Digital inequalities and public health during COVID-19: media dependency and vaccination

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic information about the transmission of the virus came out slowly and recommended practices changed over time. This made communication media, like the Internet, especially important. Few prior studies have considered how digital inequalities influence information flows. Building on three research streams – vaccine hesitancy, information-seeking, and digital inequalities – we examine how digital inequalities, health media, and mass media affect COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Using representative survey data of US Internet users, our structural equation model demonstrates the importance of digital inequalities and media use for vaccine hesitancy. Digital inclusion plays an important role in public health. It leads to increased health information-seeking, which reduces vaccine hesitancy. Our model presents evidence supporting a comprehensive policy approach to vaccine hesitancy beyond factors like socio-demographics and prior health beliefs to include broader factors like digital equity measures and sources of health information. Where and how people find information on public health issues seems to be as important as demographics.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital inequalities
• COVID-19
• media dependency
• public health
• digital divide

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation [GR-2020-61093].

Notes on contributors

Grant Blank

Grant Blank (Ph.D. University of Chicago) is the Survey Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and Senior Research Fellow of Harris Manchester College, both part of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. He is a sociologist specializing in the social and cultural impact of the Internet, the digital divide, statistical and qualitative methods, and cultural sociology. He is currently working on analyses of British Internet use based on the 2019 wave of the Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS), see https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/. Author or co-author of about 50 papers and six books, in 2015 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Communication, Information Technology and Media Sociology section of the American Sociological Association.

Bianca Reisdorf

Bianca Reisdorf (D.Phil. University of Oxford) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina – Charlotte, USA. Her work focuses on the intersection of inequalities and digital media and the Internet, with a focus on digital inequalities among marginalized populations. In her recent research, Dr. Reisdorf has been focusing on internet access in correctional settings and how returning citizens navigate a technology-dependent world after release. In addition, she is interested in proxy Internet use as well as how Internet users look for and evaluate information from various media sources.