Negative COVID-19 Vaccine Information on Twitter: Content Analysis

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Social Media Analysis
• Vaccinology

Background:

• Social media platforms amplify anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation.
• Vaccines are critical for managing pandemics like COVID-19.
• Distinguishing between anti-vaccine content and general negative vaccine information is essential for public health communication.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the prevalence of negative COVID-19 vaccine information on Twitter.
• To analyze the characteristics of negative vaccine information, including sources and timing.

Main Methods:

• Manual coding of 7,306 tweets related to COVID-19 vaccination from early 2021.
• Analysis of tweet content, author type, geographic origin (US, UK, Canada), and vaccine developer mentions.
• Comparison of anti-vaccine versus negative vaccine information prevalence over time.

Main Results:

• 1.8% of tweets were anti-vaccine; 21% contained negative vaccine information.
• Media and government were common sources of negative vaccine information, unlike anti-vaccine content.
• Negative vaccine information was most prevalent among UK Twitter users and linked to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in March-April 2021.

Conclusions:

• Explicit anti-vaccine content on Twitter is limited, but negative vaccine information is widespread.
• Negative vaccine information, originating from diverse sources including official ones, should be differentiated from anti-vaccine content.
• While potentially indicating open communication, uncontextualized negative vaccine information may increase vaccine hesitancy.