Written evidence submitted by the British Society for Immunology

British Society for Immunology Response to the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s Sub-Committee on Online Harms and Disinformation’s Inquiry on Misinformation and Trusted Voices

The British Society for Immunology is the leading UK charity organisation representing scientists and clinicians who study the immune system. As a membership organisation, we act as a focal hub for the immunology community, supporting and empowering immunologists working in academic, industry and clinical settings to drive forward scientific discovery and application together. A key aim of the Society is to provide a strong voice on behalf of our community to represent immunology at the highest levels and ensure that the public reaps the benefits from immunology research. A crucial topic in our work in this area is vaccination – we have focussed our efforts on providing reliable, evidence-based information to strengthen public understanding, and a large part of our interactions happen on online platforms.

1. Which organisations are the most trusted sources of information in the UK?

In the space about information regarding vaccines, there is much unverified information on social media, WhatsApp, and the internet more widely, that perpetuates myths that discourage individuals from choosing to have vaccinations offered to them, which ultimately is to the detriment of public health. The reason that these sources of misinformation have been able to seep into mainstream public discourse is purported to have its routes in the historic attitude that medical practitioners should not be questioned, even when a patient or parent has valid questions or concerns[i]. Whilst this is no longer the case, there are still few opportunities/time in GP appointments for the public to put their questions to an expert and receive an answer, and this combined with a growing distrust of government can drive people online to seek out answers to their questions and into the open arms of those looking to spread misinformation.

There is a wide variety of trusted sources of information online regarding vaccines, however. Apart from the British Society for Immunology’s own public engagement website, the NHS in all four home nations, the University of Oxford’s Vaccine Knowledge Project, the UKHSA, UKRI, the British Islamic Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine, and the Science Museum to name but a few all have resources aimed at setting the record straight on vaccine, and COVID-19 vaccines in particular. There are myriad other resources too numerous to list here individually.

It can often be difficult for the public to identify trusted sources of information when misinformation is shared within communities. Unreliable information can quickly spread on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, and social media, and it can be difficult to distinguish this from reliable evidence, especially when a trusted family member or community leader has shared it. Reliable organisations, such as the British Society for Immunology, should strive to work with communities to provide correct information which can be easily understood and shared.

4. What role should the National Academies have in being a source of authoritative, trustworthy information?

National Academies and learned societies have a leading role to play in acting as reliable hubs for vaccine knowledge, ensuring that accurate and easy-to-understand information about vaccinations is accessible in the public domain and countering misinformation and myths through engaging resources and constructive conversations with the public. The British Society for Immunology, for example, worked with the Academy of Medical Sciences at the beginning of the pandemic to establish the Immunology and COVID-19 Taskforce. The taskforce published reports on a number of themes including immunity and COVID-19, long COVID-19, and ageing and COVID-19 in order to make the latest scientific information available and accessible to the general public. The taskforce also engaged with policymakers through meetings, communications, oral and written evidence submitted to Houses of Commons and Lords Select Committee inquiries, and presenting findings to SAGE, in order to both place trustworthy information in the public domain and make it available to parliamentarians engaging with constituents and the wider public.

As a learned society, the BSI brings together a large community of experts working in immunology who are ideally placed to be expert sources of knowledge in public discussions about vaccination. We focus our efforts on empowering our members to engage with the public around vaccination and become positive ambassadors, through building their skills and confidence to have constructive conversations and providing the necessary resources, materials and funding to carry out public engagement.

A successful BSI campaign championing the public engagement ventures of members and the immunology and scientific community was ‘Vaccine engagement starts at home’. This long-term multichannel campaign was based on harnessing the expert knowledge of immunologists to strengthen public understanding through regular conversations in many contexts, including online engagement on social media where questions and concerns are frequently brought up. We provided tools for immunologists and scientists to become positive role models for vaccination including a briefing with top tips to talk about COVID-19 vaccines and share information with communities, several webinars to have effective conversations and finding their individual approach to public engagement, and more.

For this campaign and other activities, we developed a series of digital materials to strengthen public understanding around vaccines, which are free to access and suitable for all audiences, including infographics about how vaccines generate long-term immunity and what’s in a vaccine, in addition to supporting blogs.

In addition, since 2020, the BSI has run a mass online vaccine engagement day, calling on BSI members to come together to strengthen public understanding of vaccinations. Each year, we renew our efforts and choose a particular focus for the day, starting with #CelebrateVaccines, then #ExploreVaccines and this year in 2022, #VaccineConversations. Our membership, the immunology community and other organisations working in this space virtually assemble to spotlight the importance of vaccination, sharing a range of resources on their platforms.

Another important side of the role of learned societies is to work closely with the public, striving to understand their concerns to better engage with them. Social media networks provide the means to engage in two-way conversations with the public, and worries and doubts around vaccinations come up frequently. We have focussed on engaging directly with the public on these platforms, taking questions about COVID-19 vaccines on our Instagram, which then our members, expert immunologists, answer, effectively listening and addressing their concerns.

The BSI has also worked with local authorities in the UK to train community leaders who hold social capital and equip them with the tools to have effective conversations about COVID-19 vaccines with their families, friends, colleagues, and contacts, thus developing a network of vaccine champions and ultimately driving vaccine uptake. By combining our expertise in immunology with the expertise of the local area and people we were able to tackle misinformation, questions and concerns directly from the community groups who may not have access to reliable information otherwise. Participants felt better informed, more knowledgeable, and more confident about having effective conversations about COVID-19 vaccinations after attending the training and reported having increased the number of people they talked to about COVID-19 vaccines in person and online on various platforms.

Most learned societies are small charities, however, and are not equipped with either the resources or the workforce to take a full time lead in tackling the vast swathes of misinformation around their topics of expertise that permeate online. Whilst many are happy and enthusiastic to take a role in engaging with the public and offering a trusted voice as part of their charitable objectives, they also have other core functions such as operating as membership organisations to support those working in their sectors more widely. Were national academies and learned societies to take a greater role in the area of tackling misinformation, it would need funding to be provided, either by government or by interested private sector stakeholders such as social media companies.

The BSI collaborated with the NHS England and NHS Improvement COVID Vaccine Equalities Team to increase vaccine confidence in Black African and Black African Caribbean people. We co-developed digital fact cards about booster vaccines to answer questions from communities that were shared online, social media and through the FutureNHS Collaboration Platform.

5. Are National Academies prominent enough voices in engaging with the variety of debates on the internet?

The role of the National Academies and learned societies should be to make correct and trusted information available and accessible to those individuals who need it. There is a role to be played in discussing and debating policy in, for example, opinion editorials or on online panels, but there is very little value in extending that debate to social media. To do the latter can not only give a platform to fringe views, such as those of anti-vaxxers, but can also sap the resources and time that these organisations could better spend on other areas of outreach, both online and offline, that would be more effective.

Asking genuine questions about vaccines is encouraged and the BSI believes a two-way conversation needs to happen for everyone to feel heard. However, engaging in debate with anti-vaxxers is not appropriate as these views are not evidence-based and therefore not on equal footing with pro-vaccine messaging. There needs to be careful consideration of how to format a debate between pro and anti-vaxx views to ensure clarity on which side the science lies.

National Academies and learned societies are well placed and have the relevant expertise to play the role of honest brokers, putting reliable information into the public domain, but the primary challenges are resources and funding and the limitations that these place on the work that can be carried out by these organisations, without external sources of support.

6. Is the provision of authoritative information responsive enough to meet the challenge of misinformation that is spread on social media?

Whilst we do not support the banning of anti-vaxxer speech, as this would be playing into their narrative of a conspiracy by government and the media to suppress their views, as well as having possible unintended consequences on ensuring science and medicine are accountable, we do believe that more support is needed to meet the challenge of misinformation surrounding vaccines and COVID-19 on social media, with a particular focus on targeting the abuse received by many individuals who speak up to champion evidence-based information on vaccines. The government, social media companies, Google and other search engines, along with representatives of science and medicine all have a role to play in ensuring that misinformation does not go uncontested. Social media companies have a responsibility to better signpost people to authoritative sources of trusted information regarding vaccines when labelling anti-vax posts, search engines should ensure that their algorithms do not make such misinformation easily accessible, and government, scientists, and health workers should work together to produce information that rejects the outlandish and dangerous claims being made. We should also promote campaigns such as the UN backed ‘Verified’ initiative which provide people with verifiable information that can be shared, while empowering them to determine the veracity and reliability of the information that they are consuming.