In the period June 2021 to February 2022, the team of the portal for public accountability, transparency and fact-checking, Truthmeter, with the support of Meta and Portalb, the other two portals by the Foundation for Internet and Society, Metamorphosis, worked on a project entitled “Rapid Response to Vaccine Misinformation”, assisted by the Balkan Fund for Democracy, a special regional initiative of the German Marshall Plan in Washington.
The aim of this project was to strengthen and upgrade the existing efforts in the fight against misinformation about vaccines in public discourse, primarily in the media and social networks, but also to expose the political and media manipulations related to ovid-19 and vaccines. . To achieve this goal, fact-checking activities were used in a format manageable to a wider audience from different geographical areas of the country and for individuals with different levels of education.
The project had a combined approach based on enhanced production and distribution of verified educational media content intended for both the media and the general public, and also a direct collaboration between the media and medical professionals on expert issues related to vaccines, Covid-19 and the wider public health.
This document entitled “Facts, persistence and consistency are the most important weapons in the fight against vaccine misinformation” is, above all, an overview of the different types of disinformation encountered by the project team in their work of fact-checking, and contains conclusions and recommendations for media professionals, researchers, but also all those who want to go deeper into the world of Covid-19 and vaccine misinformation.
