Vaccine Confidence and Infodemic in Southeast Asia's Nusantara Sociocultural Sphere: A Transdisciplinary, Transnational Study

The primary aim of this research is to develop and assess the impact of an educational video in enhancing vaccine information literacy and vaccine confidence within Southeast Asia's Nusantara Sociocultural Sphere--a network of communities spanning multiple countries in Southeast Asia, connected by shared linguistic, historical, and sociocultural roots. Adopting a transdisciplinary and human-centered approach, we will engage representatives from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore through online workshops and in-person focus group discussions to co-create a video. Guided by the findings from our research (using publicly available social media dataset) and communication theories from existing literature, the video will contain messages that focus on equipping viewers with the skills to identify common tactics used in vaccine misinformation in two mutually intelligible languages (Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia) and on enhancing vaccine confidence levels among viewers.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the videos as an intervention for vaccine information literacy and vaccine confidence, we will conduct an online two-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT). Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two groups:

1. Group 1 (Intervention Group): Participants will watch the co-created video containing vaccine-related messages.
2. Group 2 (Control Group): Participants will watch a control video containing messages related to the importance of proper and safe medication disposal.

We hypothesize that exposure to Video 1 will lead to a significant increase in vaccine literacy skills and vaccine confidence compared to exposure to Video 2.

The study will be conducted online. Individuals who have signed the e-consent form will be automatically redirected to the online RCT. Each participant will be asked to respond to several pre-video questions (including demographic, vaccine confidence, and vaccine literacy). After stratification by language, they will be randomly assigned to watch either the control video (physical exercise) or intervention video (vaccine) using REDCap's randomization functionality. After watching the video, they will respond to post-video questions (including behavior, vaccine confidence, and vaccine literacy). They will then undergo debriefing, which aims to clarify which social media posts (embedded in vaccine literacy-related questions) contain misinformation AND to provide full disclosure on the goal of the RCT (which was partially disclosed during recruitment to avoid confusion). Finally, each participant will be asked if they are interested to participate in a gift card drawing -- if they are, the investigators will asked them to share their name and contact information. The UCB team will monitor data collection and stop data collection when the target number of participants has been reached.