Vaccine hesitancy in online spaces: A scoping review of the research literature, 2000-2020

Neff, Timothy; Kaiser, Jonas; Pasquetto, Irene V.; Jemielniak, Dariusz; Dimitrakopoulou, Dimitra; Grayson, Siobhán; Gyenes, Natalie; Quijano, Paola Ricaurte; Ruiz-Soler, Javier; Zhang, Amy

doi:10.37016/mr-2020-82

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…By examining what vaccine-related content is shared on Facebook and what additional vaccine-related videos are potentially recommended after viewing this content on YouTube, this article addresses an important gap in the literature on vaccine hesitancy and social media, as only 11% of the papers published in this area reviewed multiple social media platforms, with the majority of them (64%) examining "how do people talk about vaccines" as opposed to assessing the level of exposure to such content (Neff et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Facebook to YouTube: The Potential Exposure to COVID-19 Anti-Vaccine Videos on Social Media

Gruzd

Abul-Fottouh

Song

et al. 2023

Social Media + Society

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This article examines the role of Facebook and YouTube in potentially exposing people to COVID-19 vaccine–related misinformation. Specifically, to study the potential level of exposure, the article models a uni-directional information-sharing pathway beginning when a Facebook user encounters a vaccine-related post with a YouTube video, follows this video to YouTube, and then sees a list of related videos automatically recommended by YouTube. The results demonstrate that despite the efforts by Facebook and YouTube, COVID-19 vaccine–related misinformation in the form of anti-vaccine videos propagates on both platforms. Because of these apparent gaps in platform-led initiatives to combat misinformation, public health agencies must be proactive in creating vaccine promotion campaigns that are highly visible on social media to overtake anti-vaccine videos’ prominence in the network. By examining related videos that a user potentially encounters, the article also contributes practical insights to identify influential YouTube channels for public health agencies to collaborate with on their public service announcements about the importance of vaccination programs and vaccine safety.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Facebook to YouTube: The Potential Exposure to COVID-19 Anti-Vaccine Videos on Social Media

Gruzd

Abul-Fottouh

Song

et al. 2023

Social Media + Society

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“…Peru represents an important national context for examining how social media risk amplification may influence COVID-19 vaccine acceptance based on several key factors. First, as a non-Western, developing, non-English speaking country, it addresses historical WEIRD biases and gaps in the social amplification of risk [7], and social media and vaccine acceptance [6] research.…”

Section: Study Context: Perumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unfortunately, the literature on the relationship between online discourse and vaccination attitudes and behaviors historically has focused on what are typically termed WEIRD populations-Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic [5]. In a recent scoping review, for instance, of the 352 studies initially collected from Web of Science about vaccine hesitancy and online content published between 2000 and 2020, seventy-five percent of them (254) were located in North America or Western Europe [6]. More generally, other scholars have identified a similar bias in research about how media, including social media, amplify or dampen risk perceptions [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Commentators have also noted major gaps in our understanding of the effects of COVID-19 online information in languages other than English, such as Spanish [8]. Moreover, most examination of online discourse about vaccination, including COVID-19 vaccination, has been descriptive (e.g., [9,10]), without establishing a clear link with vaccine attitudes or behaviors ( [6], although see [2,11,12] for exceptions).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Media Sentiment about COVID-19 Vaccination Predicts Vaccine Acceptance among Peruvian Social Media Users the Next Day

et al. 2023

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Drawing upon theories of risk and decision making, we present a theoretical framework for how the emotional attributes of social media content influence risk behaviors. We apply our framework to understanding how COVID-19 vaccination Twitter posts influence acceptance of the vaccine in Peru, the country with the highest relative number of COVID-19 excess deaths. By employing computational methods, topic modeling, and vector autoregressive time series analysis, we show that the prominence of expressed emotions about COVID-19 vaccination in social media content is associated with the daily percentage of Peruvian social media survey respondents who are vaccine-accepting over 231 days. Our findings show that net (positive) sentiment and trust emotions expressed in tweets about COVID-19 are positively associated with vaccine acceptance among survey respondents one day after the post occurs. This study demonstrates that the emotional attributes of social media content, besides veracity or informational attributes, may influence vaccine acceptance for better or worse based on its valence.

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“…Vaccine hesitancy in online spaces is a phenomenon that had been known and scientifically observed long before the SARS-CoV2 pandemic [50]. Social media are a particularly good arena for spreading disinformation.…”

Section: Russian Propaganda and Anti-vaccination Movementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Pope Francis’ Religious Authority and Media Coverage on Twitter User’s Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccination

et al. 2021

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This paper is interdisciplinary and combines the research perspective of medical studies with that of media and social communication studies and theological studies. The main goal of this article is to determine [from arguments on all sides of the issue] whether, and to what extent, statements issued by a religious authority can be used as an argument in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. The authors also want to find answers to the questions of how the pope’s comments affect public opinion when they concern the sphere of secular and everyday life, including issues related to health care. The main method used in this study is desktop research and the analysis of the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on vaccination and on the types and significance of the pope’s statements on various topics. The auxiliary methods are sentiment analysis and network analysis made in the open source software Gephi. The authors are strongly interested in the communication and media aspect of the analyzed situation. Pope Francis’ voice on the COVID-19 vaccination has certainly been noticed and registered worldwide, but the effectiveness of his message and direct impact on Catholics’ decisions to accept or refuse the COVID-19 vaccination is quite questionable and would require further precise research. Comparing this to the regularities known from political marketing, one would think that the pope’s statement would not convince the firm opponents of vaccination.

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Vaccine hesitancy in online spaces: A scoping review of the research literature, 2000-2020

Cited by 13 publications

References 15 publications

From Facebook to YouTube: The Potential Exposure to COVID-19 Anti-Vaccine Videos on Social Media

From Facebook to YouTube: The Potential Exposure to COVID-19 Anti-Vaccine Videos on Social Media

Social Media Sentiment about COVID-19 Vaccination Predicts Vaccine Acceptance among Peruvian Social Media Users the Next Day

Effects of Pope Francis’ Religious Authority and Media Coverage on Twitter User’s Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccination

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