How Information Repertoire Affects Vaccine Hesitancy: Processes of Information Verification and Cognitive Elaboration
Abstract
As information consumption plays a critical role in addressing vaccine hesitancy in the hybrid media environment, it becomes crucial to understand how individuals' use of a combination of channels and sources affects their vaccine hesitancy. Based on information repertoire approaches emphasizing the multiplicity of channels and sources, we investigated different patterns of information repertoire related to the COVID-19 pandemic and how these patterns affected vaccine hesitancy through different informational mechanisms. Our results based on a U.S. sample suggest that while a richer information repertoire related to increased confidence in vaccines through increased information verification, this richness also corresponded with deepened vaccine hesitancy through heightened cognitive elaboration and perceived information inconsistency. Our findings support the utility of repertoire approaches for better understanding health information acquisition in the complex media ecology.
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Zhao et al. (2024) observed that access to multiple sources of COVID-19 information enhanced individuals' confidence in detecting misinformation, thereby increasing their verification behaviors.
“Similarly, Zhao et al. (2024) observed that access to multiple sources of COVID-19 information enhanced individuals' confidence in detecting misinformation, thereby increasing their verification behaviors.”
From Bridging risk and retention: risk coping with privacy and hallucination in AI (2026) · cites this paper as Zhao et al. 2024
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References 47 · Cited by 23
- Authors
- Zhao, X., Ma, Z., Xu, S., & Austin, L. L.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Oakland University (US)
- University of Tennessee at Knoxville (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zhao, Xinyan
- Venue
- Health Communication
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2022-12-12
- Volume
- 39
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 62-72
- ISSN
- 1041-0236 (ISSN-L)
- 1532-7027
- OpenAlex
- W4311286478
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 4
- FWCI
- 3.85
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Health Communication (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media Research
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Keywords
- vaccine hesitancy, COVID-19 vaccines, fact-checking, cognitive elaboration, hybrid media environment, health information acquisition, vaccine confidence
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, Vaccination Hesitancy, Cognition, Humans, Vaccination, Vaccines, Pandemics
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