Introduction

The spread of misinformation on social media has increasingly become a topic of public conversation¹ and academic research.^2–4 The veterinary profession is not immune from its spread and impact. Recent research^5,6 has documented widespread use of the internet, and particularly social media, as a primary route for seeking information on animal health topics. However, the digital information environment comprises a mix of factual and nonfactual information that can be hard to distinguish.⁷ The rise of social media influencers has shifted how we evaluate the credibility of online sources, meaning that nonexperts can become highly trusted sources in the absence of relevant expertise and training.⁸ Taken together, pet owners face a confusing online information environment that often amplifies misinformation and invokes confusion. This is increasingly being seen around vaccination, with rising vaccine hesitancy fueled by misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines shared during the pandemic spilling over into the veterinary space.⁹ Writing in Forbes,⁹ journalist Nicole Roberts describes concerns about misinformation related to both human and animal vaccination. Roberts points to misinformed narratives claiming vaccines cause autism in dogs and how subsequent vaccine refusal may lead to an uptick in preventable disease in pets.⁹

On the video-sharing app TikTok, small animal veterinarian “Cat The Vet” (@cat_the_vet) debunks misinformation she sees spreading on her feed, including misleading claims about nutrition, vaccination, medication, and even veterinary fees. She joins a growing number of veterinarians using social media platforms to debunk misinformation shared by nonexperts.¹⁰ Furthermore, online misinformation is increasingly showing up in veterinary practices. In a perspective piece¹¹ published in Vet Record, veterinarian Lucy Dobree documents experiences in practice with pet owners sharing online information they’ve encountered pertaining to arthritis medication for dogs. Dobree highlights the frustrating and nuanced nature of medication misinformation online and difficult balance between listening to pet owners’ concerns following their online information-seeking and using the best available scientific knowledge to treat pets. Dobree’s experiences highlight a need for the veterinary profession to be more proactive in countering widespread online misinformation to allow pet owners to engage in successful information-seeking online and improve trust and communication between veterinary professionals and pet owners.

This article synthesizes current research and professional conversation regarding misinformation within the animal healthcare space and how it impacts pet owners and veterinary care. First, we highlight online misinformative narratives impacting pet owners before turning to discuss research-backed routes to tackling misinformation before and after it shows up in conversations about veterinary care. We then advocate for the profession to take an active role in prebunking misinformation by engaging more rapidly in the discovery of online rumors. Furthermore, we argue for the importance of building transparent feedback loops for rumors to be thoroughly investigated and quickly debunked, or confirmed as truthful, and a broader need for trust-building between veterinary professionals and pet owners to ensure correct information is effectively received.

Defining and Understanding Online Misinformation in the Veterinary Space

While differences exist among researchers on the appropriate terminology to accurately capture the phenomenon of misleading content online, misinformation has emerged as the dominant term to frame academic and public conversations about the problematic and nonfactual information that is spread.¹² Researchers often place misinformation within a broader conversation of information disorder—a term that captures the growing issues of manipulated, manufactured, and decontextualized information often spread online through social media and search engines.¹³ Under the umbrella of information disorder, information is generally delineated across 2 domains—facticity and intent.¹⁴ Information that is false but not intended to mislead or harm is generally labeled misinformation, whereas information that is false and intentionally spread is termed disinformation.^15,16 Within the context of animal health particularly as it relates to information shared in earnest among pet owners and between pet owners and veterinarians, misinformation is the most appropriate term.

Intersecting phenomena have exacerbated the spread of misinformation online, including the speed and networked nature of the internet. Furthermore, the ability of individuals to create professional-looking online content at a low cost and with minimal technical skill complicates the assessment of the credibility of an informational source.¹⁷ Information-seeking and assessments of trust also take place within the context of growing distrust in traditional knowledge institutions including scientific,^18,19 health,²⁰ and governmental organizations. Misinformation and unsubstantiated rumors can also lead to the misguided targeting of individuals, brands, and companies in ways that can have long-running impacts on credibility, broadly defined as the extent to which audiences find a person, institution, or source trustworthy and possessing relevant expertise.^21,22 Furthermore, the circulation of misinformation amplifies uncertainty around what information is trustworthy and, subsequently, who can and should be a trusted voice on a topic.²³

The veterinary world is not immune to the spread and impact of online misinformation. In recent years, social media spaces have been flooded by misinformation targeting pet owners, undermining confidence in their decision-making and complicating the work of veterinary professionals. Extant research ^24,25,26 has documented examples of misinformation spread pertaining to false nutrition information, cancer and other diseases, vaccines, animal behavior, housing, and handling. Research by Wenzel et al²⁴ drawing on data from focus groups with small animal veterinarians found a prevailing assessment by veterinary professionals that “irreputable sites and resources were easier to find and can be more appealing to clients than those with actual scientific data and veterinary backing.” Work by Richartz et al²⁵ examines the prevalence of misinformation about canine cancer, documenting a mix of authoritative and misinformed content on the video-sharing website YouTube. Thirty-nine percent of videos in the paper’s dataset included moderate to extreme claims about canine cancer, including recommendations of understudied treatments and mischaracterizations of current treatment protocols.²⁵ Importantly, the authors found that videos created by veterinarians gained significantly higher quality scores and were highly understandable, highlighting the need for veterinarians to produce social media content that provides authoritative information for social media information seekers.

Research by Johnson and Wynne²⁶ highlights that, despite a breadth of resources providing behavioral guidance, these resources may be “rife with misinformation.” For example, social media influencers have promoted the use of aversive training methods, including shock collars, to correct behavioral issues in dogs. However, Johnson and Wynne point to recent studies showing mixed efficacy for aversive training methods, with dogs trained with aversive methods exhibiting more stress-related behaviors.²⁶ Social media posts similarly endorse unsafe pet transportation, care, and housing practices, including housing small animals in inadequate cages and treating illness with unregulated supplements, as well as incorrect claims that pets can be transported safely without carriers in moving vehicles. When presented on social media alongside engagement metrics (high numbers of likes, shares, and comments) that suggest social consensus, such information feels true despite its lack of facticity.²⁷

Misinformation also threatens public health. Van Klink et al²⁸ argue that veterinary public health is an expansive topic, traditionally centered around zoonotic diseases but applicable “wherever people’s lives are influenced as a result of interaction with animals—be it physically, mentally or socially.” The proliferation of wide-ranging misinformative narratives impacts the ability of pet and working-animal owners to access authoritative information that assists them in caring for their animals and introduces novel issues for veterinarians working with owners to provide evidence-based care. Moreover, the crossover in misinformative narratives addressing human and animal health further cements the need to consider misinformation spread as an urgent issue for veterinary public health. Research from Motta et al²⁹ identifies a potential spillover effect between misinformation acceptance about the safety of human vaccines and canine vaccine hesitancy. The authors note how canine vaccine hesitancy has been shown to motivate rabies vaccine refusal and, in a survey of US adults, found a large minority of surveyed pet owners endorsed misinformed narratives about the safety, efficacy, and importance of canine vaccines, including statements that vaccines can cause dogs to develop canine autism (37%) or that the risks posed by vaccine side effects outweigh vaccination benefits (22%).²⁹ Similarly, recent work by Haeder³⁰ confirms links between human and pet vaccine hesitancy. In a large national survey, the author found that, while pet vaccinations are less politically polarizing, human and pet vaccine hesitancy are closely related and strong predictors of vaccine acceptance or refusal.³⁰ In explaining expanding human and animal vaccine hesitancy, Kogan et al³¹ found a correlation between pet-vaccine hesitancy and organized anti-vaccine activism against mandatory childhood vaccinations. An explosion of anti-vaccine rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated issues of vaccine hesitancy, increasing the need for veterinarians to consider how to prevent the spread of pet vaccine misinformation, given its potential saliency to a vaccine-skeptical public.

Research-Backed Routes to Tackling Misinformation Before and After It Shows Up in Veterinary Practice

Preventing exposure to misinformation is the most effective way to ensure misleading narratives do not gain traction. The US Office of the Surgeon General’s report “Building a Healthy Information Environment”³² notes the need to limit the prevalence of misinformation on social media, highlighting efforts by technology platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce the distribution (sharing) of misleading posts through content moderation. However, policies surrounding content moderation—particularly the removal of misleading health-related posts—are being rolled back by major social media platforms including Meta³³ and X (formerly Twitter),³⁴ suggesting that technology platforms will not likely prioritize intervention into the spread of misinformation related to animal health issues. Accordingly, veterinary professionals must engage proactively with debunking misleading information proliferating online, and extant research³⁵ suggests that engaging in preemptive warning or “prebunking” of misinformation may be an effective strategy to develop belief resistance.

Inoculation theory is a framework from social psychology that posits that it is possible to preemptively confer psychological resistance against (malicious) persuasion attempts.³⁶ Drawing a biological analogy, research³⁵ suggests that preemptively exposing audiences to manipulation techniques and common misleading narratives may confer a cognitive resistance against future falsehoods. Prebunking guides highlight 3 main types of “prebunks”: (1) fact based, correcting specific claims or narratives; (2) logic based, explaining common manipulation tactics; and (3) source based, pointing toward source credibility or lack thereof.³⁷ While all 3 provide audiences with vital information to counter misinformation seen online, logic-based strategies have proven to be especially effective in reducing misinformation belief.³⁸ Practically speaking, this type of prebunking involves, among other strategies, pointing out the use of fear-inducing or emotionally charged language and highlighting the cherry-picking of studies and how information and/or images are taken out of context. Veterinarians may choose to do this using social media, such as the previously mentioned TikTok account producing content on animal and pet health, or through more traditional written means, such as blog posts and viewpoint articles. Indeed, prebunking blog posts (eg, a post highlighting how clinical trials may be misread or decontextualized to downplay the effectiveness of rabies vaccination) also benefit individuals using search engines as their entry into information-seeking. Accordingly, state and national veterinary medical associations, veterinary technician associations, scientific societies, animal welfare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, pet food manufacturers, and individual veterinary practices are well-placed to produce prebunking posts that elevate authoritative information to the top of search engines, affording information-seekers vital frameworks to understand and debunk misinformation they might encounter later. Furthermore, prebunking can be expanded into one-on-one interactions between animal owners and veterinarians. Veterinarians can effectively practice prebunking by priming clients on the kinds of misinformation they may see about a specific condition, disease, or diet or specific species or breed. Given the rise in misinformation around nutrition and the use of supplements, veterinarians may use prebunking techniques to tackle misleading nutritional information at the local level. This could be done through the creation of talking points around increasingly popular diet trends such as raw diets or the use of “natural” supplements (ie, an explanation of the common tactics used to undermine confidence in safe and commonly used pet foods and reiteration of the scientific consensus, testing, and standards around pet nutrition). Prebunking guides suggest creating a “truth sandwich” by prioritizing the factual claim (eg, raw-food diets are not suitable for all pets) followed by a warning that there exists much misinformation around the topic and information that is designed purposely to mislead and/or sell specific products. Following this, veterinarians should provide an example of misinformation they have encountered before concluding once again with the factual information relevant to the topic.

In addition to producing prebunking content, veterinary professionals are also well positioned to produce debunking content (ie, fact-checking). While fact-checking has had mixed efficacy in changing individual belief in misinformation,³⁹ ensuring there exists authoritative information is vital for broader information-seeking and to establish a truthful scientific record. A combination of efforts is needed to reduce the spread of misinformation within a broad and diverse population, meaning that successfully reducing the impact of misinformation requires preventing misinformation spread, inoculating individuals to increase resiliency against misinformation, and countering mistruths with factual, authoritative information. Fact-checking is thus a vital endeavor across all subject matter. Furthermore, authoritative fact-checking also supports media literacy efforts such as lateral reading. Developed by the Digital Inquiry Group, lateral reading asks individuals to engage in information verification in the moment by searching for other articles to verify or debunk the information they encounter.⁴⁰ For example, if you are scrolling through Instagram Reels and presented with a video that suggests that an all-raw diet is best for your dog, engaging in “lateral reading” would involve opening up a new internet tab and searching for other (credible or trusted) outlets and seeing whether they have produced supportive or contradictory information, clicking through to the video creator’s profile and investigating whether they are an expert and/or credible source, and, similarly, searching for relevant fact-checking pieces related to the subject matter. For this process to be easy (and thus more likely to be done by the average information-seeker), authoritative information must be readily available and seen as trustworthy. Accordingly, veterinary professionals should not only look to produce more fact-checking content so that it is easy to find but also make their professional credibility and expert credentials visible on fact-checking posts to signal to readers that the fact-checking content is trustworthy.

Popular fact-checking outlets already report on animal health–related issues, although not often. Well-regarded outlet Snopes, for example, produced a report⁴¹ in January 2024 on rumors that Purina dog food was causing illness in pets. While the report could not directly address the claims, it provided vital context to readers on how FDA animal food safety works while providing readers with expert-driven advice to allay fears. Similarly, FactCheck.org has produced limited fact-checking related to veterinary public health concerns. In 2021, with respect to concerns about the use of mRNA vaccines in animals, FactCheck.org investigated a meme spreading falsehoods about “vaccine transfer through eating meat.”⁴² In the fact-check, reporters spoke to veterinary scientists who clearly debunked the “transfer” claim, in addition to clarifying with pharmaceutical companies the limited nature of vaccine development and availability of COVID-19 vaccines for animals. Such reporting is vital in creating a factual record that information-seekers can trust, should they engage in lateral reading around claims they encounter online. Such reporting also highlights an important role for veterinary professionals and researchers to act as public communicators and engage proactively with journalists to lend scientific expertise and credibility to fact-checking reports.

Extant research^36,37,40 thus provides several routes for veterinarians to productively engage with social media misinformation both before and after it shows up in interactions with animal owners. However, for misinformation to gain less traction among information-seekers, it is vital that veterinary professionals be proactive in producing publicly available authoritative content countering falsehoods. Moreover, increasing evidence surrounding the utility of prebunking suggests veterinarians should take steps to educate pet owners about subjects highly prone to misinformation before they might encounter online falsehoods. The following section highlights practical routes that veterinary professionals can engage with to take up this challenge.

Veterinarians Need to Take a More Active Role in Intervening in Misinformation

For intervention efforts at any stage to be effective, there needs to be a range of credible, easily accessible information for the public to look to when fact-checking things they have heard on social media or initially seeking information using search engines. Accordingly, veterinarians and their professional organizations must be active and public in their communications through things like blog posts, public-facing viewpoint pieces, and engagement with social media. While these exercises may be resource intensive, particularly for smaller organizations including veterinary practices, they provide multiple benefits beyond fact-checking, including providing a public presence for practices, building public trust and authority, and assisting the broader veterinary community with identifying emerging rumors and misinformation that may impact their work. Moreover, rampant misinformation seeks to exacerbate the growing well-being crisis within veterinary medicine, increasing burnout related to interactions with pet owners⁴³ and retaining mental health impacts that follow veterinarians outside of work into their personal social media feeds. Accordingly, while proactive measures may increase (at least temporarily) the veterinary workload, they have longer term benefits that may help counter emotional burnout within the profession.

Furthermore, with the advent and popularity of generative AI, (Figure 1) it is increasingly important for numerous organizations and individuals to produce authoritative content. Generative AI is built on large language models trained on existing content, with its accuracy and relevance determined by the quality of the data on which it is trained.⁴⁴ Veterinary professionals must be proactive in producing accurate content that feeds into such technologies so that generative AI, particularly that embedded within search engines, points information-seekers to factual information. Furthermore, veterinary professionals should seek out such technologies to familiarize themselves with how animal owners are finding and/or verifying online information and offer feedback to technology platforms when misleading or inaccurate claims surface (most, if not all, generative AI tools contain feedback mechanisms for individuals to report inaccurate information).

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A screenshot of Google’s generative AI overview from the query “vaccine risks for pets.” Note the highlighting of authoritative content from professional veterinary organizations.

Citation: Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 263, 6; 10.2460/javma.24.10.0665

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Given the rise of social media misinformation, the profession must also be a more active listener within social media, keeping on top of trending conversations and topics that relate to the profession. Social media moves quickly. For example, the month of June 2024 saw conversations on TikTok leading to the virality of stainless-steel cat litter trays, discussions around the “superiority” of raw-food diets for dogs, and concerns about toxins in specific pet food brands. Keeping up-to-date with these conversations as they emerge can help veterinarians be proactive in their prebunking efforts, exposing the public to true information before they encounter misleading narratives. For those who wish to be active on social media themselves, creating professional accounts—particularly on video-forward platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels—has proven to be an effective route to both pre- and debunking claims before they go viral. The AVMA provides advice for developing a social media strategy⁴⁵ that involves thinking through how to communicate important information to clients and the tactics of reaching a specific audience. When done thoughtfully, social media content can elevate authoritative information in more personable (and potentially more persuasive) ways to audiences that may not otherwise seek it or may assist other veterinary professionals through awareness of evolving rumors and debunking strategies.

For those not wanting to create social media content, maintaining a presence online to stay up-to-date with trending topics of conversation is useful. To increase your likelihood of seeing veterinary-related content and related misinformation, consider opening secondary accounts and using them to follow veterinary professionals and related hashtags (eg, #caninevaccination, #petnutrition) and, particularly on algorithmically curated platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok, regularly interact with (eg, like or rewatch) content to train the platform’s algorithm to serve you similar videos.

Finally, to address more pernicious misleading narratives, it is vital that the profession takes stock of its public trust and leverages trusted voices to speak out publicly and often about the need and benefits of veterinary care. Trust is often strongest at the local level—built by interpersonal relationship-building by veterinarians and animal owners—and may also be built through public communicators using social media platforms to increase transparency and awareness of the profession. Trust in the veterinary profession remains strong, but this requires careful management to avoid the growing distrust building in broader scientific institutions.⁴⁶ In a 2024 Gallup poll of Americans’ ethics ratings of 23 professions, veterinarians were ranked the second most trusted profession (after nursing), with 65% of respondents rating the honesty and ethical standards of veterinary professionals as “very high” or “high.” That figure, however, has slightly decreased from the last time veterinarians were included in the survey⁴⁷ in 2006, when the figure stood at 71%. Tackling online misinformation requires that veterinary professionals attend to issues that may detract from public confidence, including building transparent feedback loops for animal owners to address concerns with authoritative information sources, rather than turning to online spaces prone to rumors and misinformation.

Rumors and spread of misinformation are seemingly inevitable parts of our digital communications ecosystem. The job of veterinarians as trusted communicators is thus to allow for rumors to be productively addressed and misinformation to be effectively and quickly debunked. The veterinary profession is already experiencing the negative effects of increasing misinformation and must tackle the issue head-on to reduce its animal and public health impacts. Research from broader misinformation studies^36,37,40 provides a roadmap for veterinary professionals to tackle social media misinformation before and after it shows up in the practice but requires veterinarians to be proactive in seeking and addressing rumors and misinformation as they arise. In sum, we suggest the following actionable recommendations to tackle social media misinformation head-on:

1. Help prevent impactful misinformation exposure by engaging in prebunking around viral and popular misleading claims.

2. Produce authoritative content (blogs/videos/social media posts) to flood the information environment (and AI tools) with factual information.

3. Use and share media literacy tools such as lateral reading to engage pet owners with proactive strategies to effectively evaluate things they see on social media.

4. Focus on trust-building at the local level by being open and transparent with pet owners and engaging respectfully when/if they share misinformation.

Disclosures

The authors have nothing to disclose. No AI-assisted technologies were used in the composition of this manuscript.

Funding

The authors have nothing to disclose.