-edge research with an analytic model that can be fine-tuned to study veracity and falsity in the digital networked paradigm.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITAT ZURICH · ZurichCoordinatorSwitzerland
- MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · CambridgeUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union