Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington, DC, USA
Cision Inc, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
BMJ Open. 2022 Jun 1;12(6):e058956. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-058956.
To describe COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and track trends over time in traditional news media.
Retrospective cohort study of a large database of online articles, July 2020-June 2021.
English-language articles from 100 news outlets with the greatest reach.
Numbers and percentages of articles containing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation over the study period. Further analysis by misinformation themes and whether articles included primary misinformation, fact-checking or simply referred to misinformation.
41 718 (3.2% of all COVID-19 vaccine articles) contained at least one of the vaccine misinformation themes based on the Boolean string developed for this study. The volume of such articles increased beginning in November 2020, but their percentage of all articles remained essentially stable after October 2020. 56.2% contained at least one mention of a safety theme, followed by development, production, and distribution (26.6%), and conspiracies (15.1%). Of 500 articles through January 2021 randomly selected from those identified by the Boolean string, 223 were not relevant, and 277 included either fact-checking (175 articles), refers to misinformation (87 articles) or primary misinformation (15 articles). In eight study weeks, the reach of these 277 articles (defined as visitors to the sites containing the articles) exceeded 250 million people. Fact-checking accounted for 69.6% of all reach for these articles and the number of such articles increased after November 2020. Overall, approximately 0.1% (95% CI 0.05% to 0.16%) of all articles on COVID-19 vaccines in our sample contained primary misinformation.
COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in traditional news media is uncommon but has the capacity to reach large numbers of readers and affect the vaccine conversation. Recent increases in fact-checking may counteract some of the misinformation currently circulating.
描述 COVID-19 疫苗错误信息，并追踪传统新闻媒体随时间的变化趋势。
对 2020 年 7 月至 2021 年 6 月期间一个大型在线文章数据库的回顾性队列研究。
影响力最大的 100 家新闻媒体的英语文章。
研究期间含有 COVID-19 疫苗错误信息的文章数量和百分比。进一步按错误信息主题进行分析，并分析文章是否包含主要错误信息、事实核查或仅提及错误信息。
41718 篇（COVID-19 疫苗文章总数的 3.2%）根据本研究开发的布尔字符串包含至少一个疫苗错误信息主题。此类文章的数量从 2020 年 11 月开始增加，但自 2020 年 10 月以来，其占所有文章的百分比基本保持稳定。56.2%的文章至少提到了一个安全主题，其次是开发、生产和分发（26.6%）以及阴谋论（15.1%）。从通过布尔字符串确定的 500 篇文章中随机选择的 2021 年 1 月前的 500 篇文章中，有 223 篇不相关，277 篇文章包含事实核查（175 篇）、提及错误信息（87 篇）或主要错误信息（15 篇）。在 8 个研究周内，这些 277 篇文章的传播范围（定义为访问包含这些文章的网站的人数）超过 2.5 亿人。事实核查占这些文章总传播量的 69.6%，且自 2020 年 11 月以来，此类文章的数量有所增加。总体而言，我们样本中约有 0.1%（95%CI 0.05%至 0.16%）的 COVID-19 疫苗文章包含主要错误信息。
传统新闻媒体中的 COVID-19 疫苗错误信息并不常见，但有能力接触到大量读者并影响疫苗接种的讨论。最近增加的事实核查可能会抵消当前一些错误信息的影响。
