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An analysis of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and fear mongering on Twitter
1Kozminski University, Management in Networked and Digital Societies (MINDS), Warsaw, Poland; Harvard University, Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Objectives:
The objective of this study was to analyse the media discourse about the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Twitter.
Study Design:
The study design used in this study is data scraping, media analysis, social network analysis, and botometer.
Methods:
We collected 221,922 tweets containing '#AstraZeneca' from 1 January 2021 to 22 March 2021. From 50,080 tweets in the English language, we analysed the linked media sources and conducted a network detection study.
Results:
We found that the most frequently retweeted tweets were full of negative information, and in many cases came from media sources that are well-known for misinformation. Our analysis identified large coordination networks involved in political astroturfing and vaccine diplomacy in South Asia but also vaccine advocacy networks associated with European Commission employees.
Conclusions:
The results of this study show that Twitter discourse about #AstraZeneca is filled with misinformation and bad press, and may be distributed not only organically by anti-vaxxer activists but also systematically by professional sources.
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