Addressing Misleading and Purposefully Manipulated Health-Related Information

Health-related rumors and intentionally manipulated information represent significant and growing threats to public health. Information that is false, misleading, or purposefully inaccurate can promote narratives that hinder effective preparedness for and responses to public health-related events and erode public trust in health authorities. This can create a vicious cycle through which low trust generates greater susceptibility to misleading rumors that, in turn, lead to less trust and more inaccurate content.

New research efforts and innovations are needed to anticipate and proactively address rumors and misleading content around health topics, establish practical solutions, build trust, and ultimately advance the science of risk communication and infodemiology.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security helps to improve trust and facilitate effective responses to misleading rumors by conducting research, identifying best practices, educating public health practitioners and policymakers, and furthering policy solutions to the problem.

Our work includes:

• The TRUST in Public Health website, which features:
  • A practitioner-validated Checklist to Build Trust, Improve Public Health Communication, and Anticipate Rumors During Public Health Emergencies.
  • A pilot analysis of health-related rumors that have come up during past public health emergencies.
  • An analysis exploring specific interventions to help policymakers and practitioners understand critical components of infodemic approaches.
  • An evidence-informed conceptual framework to describe how building trust in emergency preparedness and response can help build resilience against incorrect or deliberately false narratives.
  • Recommendations to assist public health professionals in increasing or maintaining public trust during health emergencies when rumors are abundant.
• The Practical Playbook for Addressing Health Rumors, which takes a hands-on approach to help public health practitioners, medical professionals, and health communicators recognize and respond to misleading and potentially harmful health rumors.
• A project to understand information manipulation about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the impact of this information on non-proliferation efforts, and potential policy solutions.
• An effort working to understand similarities and differences among different U.S. and Russian news sources, focusing on rumors about Ukrainian bioweapon labs.
• Analysis of tweets about Ebola during the 2014 U.S. outbreak, investigating the accuracy and content of social media messages in the context of public health emergencies
• Analysis of tweets about masks and vaccines in the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• A proposal for developing a national strategy to address misleading, contradictory, and manipulated narratives future health emergencies.
• Economic analysis examining the costs of false or misleading information related to COVID-19 nonvaccination.

Project Team

Team Lead: Tara Kirk Sell, PhD, MA

Project supported by:

• US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Johns Hopkins University Catalyst Award
• National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM)
• Coefficient Giving (past funding support)