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Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy seems likely to increase mortality rates and delay the easing of social distancing restrictions. Online platforms with large audiences may influence vaccine hesitancy by spreading fear and misinformation that is avoided by the mainstream media. Understanding what types of vaccine hesitancy information is shared on the popular social web site Twitter may therefore help to design interventions to address misleading attitudes. This study applies content analysis to a random sample of 446 vaccine hesitant Covid-19 tweets in English posted between 10 March and 5 December 2020. The main themes discussed were conspiracies, vaccine development speed, and vaccine safety. Most (79%) of those tweeting refusal to take a vaccine expressed right-wing opinions, fear of a deep state, or conspiracy theories. A substantial minority of vaccine refusers (18%) mainly tweeted non-politically about other themes. The topics on Twitter reflect vaccine concerns, but those stating vaccine refusal in non-political contexts may unsettle the wider Twitter network by reaching outside right-wing areas of Twitter.

PurposePublic attitudes towards COVID-19 and social distancing are critical in reducing its spread. It is therefore important to understand public reactions and information dissemination in all major forms, including on social media. This article investigates important issues reflected on Twitter in the early stages of the public reaction to COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachA thematic analysis of the most retweeted English-language tweets mentioning COVID-19 during March 10–29, 2020.FindingsThe main themes identified for the 87 qualifying tweets accounting for 14 million retweets were: lockdown life; attitude towards social restrictions; politics; safety messages; people with COVID-19; support for key workers; work; and COVID-19 facts/news.Research limitations/implicationsTwitter played many positive roles, mainly through unofficial tweets. Users shared social distancing information, helped build support for social distancing, criticised government responses, expressed support for key workers and helped each other cope with social isolation. A few popular tweets not supporting social distancing show that government messages sometimes failed.Practical implicationsPublic health campaigns in future may consider encouraging grass roots social web activity to support campaign goals. At a methodological level, analysing retweet counts emphasised politics and ignored practical implementation issues.Originality/valueThis is the first qualitative analysis of general COVID-19-related retweeting.

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PurposeAlthough gender identities influence how people present themselves on social media, previous studies have tested pre-specified dimensions of difference, potentially overlooking other differences and ignoring nonbinary users.Design/methodology/approachWord association thematic analysis was used to systematically check for fine-grained statistically significant gender differences in Twitter profile descriptions between 409,487 UK-based female, male, and nonbinary users in 2020. A series of statistical tests systematically identified 1,474 differences at the individual word level, and a follow up thematic analysis grouped these words into themes.FindingsThe results reflect offline variations in interests and in jobs. They also show differences in personal disclosures, as reflected by words, with females mentioning qualifications, relationships, pets, and illnesses much more, nonbinaries discussing sexuality more, and males declaring political and sports affiliations more. Other themes were internally imbalanced, including personal appearance (e.g. male: beardy; female: redhead), self-evaluations (e.g. male: legend; nonbinary: witch; female: feisty), and gender identity (e.g. male: dude; nonbinary: enby; female: queen).Research limitationsThe methods are affected by linguistic styles and probably under-report nonbinary differences.Practical implicationsThe gender differences found may inform gender theory, and aid social web communicators and marketers.Originality/valueThe results show a much wider range of gender expression differences than previously acknowledged for any social media site.