Cargando…

Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy

Vaccination hesitancy is a major obstacle to achieving and maintaining herd immunity. Therefore, public health authorities need to understand the dynamics of an anti-vaccine opinion in the population. We introduce a spatially structured mathematical model of opinion dynamics with reinforcement. The...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Müller, Johannes, Tellier, Aurélien, Kurschilgen, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9554521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36312563
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220367
_version_ 1784806716442935296
author Müller, Johannes
Tellier, Aurélien
Kurschilgen, Michael
author_facet Müller, Johannes
Tellier, Aurélien
Kurschilgen, Michael
author_sort Müller, Johannes
collection PubMed
description Vaccination hesitancy is a major obstacle to achieving and maintaining herd immunity. Therefore, public health authorities need to understand the dynamics of an anti-vaccine opinion in the population. We introduce a spatially structured mathematical model of opinion dynamics with reinforcement. The model allows as an emergent property for the occurrence of echo chambers, i.e. opinion bubbles in which information that is incompatible with one’s entrenched worldview, is probably disregarded. We scale the model both to a deterministic limit and to a weak-effects limit, and obtain bifurcations, phase transitions and the invariant measure. Fitting the model to measles and meningococci vaccination coverage across Germany, reveals that the emergence of echo chambers dynamics explains the occurrence and persistence of the anti-vaccination opinion in allowing anti-vaxxers to isolate and to ignore pro-vaccination facts. We predict and compare the effectiveness of different policies aimed at influencing opinion dynamics in order to increase vaccination uptake. According to our model, measures aiming at reducing the salience of partisan anti-vaccine information sources would have the largest effect on enhancing vaccination uptake. By contrast, measures aiming at reducing the reinforcement of vaccination deniers are predicted to have the smallest impact.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9554521
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher The Royal Society
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-95545212022-10-27 Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy Müller, Johannes Tellier, Aurélien Kurschilgen, Michael R Soc Open Sci Mathematics Vaccination hesitancy is a major obstacle to achieving and maintaining herd immunity. Therefore, public health authorities need to understand the dynamics of an anti-vaccine opinion in the population. We introduce a spatially structured mathematical model of opinion dynamics with reinforcement. The model allows as an emergent property for the occurrence of echo chambers, i.e. opinion bubbles in which information that is incompatible with one’s entrenched worldview, is probably disregarded. We scale the model both to a deterministic limit and to a weak-effects limit, and obtain bifurcations, phase transitions and the invariant measure. Fitting the model to measles and meningococci vaccination coverage across Germany, reveals that the emergence of echo chambers dynamics explains the occurrence and persistence of the anti-vaccination opinion in allowing anti-vaxxers to isolate and to ignore pro-vaccination facts. We predict and compare the effectiveness of different policies aimed at influencing opinion dynamics in order to increase vaccination uptake. According to our model, measures aiming at reducing the salience of partisan anti-vaccine information sources would have the largest effect on enhancing vaccination uptake. By contrast, measures aiming at reducing the reinforcement of vaccination deniers are predicted to have the smallest impact. The Royal Society 2022-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC9554521/ /pubmed/36312563 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220367 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Mathematics
Müller, Johannes
Tellier, Aurélien
Kurschilgen, Michael
Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
title Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
title_full Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
title_fullStr Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
title_full_unstemmed Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
title_short Echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
title_sort echo chambers and opinion dynamics explain the occurrence of vaccination hesitancy
topic Mathematics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9554521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36312563
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220367
work_keys_str_mv AT mullerjohannes echochambersandopiniondynamicsexplaintheoccurrenceofvaccinationhesitancy
AT tellieraurelien echochambersandopiniondynamicsexplaintheoccurrenceofvaccinationhesitancy
AT kurschilgenmichael echochambersandopiniondynamicsexplaintheoccurrenceofvaccinationhesitancy