Mitigating the impact of negative vaccine-related information diffusion #

Sarah Alahmadi, Rebecca Hoyle, Markus Brede

10:50 Wednesday in 2Q49.

Part of the Networks and complex systems in society session.

Abstract #

Our research examines how the dynamics of vaccine beliefs, as a social contagion, affects the population composition and, in turn, how this affects an outbreak spread. The decision to become vaccinated is influenced by exposure to information from external sources (such as health services, the media and social connections). That information can be negative or positive in regard to vaccination. Once someone adopts an opinion about vaccination, they can begin to influence the people in their contact networks, with potential for a social contagion that spreads through their networks. We investigate the possibility of mitigating negative social contagion by applying an effective counter campaign that promotes vaccine uptake. If negative vaccine-related information arises from random general exposures and starts spreading among individuals affecting their willingness to be vaccinated, having a positive counter campaign can alter the spread of anti-vaccine opinion and lead to a better distribution of vaccine uptake, which will ultimately suppress the epidemic. In this study, we suggest and investigate several strategies for disseminating positive vaccine-related information to find efficient models that would successfully mitigate the impact of negative information and, thus, encourage vaccination. These include choosing targets (i.e., a set of individuals) at random or selecting them based on the local presence of negative information, in both cases either with or without dynamic updating of those targets. We demonstrate that working randomly to spread positive vaccine-related information could worsen the situation by encouraging a greater growth of anti-vaccine communities and, as a result, accelerating the spread of the outbreak once it emerges in one of these communities. However, targeted campaigns that take into account the presence of negative sentiment in a community do better, with varying degrees of epidemic suppression.