Pascual-Ferrá Paola, Alperstein Neil, Barnett Daniel J
Communication Department, Loyola University Maryland.
Department of Environmental Health & Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2021 May 3:1-24. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2021.136.
The aim of this study was to test the appearance of negative dominance in COVID-19 vaccine-related information and activity online. We hypothesized that if negative dominance appeared, it would be a reflection of peaks in adverse events related to the vaccine, that negative content would attract more engagement on social media than other vaccine-related posts, and posts referencing adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination would have a higher average toxicity score.
We collected data using Google Trends for search behavior, CrowdTangle for social media data, and Media Cloud for media stories, and compared them against the dates of key adverse events related to COVID-19. We used Communalytic to analyze the toxicity of social media posts by platform and topic.
While our first hypothesis was partially supported, with peaks in search behavior for image and YouTube videos driven by adverse events, we did not find negative dominance in other types of searches or patterns of attention by news media or on social media.
We did not find evidence in our data to prove the negative dominance of adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination on social media. Future studies should corroborate these findings and, if consistent, focus on explaining why this may be the case.
本研究旨在测试新冠疫苗相关信息和网络活动中负面主导性的表现。我们假设，如果出现负面主导性，这将反映出与疫苗相关的不良事件高峰，负面内容在社交媒体上比其他疫苗相关帖子更能吸引参与度，并且提及新冠疫苗接种相关不良事件的帖子平均毒性得分会更高。
我们使用谷歌趋势收集搜索行为数据，使用CrowdTangle收集社交媒体数据，使用媒体云收集媒体报道数据，并将它们与新冠相关关键不良事件的日期进行比较。我们使用Communalytic按平台和主题分析社交媒体帖子的毒性。
虽然我们的第一个假设得到了部分支持，即不良事件推动了图像和YouTube视频搜索行为的高峰，但我们在其他类型的搜索、新闻媒体或社交媒体上的关注模式中未发现负面主导性。
我们在数据中未找到证据证明新冠疫苗接种相关不良事件在社交媒体上具有负面主导性。未来的研究应证实这些发现，如果结果一致，则应专注于解释为何会出现这种情况。
