To Vaccinate or Not? The Role Played by Uncertainty Communication on Public Understanding and Behavior Regarding COVID-19

Kelp, Nicole; Witt, Jessica K.; Sivakumar, Gayathri

doi:10.1177/10755470211063628

Cited by 31 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(46 reference statements)

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“…Secondly, uncertainty also relates to the ways in which the benefits and risks of Covid-19 vaccines were communicated to the public and confusion caused by changing messages and policies, which was interpreted as indecisiveness by some of our study participants, as discussed before. While recognising the challenge of ‘discussing newly licensed vaccines for an emerging and uncertain disease’ (Kelp et al 2022 ), Kelp and her co-authors argue that the way scientific uncertainty is communicated to the public has an impact on public attitudes. Through a survey study they conducted with college students, they examined the extent to which “uncertainty communication” had an effect on risk perceptions, trust in science and government, and behavioural decision-making, including vaccine uptake.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through a survey study they conducted with college students, they examined the extent to which “uncertainty communication” had an effect on risk perceptions, trust in science and government, and behavioural decision-making, including vaccine uptake. One of their conclusions is that ‘individuals who read information with low uncertainty ranked the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine higher’ (Kelp et al 2022 : 233). However, information with “low uncertainty” might not always be a “true” reflection of the state of what is being communicated, in this case the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, information with “low uncertainty” might not always be a “true” reflection of the state of what is being communicated, in this case the safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines. This raises the question of ‘ethics involved in the need to disclose the limitations and uncertainty of science to patients’ (Kelp et al 2022 : 234) and the possible trade-off between ‘short-term and long-term understanding and trust’ (Kelp et al 2022 : 234).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceptions and attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccines: narratives from members of the UK public

Ajana

Engstler

Ismail

et al. 2022

J Public Health (Berl.)

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Aim The aim of the paper is to enhance understanding of how members of the public make sense of the Covid-19 vaccines and to understand the factors influencing their attitudes towards such artefacts of pandemic governance. Methods The paper draws on 23 online in-depth interviews with members of the UK public and builds on relevant literature to examine participants’ perceptions of the benefits and risks of Covid-19 vaccines, the sources that have shaped their attitudes, and the level of trust they have towards the government’s handling of the pandemic through vaccines. Results The findings indicate that participants generally felt that the benefits of having the vaccine outweigh the risks and that Covid-19 vaccines are a crucial mechanism for enabling society to return to normal. Vaccine acceptance was, for some, strongly linked to a sense of social responsibility and the duty to protect others. However, some participants expressed concerns with regard to the side-effects of Covid-19 vaccines and their perceived potential impact on fertility and DNA makeup. Participants used various sources of information to learn about Covid-19 vaccines and understand their function, benefits, and risks. The majority of participants criticised the government’s response during the early stages of the pandemic yet felt positive about the vaccine rollout. Conclusion Just as with any other vaccination programme, the success of the Covid-19 immunisation campaigns does not only depend on the efficacy of the vaccines themselves or the ability to secure access to them, but also on a myriad of other factors which include public compliance and trust in governments and health authorities. To support an effective immunisation campaign that is capable of bringing the pandemic to an end, governments need to understand public concerns, garner trust, and devise adequate strategies for engaging the public and building more resilient societies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Perceptions and attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccines: narratives from members of the UK public

Ajana

Engstler

Ismail

et al. 2022

J Public Health (Berl.)

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“…How media informs about an EID can affect public risk perception and influence public behavior, like the uptake and implementation of preventive measures (Betsch, 2020;Kitzinger & Reilly, 1997;Roche & Muskavitch, 2003;Sandell et al, 2013), in particular vaccinations (Kelp et al, 2022).…”

Section: Health Communication During a Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Christian Drosten as a science communicator focused more on aspects of pandemic monitoring like 'case tracking' and 'testing' than his audience did. This emphasizes the crucial role of health communication during a pandemic (Bjørkdahl & Carlsen, 2017) that influences public behavior, like the implementation of preventive measures (Betsch, 2020;Kelp et al, 2022;Sandell et al, 2013).…”

Section: Identification Of Relevant Preventive Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between a health communication podcast and audience engagement: A social media case study

Beniermann¹,

Bergmann²,

Büssing³

2022

Preprint

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Knowledge about how health communication relates to the needs of the audience may foster two-way communication and audience engagement. Utilizing text mining and cumulative term frequencies (CTF), we investigated the German podcast Coronavirus Update and its subsequent YouTube comments concerning preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. CTF patterns as a measure of relative relevance revealed that preventive measures were partly discussed more frequently in the podcasts (e.g., testing) or the comments (e.g., wearing a mask) and demonstrated ‘discourse hot spots’. The CTF approach enables researchers to identify episodes for further analyses and could help health communicators to foster two-way communication.

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Transferring AI Explainability to User-Centered Explanations of Complex COVID-19 Information

Novak

Maljur

Drenska

2022

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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This paper presents a user-centered approach to translating techniques and insights from AI explainability research to developing effective explanations of complex issues in other fields, on the example of COVID-19. We show how the problem of AI explainability and the explainability problem in the COVID-19 pandemic are related: as two specific instances of a more general explainability problem, occurring when people face in-transparent, complex systems and processes whose functioning is not readily observable and understandable to them (“black boxes”). Accordingly, we discuss how we applied an interdisciplinary, user-centered approach based on Design Thinking to develop a prototype of a user-centered explanation for a complex issue regarding people’s perception of COVID-19 vaccine development. The developed prototype demonstrates how AI explainability techniques can be adapted and integrated with methods from communication science, visualization and HCI to be applied to this context. We also discuss results from a first evaluation in a user study with 88 participants and outline future work. The results indicate that it is possible to effectively apply methods and insights from explainable AI to explainability problems in other fields and support the suitability of our conceptual framework to inform that. In addition, we show how the lessons learned in the process provide new insights for informing further work on user-centered approaches to explainable AI itself.

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To Vaccinate or Not? The Role Played by Uncertainty Communication on Public Understanding and Behavior Regarding COVID-19

Cited by 31 publications

References 43 publications

Perceptions and attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccines: narratives from members of the UK public

Perceptions and attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccines: narratives from members of the UK public

The relationship between a health communication podcast and audience engagement: A social media case study

Transferring AI Explainability to User-Centered Explanations of Complex COVID-19 Information

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