JITSUVAX Annual Report 2023

Introducing JITSUVAX project (EU Horizon 2020 funded research)

You can find further information in this link 

WHAT IS JITSUVAX

JITSUVAX is an EU Horizon 2020 funded project coordinated by the University of Bristol working with five other EU institutions as well as one in Canada. The project will run from April 2021 until March 2025. The JITSUVAX team consists of psychologists, epidemiologists, behavioural scientists, clinicians and others. Together we are investigating misinformation around vaccines which may lead to people being less likely to accept vaccination. We will be testing ways of combatting this misinformation and helping healthcare professionals to communicate with patients.

What is Misinformation?

Misinformation is wrong information. It can come from a variety of sources and for a variety of reasons: the common factor is that it can be disproven. Examples can be seen in the COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook (page 5) where commonly seen misinformation about COVID-19 vaccinations is described and analysed using evidence.

What is vaccine hesitance?

The World Health Organization (WHO) SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy defines vaccine hesitancy as 'delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination services'. It is a behavioural decision to delay or reject some or all vaccines.

How to combat misinformation?

The first step is to identify and analyse the anti-vaccination arguments that circulate on social media and elsewhere. We will also develop and trial a questionnaire that measures attitudes and behaviours around vaccination in healthcare professionals. Later steps will include using this questionnaire to measure and compare results across our six countries as well as developing and trialling methods of combatting misinformation, such as trainings, websites, and computer games.

Why 'Jiu Jitsu' with misinformation?

A Jiu Jitsu ʻmodel of persuasion' was described in 2017 in a peer-reviewed paper by Hornsey & Fielding. ʻJiu Jitsu is a martial art that coaches people to use the opponents’ force against them, rather than trying to defeat it head-on... It teaches that small or lightweight fighters can win by using leverage, gravity, and momentum to defeat more powerful opponents, in other words, by turning the opponent's power into an asset.' In short, we are trying to find ways of working with people's motivations rather than fighting them.

Read more in the report below. Thanks, Renata