  Information regarding vaccines from sources such as health services, media,
and social networks can significantly shape vaccination decisions. In
particular, the dissemination of negative information can contribute to vaccine
hesitancy, thereby exacerbating infectious disease outbreaks. This study
investigates strategies to mitigate anti-vaccine social contagion through
effective counter-campaigns that disseminate positive vaccine information and
encourage vaccine uptake, aiming to reduce the size of epidemics. In a coupled
agent-based model that consists of opinion and disease diffusion processes, we
explore and compare different heuristics to design positive campaigns based on
the network structure and local presence of negative vaccine attitudes. We
examine two campaigning regimes: a static regime with a fixed set of targets,
and a dynamic regime in which targets can be updated over time. We demonstrate
that strategic targeting and engagement with the dynamics of anti-vaccine
influence diffusion in the network can effectively mitigate the spread of
anti-vaccine sentiment, thereby reducing the epidemic size. However, the
effectiveness of the campaigns differs across different targeting strategies
and is impacted by a range of factors. We find that the primary advantage of
static campaigns lies in their capacity to act as an obstacle, preventing the
clustering of emerging anti-vaccine communities, thereby resulting in smaller
and unconnected anti-vaccine groups. On the other hand, dynamic campaigns reach
a broader segment of the population and adapt to the evolution of anti-vaccine
diffusion, not only protecting susceptible agents from negative influence but
also fostering positive propagation within negative regions.
