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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Commun.
Sec. Health Communication
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2025.1490292
Lessons Learned about Conspiracy Mindset and Belief in Vaccination Misinformation During the Covid Pandemic of 2019 in the United States
Provisionally accepted
Dan Romer *
Kathleen H. Jamieson - University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States
We review research we conducted from the first through the third year of the Covid pandemic that identified conspiracy mindset as an important source of vaccination resistance in the United States (US). We show that the mindset was highly related to the acceptance of misinformation about the safety and eSicacy of vaccination, including the vaccines against Covid-19. We show that its eSects were overcome to some extent in racial-ethnic and political groups that were likely to have received supportive information from sources trusted within their group. At the same time, some of our evidence suggests that media sources that promoted conspiracy theories about vaccination and the pandemic likely intensified conspiracy mindsets and with it, vaccination resistance. Our findings suggest that eSorts countering misinformation cannot rely on simply correcting falsehoods but should also involve engaging trusted leaders who can reassure the conspiracy minded that the recommended action is safe and eSective.
Keywords: covid vaccination, COVID Pandemic, Misinformation 3, conspiracy mindset, Conspiracy beliefs, Media Use, Misinformation correction
Received: 04 Sep 2024; Accepted: 05 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Romer and Jamieson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dan Romer, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States
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