Yiannakoulias Niko, Darlington J Connor, Slavik Catherine E, Benjamin Grant
School of Earth, Environment and Society McMaster University Hamilton, ON Canada.
School of Geography and Environmental Management University of Waterloo Waterloo, ON Canada.
JMIR Infodemiology. 2022 Aug 29;2(2):e38485. doi: 10.2196/38485. eCollection 2022 Jul-Dec.
Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, have a role in spreading anti-vaccine opinion and misinformation. Vaccines have been an important component of managing the COVID-19 pandemic, so content that discourages vaccination is generally seen as a concern to public health. However, not all negative information about vaccines is explicitly anti-vaccine, and some of it may be an important part of open communication between public health experts and the community.
This research aimed to determine the frequency of negative COVID-19 vaccine information on Twitter in the first 4 months of 2021.
We manually coded 7306 tweets sampled from a large sampling frame of tweets related to COVID-19 and vaccination collected in early 2021. We also coded the geographic location and mentions of specific vaccine producers. We compared the prevalence of anti-vaccine and negative vaccine information over time by author type, geography (United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), and vaccine developer.
We found that 1.8% (131/7306) of tweets were anti-vaccine, but 21% (1533/7306) contained negative vaccine information. The media and government were common sources of negative vaccine information but not anti-vaccine content. Twitter users from the United States generated the plurality of negative vaccine information; however, Twitter users in the United Kingdom were more likely to generate negative vaccine information. Negative vaccine information related to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was the most common, particularly in March and April 2021.
Overall, the volume of explicit anti-vaccine content on Twitter was small, but negative vaccine information was relatively common and authored by a breadth of Twitter users (including government, medical, and media sources). Negative vaccine information should be distinguished from anti-vaccine content, and its presence on social media could be promoted as evidence of an effective communication system that is honest about the potential negative effects of vaccines while promoting the overall health benefits. However, this content could still contribute to vaccine hesitancy if it is not properly contextualized.
脸书、照片墙、推特和优兔等社交媒体平台在传播反疫苗观点和错误信息方面发挥了作用。疫苗一直是应对新冠疫情的重要组成部分，因此劝阻接种疫苗的内容通常被视为对公共卫生的一种担忧。然而，并非所有关于疫苗的负面信息都是明确的反疫苗信息，其中一些可能是公共卫生专家与社区之间开放交流的重要组成部分。
本研究旨在确定2021年的前4个月推特上负面新冠疫苗信息的出现频率。
我们对从2021年初收集的与新冠疫情和疫苗接种相关的大量推文样本框架中抽取的7306条推文进行了人工编码。我们还对地理位置以及对特定疫苗生产商的提及进行了编码。我们按作者类型、地理位置（美国、英国和加拿大）以及疫苗开发商，比较了不同时间内反疫苗和负面疫苗信息的流行情况。
我们发现1.8%（131/7306）的推文是反疫苗的，但21%（1533/7306）包含负面疫苗信息。媒体和政府是负面疫苗信息的常见来源，但不是反疫苗内容的来源。来自美国的推特用户产生了大部分负面疫苗信息；然而，英国的推特用户更有可能产生负面疫苗信息。与牛津/阿斯利康疫苗相关的负面疫苗信息最为常见，尤其是在2021年3月和4月。
总体而言，推特上明确的反疫苗内容数量较少，但负面疫苗信息相对常见，且由广泛的推特用户（包括政府、医学和媒体来源）发布。负面疫苗信息应与反疫苗内容区分开来，其在社交媒体上的存在可以作为一个有效沟通系统的证据而得到推广，该系统在宣传疫苗总体健康益处的同时，诚实地告知疫苗潜在的负面影响。然而，如果这些内容没有得到恰当的背景阐释，仍可能导致疫苗犹豫。
