VSN news in the media

Promoting accurate vaccine information in India | NewsQ | 21 April 2021

Help Us Promote Accurate Vaccine Information Online!

Continuing our collaboration with NewsQ, the next in the series of improving the quality and quantity of vaccine safety information on Wikipedia will be focused on improving regional vaccine safety information, focusing on content for India in the Malayalam language (and in English).

No Wikipedia editing experience is required as full training will be provided and the session will be guided by experienced Wikipedians.

• Event information: HERE

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VSN working with Goolge to tackle misinformation | Google News Initiative | 12 January 2021

An open fund for projects debunking vaccine misinformation

The uncertainty and developing nature of the coronavirus pandemic continues to generate related misinformation. Fact-checkers have been hard at work debunking falsehoods online, with nearly 10,000 fact checks about the pandemic currently showing up across Google.

The VSN are proud to support the Google News Initiative; COVID-19 Vaccine Counter-Misinformation Open Fund worth up to $3 million, to tackle vaccine misinformation, factchecking initiatives and debunking efforts.

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Supporting public health experts’ vaccine efforts | Facebook Newsroom | 13 October 2020

Amplifying the Voices of Public Health Partners

With vaccination rates still low in many parts of the world, we’re working with global health organizations on vaccine education campaigns. This includes working with organizations including WHO and UNICEF on public health messaging campaigns to increase immunization rates. We’re working with WHO’s Vaccine Safety Network to train and support their network of vaccine partners to utilize Facebook to reach as many people as possible with public health messaging.

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The Web Analytics team publish in the Vaccine Journal | Vaccine 2020; 38:6418-6426 | 22 September 2020

The use of web analytics combined with other data streams for tailoring online vaccine safety information at global level: The Vaccine Safety Net’s web analytics project

The Vaccine Safety Net’s Web Analytics Project (VSN-WAP) was launched in October 2017 to monitor the behavior of users visiting websites belonging to the VSN, a global network of websites providing science-based information on vaccine safety. Participating websites could provide web metrics in two ways: through a Google Analytics (GA) script, which automatically forwarded metrics to a central account and through manual input (MI) of a reduced subset of metrics (Sessions, Page Views, New Users, Bounce Rate, Views/Session and Average Session Duration), which were pooled with the metrics obtained through GA. Additional metrics were obtained from websites providing data through Google Analytics (Country, Age, Sex, Device).

Digital media monitoring techniques can provide insights on the characteristics of users with a specific interest in vaccines. These data can be exploited to improve the performance of websites providing information on vaccines to the general public.

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Vaccine Safety Net | Wikipedia | 28 August 2020

New Wikipedia page

Wikipedia is accessed over 18 billion times a month and is one of the most frequently visited sites for healthcare information worldwide.

Keep posted on how the VSN are working with NewsQ and Wikipedia DC to increase the quality and quantity of vaccine safety articles on Wikipedia and help VSN members with publishing their page to promote reliable information online.

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Pinterest's new vaccine search will offer something rare on social media: facts | The Guardian | 28 August 2019

Users looking for medical advice will get results from major public health groups in an effort to combat misinformation

Pinterest’s initiative earned praise from global health groups. Isabelle Sahinovic of the Vaccine Safety Network called it a “a critical addition to the global health community’s efforts to tackle incorrect and harmful misinformation online” in an emailed statement.

“Different initiatives have been piloted by other social media platforms but to date, Pinterest has taken the boldest step by asking for expert advice to improve their vaccine-related search results,” she added.

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Bringing authoritative vaccine results to Pinterest search | Pinterest Newsroom | 28 August 2019

Health misinformation is contagious

Since last year Pinterest blocked vaccine-related search terms on their platform to stop the spread of harmful misinformation.

In an announcement today, Pinterest will allow users to search 200 terms relating to vaccines, but the results displayed will only come from trusted partners, including the World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and the Vaccine Safety Net.

Ifeoma Ozoma, from Pinterest goes on to say: “This new search experience only shows content from leading public health institutions—you won’t see any recommendations or comments on Pins in these results. We also won’t show ads. We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn't responsible.”

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What is the WHO Vaccine Safety Net? | YouTube - VaccinesToday | 25 July 2018

Who we are, what we do

The Vaccine Safety Net is a global network of 60 websites in 16 languages across 28 countries. Websites are evaluated by the World Health Organization to ensure that they provide reliable information on vaccine safety. Members must reach high standards of credibility, content, accessibility and design.