The Sars-Cov-2 vaccines currently approved for emergency use in the U.S. constitute a breakthrough in vaccine research, and a way to return to regular life. Despite this, the American public remains divided as to the vaccines’ perceived safety, and continue to express low levels of intent to accept the vaccine when one is available.
Thomas Wood, Senior Faculty Fellow with the Mershon Center's Security and Governance Research Cluster and political scientist at OSU, recently received a large grant from Google to study the effect of online vaccine misinformation, and how to effectively redress falsehoods in an online setting. Google’s Newslab will use Wood’s findings to guide the company’s grant making to online media outlets, as they build out their own fact checking capabilities.
