Social Media Misinformation may Alter the Willingness for COVID-19 Vaccine

COVID-19 vaccine uptake may have the influence of misinformation on social media as per a study published in Health Data Science, a Science partner journal. The team explored nearly four million Twitter posts from April 19 to June 30, 2021, to examine the scale and scope of the influence of misinformation and fact-based news about COVID-19 vaccines on social media platforms on vaccine uptake.

The data revealed 456,061 fact-related tweets and 26,998 fake-news-related tweets indicating fake news, conspiracy theories, unreliable content, or highly biased news. In addition, 10,925 Twitter users were associated with fake news, while 159,283 were linked to fact-based news.

“Seemingly counter-intuitive, the percentage of fact-related users is significantly negatively associated with the vaccination rate. A combination of a larger user-level influence and the negative impact of online social endorsement on vaccination intent may account for this paradox,” says Jiebo Luo, a professor with the Department of Computer Science, University of Rochester.

However, the percentage of fake-news-related users and the vaccination rate revealed no significant correlation. The study thereby provides a better understanding of the relationship between vaccine-related news, online behaviors, and vaccination rates.

Source-Medindia