This is where you’ll find recaps of each our five 2021 Media Impact Forum sessions. This year’s Media Impact Forum is focusing on evidence-based communications through one online discussion a month from February to June. The recorded sessions appear in chronological order below.
Agenda
Date: Wednesday, Feb. 17 | 1-2:30 p.m. ET
Session 1: Addressing vaccine hesitancy
Billions of dollars were invested in developing COVID-19 vaccines, but they won’t protect us until they are broadly accepted and taken. We need a widespread public communications that is rooted in science to build confidence in the vaccine.
This fall, the Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida collaborated with 16 scholars from the disciplines of behavioral economics, social psychology, medical anthropology, political communication, and neuroscience with funding from the United Nations Verified initiative. They developed a research-driven communication framework for decreasing vaccine hesitancy, and their eight-part framework offers guidelines for creating an effective communications strategy. We’ll explore the framework in depth during this session.
Then, we’ll break out into two concurrent sessions:
- FOR ALL FUNDERS: Funders will explore the essential role philanthropy can play in testing and promoting effective communications about the necessity of the COVID-19 vaccine by investing in strategies that translate this research into meaningful, actionable and trustworthy messages targeted to specific communities.
- FOR JOURNALISM FUNDERS: In this breakout, we’ll reframe the insights in a way that offers value to news organizations that are covering the vaccine rollout. (This session will be facilitated by Joy Mayer, Director, Trusting News; and Matt Sheehan, Managing Director, Center for Public Interest Communications; Senior Lecturer, Journalism, University of Florida)
Speakers:
- Ann Christiano, founder and Director of the Center for Public Interest Communications, University of Florida
- Jack J. Barry, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Center for Public Interest Communications, University of Florida
- Joy Mayer, Director, Trusting News
- Matt Sheehan, Managing Director of the Center for Public Interest Communications
