Online mis/disinformation and vaccine hesitancy in the era of COVID-19: Why we need an eHealth literacy revolution

Abstract

The quality of online health information is cause for concern in general, and the spread of mis/disinformation on the benefits and risks of vaccines has certainly been fueling vaccine hesitancy. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have entered an era of unprecedented "infodemic." There has never been a more urgent time to address the long-standing question of how to overcome the deleterious influence of exposure to online mis/disinformation on vaccine uptake. eHealth literacy, a skill set including media literacy, is key to navigating the web in search for health information and processing the one encountered through social media. Studies assessing the impact of increasing eHealth literacy on behavioral attitudes and health outcomes in the general population are relatively scarce to date. Yet for many reasons, leveraging eHealth literacy skills, and more specifically, media literacy, could be of great value to help mitigate the detrimental effects of erroneous information on vaccination decision-making. In this paper, we make the case that eHealth and media literacies should be viewed as fundamental skills that have the potential to empower citizens to better recognize online mis/disinformation and make informed decisions about vaccination as any other health matters.

Keywords: Internet; Misinformation; disinformation; eHealth literacy; vaccine hesitancy.