Preliminary evidence that brief exposure to vaccination-related internet memes may influence intentions to vaccinate against COVID-19

Abstract

Despite global efforts to rapidly distribute COVID-19 vaccines, early estimates suggested that 29–35% of the population were hesitant/unwilling to receive them. Countering such vaccine hesitancy is thus an important priority. Across two sets of online studies (total n = 1584) conducted in the UK before (August–October 2020) and immediately after the first effective vaccine was publicly announced (November 10–19, 2020), brief exposure (<1 min) to vaccination memes boosted the potentially life-saving intention to vaccinate against COVID-19. These intention-boosting effects, however, weakened once a COVID-19 vaccine became a reality (i.e., after the announcement of a safe/effective vaccine), suggesting meme-based persuasion may be context-dependent. These findings thus represent preliminary evidence that naturally circulating memes may—under certain circumstances—influence public intentions to vaccinate, although more research regarding this context-specificity as well as the potential psychological mechanisms through which memes act is needed.

Do social media campaigns foster vaccination adherence? A systematic review of prior intervention-based campaigns on social media

“…As noted earlier, targeting messages to a sub-population group’s identity and using social connection features to foster interactions among participants increased the participants’ engagement in the content. Moreover, the use of visual aids is pertinent to immunization campaigns because visual aids are processed faster, receive selective attention, and are retained longer in memory than texts ( Geniole et al, 2022 , Peterson et al, 2017 ). Visual aids are, therefore, persuasive among those with lower digital literacy and a high level of vaccine hesitancy.…”

Disparagement humor permits unsafe COVID‐19 behaviors: A prejudiced norm perspective

“…The present study broadens research on memes' relationships with health behaviors. Whereas previous research studied memes alluding to the pandemic (Myrick et al., 2022) or actively encouraging certain health behaviors (Geniole et al., 2022), we examined memes that downplay the pandemic's severity and question the need for such behaviors. Supporting our hypotheses; COVID‐19 disparagement memes signaled a local norm of tolerance for unsafe pandemic behaviors, which permitted people viewing COVID‐19 as nonthreatening to forego the protocols set by the larger society.…”

“…Like any major event in modern times, COVID‐19 spawned thousands of humorous memes. Several studies on COVID‐19 demonstrate how coping and health behaviors are related to exposure to memes themed around the oddities of living during a pandemic (Myrick et al., 2022; Torres‐Marín et al., 2022) and memes mocking anti‐vaccination communities and COVID‐19 skeptics (Geniole et al., 2022). However, no studies have investigated the impact of memes that mock and downplay the pandemic, such as humor common among skeptic communities (Scannell et al., 2021).…”

Reexamining health messages in the political age: The politicization of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its detrimental effects on vaccine hesitancy

“…Our Study 1 data analysis also revealed that survey respondents relied heavily on social media to get trustworthy vaccine information. To explore the kind of meme‐based vaccine messaging available to an average Twitter audience in the United States, we constructed Study 2 as an Exploratory analysis of anti‐vaccine memes circulating on social media during the data collection timeframe of Study 1 (Geniole et al, 2022).…”