Digital Strategies To Counter Health Misinformation and Strengthen Vaccine Acceptance: a Scoping Review

Health misinformation is one of the greatest challenges in contemporary public health and has been consistently associated with higher levels of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, particularly through its dissemination on digital platforms. The aim of this review was to map and synthesize the available evidence on digital strategies designed to reduce health misinformation and strengthen vaccine acceptance in the community, identifying their types, mechanisms of action, reported effectiveness, target populations, contexts of application, and evidence gaps. A scoping review was conducted following the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology and the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The research question was structured using the PCC framework (Population, Concept, and Context). A systematic search was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and BIREME, including studies published between January 2021 and December 2025 in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. A total of 2,188 records were identified, of which 37 studies met the inclusion criteria, originating from 12 countries and published between 2019 and 2026. The evidence was organized into six thematic categories: social media campaigns (n = 9), experimental message interventions (n = 9), prebunking and psychological inoculation (n = 3), narrative interventions and digital storytelling (n = 5), emerging technologies and digital innovation (n = 3), and organizational social listening strategies (n = 4). The strategies with the strongest evidence of effectiveness on vaccine attitudes and intention were culturally adapted campaigns, fact-checking messages from recognized sources, prebunking through digital games, and community narrative interventions. However, the meta-analysis by [1], comprising 28 randomized controlled trials, found that social media interventions did not produce statistically significant differences in the number of people vaccinated (RR = 1.04; 95% CI: 0.96-1.14), although they did yield improvements in attitudes and intention. The benefit of digital strategies on vaccine acceptance depends more on the recipient's profile, the message source, and the sociocultural context than on the technology used. The available evidence suggests that digital strategies are especially effective at improving vaccine attitudes, knowledge, and intention, although their impact on actual vaccination depends on their integration with community interventions and on the sociocultural context.