Kathryn Haglin, assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is available to comment on communicating about the COVID-19 vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, and vaccine misinformation.
1. How do politics impact science communication?
Politics play a role in every field in the physical and social sciences, but the COVID-19 pandemic has really brought these connections to the forefront of people’s minds. Basic information around COVID-19 has become highly politicized, and public health measures like mask wearing and social distancing have turned into political statements. We have also seen misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and the newly developed vaccines reach a wide audience in the United States. This is obviously concerning, since vaccines are going to be one of the best tools we have to bring the pandemic to a halt. If belief in these false claims undermines our ability to vaccine the public, the pandemic will continue to disrupt life and cause more deaths for months to come.
2. Any tips for being savvy when consuming important information about the vaccine?
To combat COVID-19 misinformation, it’s important to address the concerns of the reluctant and distrustful. Calling people “idiots” is not going to open hesitant people up to new information. Instead, we need to understand reasons why some groups do not trust vaccines and address those concerns.
We also need to amplify accurate messages. Spending lots of time and attention on misinformation puts too much focus on things that are not true. Instead, it’s best to focus on scientifically supported information and having that information come from trusted sources. If your uncle is a vaccine skeptic, hearing about the importance of vaccines from his friends, family, and pastor is going to be more impactful than having him read things on the CDC website. Even celebrities, like sports figures, can play a huge role in spreading accurate information. But we have to keep in mind that the most effective messenger for one community won’t be the same as one for another community. Mobilizing the most impactful messengers for different communities is part of that need to meet each group where they are and address their concerns.
It’s also important to address the gaps between beliefs, intentions, and actions. Even if you are able to correct someone’s belief in misinformation, that does not mean they will go out and get vaccinated. Even if someone says they intend to get vaccinated, they still might not. All of this underscores the incredible challenges we currently face as a nation.
About Kathryn Haglin
Photo credit: Ashley Washburn Photography
Kathryn Haglin earned her PhD in political science from Texas A&M University in 2018. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on science communication and based at Yale Law School. Dr. Haglin's research addresses questions related to political behavior, science politics and policy, and science communication. She is particularly interested in the connections between political elites and the scientific community, developing communication strategies to combat misinformation, identifying determinants of anti-science attitudes, and how anti-science attitudes affect the political landscape. She is also involved in an on-going project studying attitudes towards universal basic income (UBI) and the intersections between UBI and automation.
Dr. Haglin’s academic work spans a variety of fields and can be found in journals such as Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Climatic Change, and Health Communication.
Contact
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 218 726 8379