VACCINES AND MASKS

Vaccine, mask hesitancy fuel fires at A&M

Social media, content algorithm affect health communication

By Shelby McVey and Lindsey Golden

Filter bubbles are making some people hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine, according to two researchers who study health messaging. In a state with more than 29 million people, only approximately 15 million Texans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. A number of factors, such as social norms of peers and a lack of transparency in the vaccine roll-out process, are stopping the other 14 million Texans from getting any form of the vaccine, said Lu Tang, Ph.D. and associate professor in Texas A&M’s Department of Communication. Social media and its algorithm of depositing information to users is a main contributor to who receives wanted, or unwanted, information, Tang added.

This filter bubble is where social media platforms identify the content their users are interacting with, and produce more of it, explained Tang. If an unvaccinated person were to watch an anti-vaccination video on YouTube, the platform’s algorithm will identify it and keep pushing for similar information to be shown, Tang said. In turn, this strongly contributes to vaccine hesitancy. “I feel like what kind of media you consume on a day-to-day basis will affect how you think of COVID[-19] vaccines, whether it’s useful, whether vaccines are going to make you magnetic,” Tang said. “Media is very, very powerful. I feel like in this pandemic, the media has more effect on how we handle [COVID-19] than the medical community or the government.”

Social media’s push of information based on a curated algorithm helps directly relate to a psychological way of processing information called cognitive dissonance theory, Tang said. “Basically, it says that if I already have a piece of information that I think is true, it can be like I believe in vaccines or I don’t believe in vaccines, if we already have this piece of information in our heads, that is called a cognition,” Tang said. “And then, once it’s there and if we receive a new piece of information that is inconsistent with our existing cognition — we experience cognitive dissonance.”

Rooted ideological reasoning is what Tang credits as also contributing to anti-vaccination campaigns. This means, labeling the government as untrustworthy makes increasing the vaccination rate more difficult. Factors such as having reliable forms of transportation and insurance mean these individuals do not have to rely as heavily on the government, Tang said. This contributes to their mistrust of government entity regulation, such as the COVID-19 vaccine.

“If this thing is against people’s deeply rooted values, then I feel it’s very difficult to persuade them, and that’s why the United States has [one of the] lowest vaccination rates,” Tang said.

Motivations are what drive people to wear a mask or not, said Richard Street, Ph.D. and professor in A&M’s health communication department.

“If you have family members that are getting really sick and dying, that makes it a very different situation for some people,” Street said.

Photo by Ronnie Mata Photo by Katen Adams Lu Tang, Ph.D. and associate professor of communication, researches how stigmas and culture affect health communication. She counted 20 of 150 students wearing masks during a recent exam in class, in line with trends observed throughout the semester.

Since the vaccine is not currently mandated in Texas, regardless of whether a doctor recommends a patient get vaccinated or not, medical ethics dictate the patient does not have to receive it.

“One of the ethical principles of health care is what’s called autonomy, and it is where patients choose to undergo treatments and procedures,” Street said. “You can’t force them in most instances to do anything. A person has to choose to engage in a particular treatment.

“So what you want to do is work with a person to enhance their understanding of why they should get the vaccine. You’re working so they come to that decision on their own.”

The other part of medical practice is persuasion, Street said.

“Sometimes, doctors are influential by encouraging and having a patient do something by arguing it is the right thing to do,” Street said. “Getting a person to do what you want them to do versus [telling them what to do] is shared-decision making.

“So, in the case of vaccines, that’s where sometimes clinicians have to balance and have [patients] make their own choice.”