White House COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Plan: Analysis and Recommendations
Authors: Matt Masterson, Alex Zaheer, Katie Jonsson
In January, the Biden administration published a broad plan regarding response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. The first chapter of this plan focused on a goal of “restor[ing] trust with the American people” towards the COVID-19 response and outlined five main priorities concerning the public messaging around COVID-19:
Lead a coordinated, federal response that elevates the voices of public health experts.
Direct dialogue with the American people on COVID-19 led by public health experts. Empower local community leaders to carry a science-based, public health message.
Lead world-class public education campaigns — covering topics like vaccinations and vaccine hesitancy, masking, and testing — designed with diversity and inclusivity in mind, including communications in multiple languages, to maximize reach and effectiveness.
Develop the capacity to quickly identify disinformation and misinformation and work closely with stakeholders to ensure that accurate, science-based information is available to the American people.
Address vaccine hesitancy, especially in hard-to-reach communities. The federal government’s public health campaign should directly address the various reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and combat particular types of misinformation related to vaccinations.
This post will review the challenges and opportunities in each of these priorities. Broadly speaking, the new administration should:
Provide public health communicators with regular analysis of public social media conversation. This plan makes clear the White House intends to coordinate a wide range of actors around accurate messaging. Given the volatile nature of online discourse, these stakeholders must rapidly adapt messaging to address emerging narratives — particularly in the case of viral false or misleading claims. Most public health communicators cannot assess these developments alone. To assist them, the federal government should provide guidance to assist state and local officials in understanding salient dynamics.
Develop channels of communication between vaccine rollout stakeholders in anticipation of events that could diminish vaccine confidence. The federal government should coordinate real-time response to emerging misinformation. Misinformation related to the COVID vaccines cannot be moderated away; instead, it must be addressed directly, and accurate information must be transparently and frequently provided to the public via reputable, trusted figures. When an event occurs that is likely to drive misinformation, brief public health stakeholders promptly. Use empirical analysis. When possible, coordinate the response across government, healthcare providers, and scientific, medical, and industry stakeholders. H-ISAC may be an appropriate forum for this coordination.
Empower a federal agency to run a COVID vaccine rumor control page. State and local public health communicators should not have to counter misinformation alone. In the 2020 election, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) demonstrated that a centralized rumor control page could counter online misinformation. That page can be replicated for vaccine misinformation. Local health communicators can then adapt this centralized public messaging to the needs of their specific communities.
Facilitate public-private collaboration with social media companies. Many of the large social media platforms have improved their ability to respond to misinformation at scale. Specifically, Twitter and Facebook now have teams dedicated to promoting accurate COVID vaccine information. The federal government can encourage these companies to build counter-messaging tools based upon their advertising platforms. For example, such a collaboration could involve the capability to create a custom audience based upon individuals who engaged with or saw a specific piece of anti-vaccine disinformation, along with the advertising credits necessary to create counter-messaging advertisements for that audience.
For each priority, we outline below challenges to achieving each specific goal, and targeted actions the federal government can take to accomplish the goals set out in the plan and better empower partners to combat misinformation or disinformation regarding the COVID-19 vaccine.
Priority 1: Lead a coordinated, federal response that elevates the voices of public health experts.
Key challenges to achieving this objective:
A lack of coordination may lead to inconsistent messaging, allowing false or misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines to develop and spread.
It is difficult to identify, assemble and balance the interests of a broad group of experts. The different needs and experiences of the communities that they live and work in can lead to differences of opinion on response and messaging.
There are no clear distribution channels for messaging once such messaging is created.
Recommendations:
Provide regular (at least weekly) updates to federal, state and local partners regarding emerging false and misleading COVID-19 narratives, followed by messaging and strategic communications plans to mitigate them. Common awareness and coordination will prevent disinformation actors from exploiting inconsistent messaging.
Empower a federal agency to run a centralized rumor control page like DoD, CISA, and FEMA have done. The purpose of the page would be to present facts regarding the vaccine to counter misleading information, particularly for those searching for information. Local health communicators can then adapt this centralized public messaging to meet the needs of their specific communities.
Empower trusted medical professionals and government leaders with clear messaging to rebut emerging narratives. Allow them flexibility in how they choose to rebut them, so long as the rebuttal is public, transparent and consistent with the overall messaging.
Identify partners to disseminate content at the local level, including social media influencers and members of the local press. If these partners are identified early, they can provide critical assistance in orchestrating a rapid response.
Priority 2: Direct dialogue with the American people on COVID-19 led by public health experts. Empower local community leaders to carry a science-based, public health message.
Key challenges to achieving this objective:
There has been a lack of direct and consistent communication with the general population regarding the current status of COVID-19 vaccines.
Local community leaders are either bereft of information or overwhelmed by low-quality information on social media narrative trends. State and local leaders often lack the time and resources to update their messaging to respond to emerging false or misleading claims.
Recommendations:
Message early and often: avoid information vacuums and data voids.
The federal government should provide a structure to connect local community leaders with centralized public health decision-makers. That structure should uptake local reports of COVID misinformation, organize them, and coordinate strategy to counter as necessary. This structure will also inform CDC toolkit products and longer-term outreach efforts.
Work with online influencers and community leaders who can address false or misleading claims among targeted audiences.
Messaging should use plain language and directly address dominant narratives. It should acknowledge legitimate concerns with the vaccine, for example, that some people may initially feel weak after vaccination. Such measures will help to build trust.
The federal government should act rapidly to counter new viral falsehoods by briefing local officials with high-quality information about the facts, the reach of the claims, and potential counter-messaging at the earliest opportunity.
The federal response should include state and local health agencies, healthcare providers, and vaccine manufacturers. H-ISAC may be an appropriate forum for coordination. When possible, these communicators should mutually reinforce each other’s messaging.
Priority 3: The Administration will lead world-class public education campaigns — covering topics like vaccinations and vaccine hesitancy, masking, and testing — designed with diversity and inclusivity in mind, including communications in multiple languages, to maximize reach and effectiveness.
Key challenges to achieving this objective:
The absence of a COVID-19 coordinated national public health campaign to date has led to intermittent and inconsistent public education — and, in some communities, misinformation has taken root.
Disinformation targets specific communities and ethnic groups, complicating a unified response.
Fact-checkers and public health authorities have limited visibility into non-English-speaking communities.
Recommendations:
Engagement should span traditional media (both national and local) and social media. It should include newspapers and radio that speak to specific ethnic communities, prioritizing communities with the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy and/or exposure to misinformation.
Because misinformation may vary by community, trusted community leaders should be empowered to tailor counter-messaging to local needs.
Social media hashtags can amplify reach, but risk oversimplification. Use hashtags in a deliberate way to amplify broad messaging about the safety of the vaccine.
Where possible, the federal government should partner with social media companies to increase reach and saturation. Facebook’s and Twitter’s voter information portals provide templates for possible cooperation.
Priority 4: The federal government will develop capacity to quickly identify disinformation and misinformation and work closely with stakeholders to ensure that accurate, science-based information is available to the American people.
Key challenges to achieving this objective:
Mis- and disinformation changes rapidly, transits between media platforms, and commands widespread appeal. Government can be slow to respond to it.
There is no centralized government body responsible for addressing vaccine misinformation. Federal agencies have unclear or overlapping jurisdictions.
Recommendations:
Develop a public-facing misinformation center of excellence within the federal government to act as a clearinghouse for counter-misinformation efforts.
Civil society and academic organization partnerships can help identify and counter misinformation as the federal government builds more robust and organized capabilities.
When possible, corrections to false and misleading claims should originate from authoritative subject matter experts. For example, messaging about vaccine safety might require different experts than vaccine distribution.
Provide public health communicators with up-to-date analysis of social media discourse and emerging narratives.
Priority 5: Address vaccine hesitancy especially in hard to reach communities. The federal government’s public health campaign will directly address the various reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and combat particular types of misinformation related to vaccinations.
Key challenges to achieving this objective:
Public health communicators struggle to identify specific community narratives without elaborate social media tools or community liaisons.
Vaccine unavailability or delay creates uncertainty. That uncertainty allows misinformation to take hold. Transparency about supply and distribution is critical.
Recommendations:
Healthcare providers must be briefed on each community’s needs before beginning vaccination. Currently, the CDC provides pamphlets to health professionals to inform their individual conversations with vaccine-skeptical patients. These pamphlets should be regularly updated as new narratives emerge.
Provide up-to-date information about vaccine availability, and distribution. Be transparent with potential challenges or remaining uncertainties. Changes to delivery dates may exacerbate suspicions among skeptical populations.