Overview

Our lab conducts research on detecting, understanding, and combating misinformation, with a particular focus on vaccine-related misinformation. We develop natural language processing techniques to analyze patterns in misinformation spread and create tools to help combat false information.

Vaccine Concerns in the Wild

VaxCC is a tool that uses natural language processing to analyze web pages from Common Crawl to identify concerns. We intend to update this dataset monthly to track real-time vaccine concerns.

VaxCC Demo

Vaccine Misinformation Taxonomy

One of our key contributions is a comprehensive taxonomy of vaccine-related concerns and misinformation. This taxonomy helps researchers and practitioners better understand and address vaccine hesitancy by categorizing common concerns into five major categories.

Argues that there is not enough research to answer a specific question or concern regarding vaccines. In this view, the implied solution is to conduct more scientific experiments.
Attacks elements of some existing piece of vaccine research to invalidate it or cast doubts on its results. The implied solution is to redo the experiment or analysis to fix the issues of quality.
Raises doubt in knowledge regarding vaccines based on the fact that you can never be 100% sure of research conclusions. This view implies that more or better experiments will not solve the issue.
Argues that efficacy, the rate of successful protection against disease, is low or imperfect. You may still get the disease even if you are vaccinated.
Argues that you may already receive protection from disease on the basis that others around you are immune, whether naturally or through a vaccine.
Argues that immunity that comes naturally from contracting the virus or disease is preferable or comparable to the immunity from vaccines.
Claims that the virus or disease which vaccines aim to prevent is not common or not dangerous. Equivalently, this can be stated as "risks are exaggerated".
Any claims that some medical alternative (whether accepted by the medical community or not) could replace vaccination. The potential alternatives can be varied, anything from preventions like "hand washing" to cures like "herbal medicine" or "respirators".
Concerns of contracting or spreading virus/disease through vaccination originally meant to protect against the disease.
Attributes the cause of health risks to some ingredient(s) included in vaccines that are potentially hazardous.
Cites specific undesirable outcomes which may occur from vaccination.
Attributes the cause of health risks to the practices of vaccine delivery or circumstances around the vaccination rather than the vaccine contents.
Attributes the cause of health risks to be due to some people's individualized reactions to vaccines. This claim states that some people of certain demographics or health conditions may be at higher risk than others.
Points out conflicting views between religion/moral beliefs and vaccination, arguing that such religious/moral beliefs are incompatible with getting vaccinated.
Argues that not getting vaccinated is your human right. This argument views vaccine mandates as a form of infringement on rights but may stretch to state that any consequence imposed for not getting vaccinated interferes with the right to choose.
Claims that some persons or organizations involved in vaccination cannot be trusted due to their incompetence. If trusted, there may be negative consequences due to errors, mistakes, stupidity, etc.
Claims that profit motives involved in vaccination create bad incentives for decision makers. Money has to be identified as the perverse motive behind decisions.
Claims that anti-vax people, ideas, or data is being actively silenced or hidden by people in power.
Claims of secret plans or activities organized by people in power, either to use vaccination for some hidden purpose or to influence/change about vaccinations.

This taxonomy serves as a foundation for developing targeted interventions and communication strategies to address specific concerns and combat vaccine misinformation effectively.

Development and validation of VaxConcerns: A taxonomy of vaccine concerns and misinformation with Crowdsource-Viability
Rickard Stureborg, Jenna Nichols, Bhuwan Dhingra, Jun Yang, Walter Orenstein, Robert A. Bednarczyk, Lavanya Vasudevan (2024)
In Vaccine.  [ link ]
Tailoring Vaccine Messaging with Common-Ground Opinions
Rickard Stureborg, Sanxing Chen, Roy Xie, Aayushi Patel, Christopher Li, Chloe Qinyu Zhu, Tingnan Hu, Jun Yang, Bhuwan Dhingra (2024)
In NAACL Findings.  [ link | arxiv | code | data | twitter ]
Hierarchical Multi-Label Classification of Online Vaccine Concerns
Chloe Qinyu Zhu*, Rickard Stureborg*, Bhuwan Dhingra (2024)
In AI for Health Equity and Fairness.  [ link | arxiv ]