Fake news mediate the relationship between sociopolitical factors and vaccination intent in Brazil.

Abstract

Vaccination hesitancy has become a central concern and is a barrier to overcoming the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis. Studies have indicated that mis/disinformation plays a role on the attitudes and behaviours towards vaccination. However, further formal statistical models are required to investigate how fake news relates to vaccination intent and how they mediate the relationship between socioeconomic/political factors and vaccination intent. We studied a sample of 500 Brazilians and found that people were mostly not susceptible to vaccine mis/disinformation. In addition, we found that their vaccination intent was high. However, suspicions that fake news could be true raised doubts over the vaccination intention. Although age and political orientation directly influenced vaccination intent, we found that the relationship between socioeconomic/political factors and vaccination intent was strongly mediated by belief in fake news. Our results raise the need to create multiple strategies to combat the dissemination and acceptance of such content.