Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 11, 2025
Author Spotlight: Evaluating the Adjuvant Efficacy and Safety of Angong Niuhuang Pill in Viral Encephalitis Treatment
Published on: April 19, 2024
A retrospective analysis of social media posts pertaining to COVID-19 vaccination side effects
Max-Philipp Lentzen1, Viola Huebenthal1, Rolf Kaiser2
1Department for Oral and Craniomaxillofacial and Plastic Surgery, University Hospital Cologne and Faculty of Medicine, University of Cologne, Germany.
Objectives:
With an uprising influence of social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram a multitude of worldwide accessible information is available. Since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic the exchange of medical information about several topics related to this infectious disease and its vaccination has increased rapidly. The purpose of this investigation was to assess the content associated with COVID-19 vaccination and its side effects and evaluate its educational quality.
Methods:
We conducted this retrospective study to investigate 600 Twitter and Instagram posts by #covidvaccinesideeffects due to number of 'likes', comments, type of post, language, its purpose and source. In addition, posts were evaluated due to educational quality by three examiners of different educational levels.
Results:
The majority of posts showed 0 to 50 "likes" and 0 to 5 comments in English language. A comparison between Twitter and Instagram by the influence of application showed significant differences in number of posts and "likes" or comments (p < 0.05). The major post type were texts for Twitter (251; 83.7%) and videos for Instagram (104; 34.7%). While a majority of posts by #covidvaccinesideeffects report about the occurrence of side effects, the majority of them were mild and general COVID-19 vaccination feedback during the first 4 months was positive. But, only 3 to 7% were rated by "excellent" educational and validatable content. Interrater reliability between all three examiners presented a high concordance with 89% (p = 0.001).
Conclusions:
This study presents an analysis of quantity and quality of social media content according to COVID-19 vaccinations and its side effects. It supports the deduction that most of the content on Twitter and Instagram is shared by patients and unclear sources and thus is limited informative. Nevertheless, influence of social media on medical information especially during COVID-19 pandemic is increasing and practitioners have to face its effect on their patients.
More Related Videos
08:53Integrating Computerized Linguistic and Social Network Analyses to Capture Addiction Recovery Capital in an Online Community
Published on: May 31, 2019
06:55Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting Propensity Score using the Military Health System Data Repository and National Death Index
Published on: January 8, 2020
Related Concept Videos
01:19Pharmacovigilance
This process, termed pharmacovigilance, aims to detect, evaluate, and minimize harmful effects related to medication use. The data collection for pharmacovigilance depends on spontaneous reporting systems, where healthcare professionals or patients voluntarily report suspected ADRs.
In some cases, there...
01:51Vaccinations
01:23Types of Biopharmaceutical Studies: Controlled and Non-Controlled Approaches
Non-controlled studies, commonly employed for initial exploration, lack a control group, rendering them susceptible to biases and external influences. In contrast,...
01:29Bias in Epidemiological Studies
01:11Observational Studies
There are three types of observational studies – Prospective, retrospective, and cross-sectional.
Prospective Study
Prospective studies, also known as longitudinal or cohort studies, are carried out by collecting future data from groups sharing similar characteristics. One...
01:29Therapeutic Drug Monitoring: Affecting Factors