The Drum Beat 799 - Polio, Vaccines, and Social Media

• 1.Vaccines: Saving Lives or Depopulating the World? A Discourse Analysis
  by Simona Vulpe and Maria-Steluța StoianConsidering that the online discourse of people who support or oppose vaccines can be interpreted in relation to the wider cultural context in which it occurs, this study examines the discourse of pro- and anti-vaccine Romanian Facebook pages. One finding: "The most prominent similarity of the discourses is the approach of trust versus distrust towards the medical system and other institutions of the state. The main differences stem from the type of arguments employed by the two parties, with the anti-vaccine pages using the storytelling technique and a mix of claimed scientific information and conspiracy theories as their main argumentation sources..." [Summer 2018]
   
• 2.The Visual Vaccine Debate on Twitter: A Social Network Analysis
  by Elena Milani, Emma Weitkamp, and Peter WebbThis study explores how vaccine visual information (and misinformation) circulates within and among Twitter networks and identifies the various actors that could potentially influence the flow of vaccination images and, by extension, discussion and action around vaccine decision-making and uptake. In short, the study found that anti-vaccine images were predominant. By retweeting each other, anti-vaccination users increased the visibility of their images, enabling them to appear in followers' timelines and hashtag streams more often - potentially reaching a broader audience than the pro-vaccine ones. [Jun 2020]
   
• 3.How Internet Access Drives Global Vaccine Skepticism
  by Kristin Lunz Trujillo and Matthew MottaData suggest that wealthier countries tend to be more vaccine skeptical than economically poorer countries. This survey of 149,014 individuals across 144 countries found that internet access is strongly associated with negative attitudes toward vaccines, and it explains away the effect of economic development on vaccine skepticism. Moreover, those people expected to consume antivaccine misinformation online are more likely to hold vaccine-skeptic views. In the highest-internet-access countries, those with low levels of trust in doctors score nearly 12 percentage points higher on the vaccine skepticism scale than those who express high levels of trust. [May 2021]
   
• 4.The Sources and Correlates of Exposure to Vaccine-Related (Mis)information Online
  by Andrew M. Guess, Brendan Nyhan, Zachary O'Keeffe, and Jason ReiflerExposure to information online that questions the safety and effectiveness of vaccines may exacerbate vaccine hesitancy and be difficult to refute. Many observers fear that people with strong views or misinformed beliefs will become trapped in "echo chambers" of like-minded sources online. The study found that people with more favourable attitudes toward vaccines were relatively more likely to be exposed to less skeptical information about the topic. The researchers envision unfulfilled opportunities for platforms to promote accurate information about vaccines - for example, by better promoting incidental exposure to accurate information. [Oct 2020]
   
• See also:
  The Anti-Vaxx Industry: How Big Tech Powers and Profits from Vaccine Misinformation
  First Draft Case Study: Understanding the Impact of Polio Vaccine Disinformation in Pakistan
  "Down the Rabbit Hole" of Vaccine Misinformation on YouTube: Network Exposure Study
  

• 5.Methods for Social Media Monitoring Related to Vaccination: Systematic Scoping Review
  by Emilie Karafillakis, Sam Martin, Clarissa Simas, Kate Olsson, Judit Takacs, Sara Dada, Heidi Jane LarsonSocial media monitoring provides opportunities for authorities to listen, in real time, to online narratives about vaccines and to detect changes in sentiments and confidence early. The aim of this study was to identify "infoveillance" methods used for monitoring vaccination-related topics on different social media platforms and to assess their effectiveness and limitations. Analysis of 86 articles on the topic led the researchers to develop a 3-step model of social media monitoring. "Future research should focus on evaluating these methods to offer more evidence and support the development of social media monitoring as a valuable research design." [Feb 2021]
   
• 6.Comparing Covariation among Vaccine Hesitancy and Broader Beliefs within Twitter and Survey Data
  by Sarah A. Nowak, Christine Chen, Andrew M. Parker, Courtney A. Gidengil, and Luke J. MatthewsSocial media provides a way for researchers to observe the beliefs of a greater number of individuals than is possible through more traditional research methods, such as surveys and focus groups. However, users of any given social media platform are not representative of the population as a whole, views are volunteered rather than elicited, and the generalisability of findings from social media research is a subject of ongoing debate. In that context, this study examined whether it is possible to draw similar conclusions from Twitter and national survey data about the relationship between vaccine hesitancy and a broader set of beliefs. [Oct 2020]
   
• 7.Vaccine Hesitancy on Social Media: Sentiment Analysis from June 2011 to April 2019
  by Hilary Piedrahita-Valdés, Diego Piedrahita-Castillo, Javier Bermejo-Higuera, et al.Sentiment analysis (SA) is a text-mining subfield that allows for the classification of opinions according to the polarity (positive, negative, or neutral), the emotion (happiness, fear, etc.), or the intensity of agreement based on a numerical rating scale. This sentence-level SA on a dataset composed of nearly 1.5 million vaccine-related tweets, in two languages, published over a nearly eight-year period, "highlights the importance of relying on machine learning for opinion-mining in big data and the need to keep improving the algorithms to overcome the present challenges, such as the identification of irony and sarcasm. The application of artificial intelligence has allowed us to perform a fast and low-cost analysis of sentiment polarity towards vaccination in a large number of tweets written over several years." [Jan 2021]
   
• 8.An Analysis of Pro-Vaccine and Anti-Vaccine Information on Social Networks and the Internet: Visual and Emotional Patterns
  by Ubaldo Cuesta-Cambra, Luz Martínez-Martínez, and José-Ignacio Niño-GonzálezSocial Network Analysis (SNA) allows for the collection of data through web scraping techniques, enabling the monitoring and analysis of social networks and helping to identify those agents or nodes that centre around vaccines. Digital opinion leaders (DOLs) can be detected - being those who direct the conversation - as well as intrinsic characteristics such as the number of relationships established. Anti-vaccine Facebook messages and groups were identified, and a mapping of influencers is presented. The analysis of the DOLs shows two common denominators: (i) the ability to combine different digital platforms, such as a main web page of a more informative nature with frequent publications in social networks; and (ii) the importance of constancy in publishing and activity through time. [Mar 2019]
   
• 9.Automatically Appraising the Credibility of Vaccine-Related Web Pages Shared on Social Media: A Twitter Surveillance Study
  by Zubair Shah, Didi Surian, Amalie Dyda, et al.Considering that misinformation can cause harm by influencing attitudes and beliefs, and given the rate at which new information is made available and the resources needed to appraise them, the researchers developed and tested machine learning methods to support the automatic credibility appraisal of vaccine-related information on Twitter. "The results suggest two new ways to address the challenge of misinformation, including ongoing surveillance to identify at-risk communities and better target resources in health promotion and embedding the tool in interventions that flag low-credibility communications for consumers as they engage with links to Web pages on social media." [Nov 2019]
   
• See also:
  The Research Design - Natural Social Spaces: How Do We Research Social Media and Development Trends, Dynamics, and Impact? Learning from a Polio and Routine Immunization and Social Media Research Initiative in Ukraine
  

• 10.Digital Engagement: Potential Applications for Polio C4D
  Hosted by the polio communication for development (C4D) team at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), this webinar explored digital community engagement and its potential for polio C4D work worldwide. One area of focus in the webinar was on addressing misinformation and building demand for vaccination. For example, one speaker described digital engagement at UNICEF Philippines as involving, for example, complementing government efforts through UNICEF social media channels and assets. She outlined what has worked well (e.g., celebrity engagement, shareable content) and what some of the challenges have been (e.g., the need to stand out among competing information, fake news, and anti-vaccine sentiments). A bilingual webinar video and PowerPoint presentation are available. [Aug 2020]
   
• 11.The Anti-Vaccination Infodemic on Social Media: A Behavioral Analysis
  by Federico Germani and Nikola Biller-AndornoThis study sought to identify potential communication strategies to decrease the spread of vaccine misinformation by quantitatively analysing the online behaviour of Twitter users. It also makes suggestions for social media companies (e.g., suspend profiles that clearly share misinformation about scientific topics, and implement selective "shadow bans" that could force a tweet's organic reach to drop) and for health organisations (e.g., use people-centred, first-person narratives with emotional language, and develop a proactive, long-term strategy for increasing the general public's science literacy). [Mar 2021]
   
• 12.Experts' Goals and Constraints When Discussing Vaccines With Laypeople on a Facebook Group
  by Aviv J. Sharon and Ayelet Baram-TsabariThe researchers conducted a study on the Hebrew-language Facebook group Medabbrim Al H_issunim ("Talking about Vaccines" - TaV), founded in the wake of Israel's 2013 polio crisis. Members of TaV (e.g., mothers) may pose vaccine-related questions to community members (e.g., experts in science and medicine). Interviews revealed that experts used a diverse set of considerations in responding to online questions about vaccines. Further research on co-construction of scientific and health knowledge in online communities could explore questions such as: Do dissemination efforts result in knowledge gains? Do answerers' efforts to calm askers truly work? What competencies are needed for experts for meaningful dialogue with laypeople online? [2018]
   
• 13.Effects of Fact-Checking Social Media Vaccine Misinformation on Attitudes toward Vaccines
  by Jingwen Zhang, Jieyu Ding Featherstone, Christopher Calabrese, and Magdalena WojcieszakOne approach to the spread of misinformation on social media is the design of platform-based interventions to provide social media users with signals on content and source quality. This paper asks: (i) Can one such signal - fact-checking labels on misinformation - result in more favourable attitudes toward vaccines, and is the effect contingent upon race, education, and/or conspiracy ideation? (ii) Does the fact-checking labels' effect depend on the source to which the label is attributed? One finding: Incorporating labels from trusted universities and health institutions on social media platforms could be a promising direction for addressing the vaccine misinformation problem. [Jan 2021]
   
• 14.How Unsponsored, Online User-Generated Content Impacts Consumer Attitudes and Intentions toward Vaccinations
  by T. J. Weber, Darrel D. Muehling, and Ioannis KareklasIn light of research finding that using scientific sources to persuade those choosing not to vaccinate themselves and their family may be fruitless, it is possible that peer-to-peer electronic word of mouth might be a more effective approach. One such route is by posting user-generated content on social media sites, where users also have the ability to post comments in response to a story, article, picture, meme, or video posted by others. Contributions from three empirical studies that may interest digital marketers and health practitioners are offered; for instance, manipulative intent plays a significant role in explaining how consumers respond to online UGC. [Oct 2019]
   
• See also:
  Using Social Media for Vaccination Promotion: Practices and Challenges
  Social Media - Building Positive Narratives by Social Listening: Learning Brief
  

• 15.Vaccine Misinformation Management Field Guide
  by Angus Thomson and Gary FinneganUNICEF, First Draft, Yale Institute for Global Health, and PGP (The Public Good Projects) created this guide to help practitioners develop evidence-based approaches, informed by active social listening, to rapidly counter vaccine misinformation and build demand for vaccination. A recording of a webinar, "Misinformation: A Strategic Approach", related to the guide is also available. During it, representatives from the UNICEF Pakistan Country Office discuss a partnership with Facebook (Insights for Impact) through which data from different social listening tools are being used to run a customised digital media campaign that aims to provide accurate information to the public on routine immunisation for children. [Dec 2020]
   
• 16.Health and Science Controversies in the Digital World: News, Mis/Disinformation and Public Engagement
  by An Nguyen, Ed. and Daniel Catalan-Matamoros, Ed.This edition of the open access journal Media and Communication brings together a range of data and perspectives from four continents - including eleven articles and nine commentaries - to help media scholars, journalists, science communicators, scientists, health professionals, and policymakers understand developments in the study of health and science controversies in digital environments and determine what can be done to mitigate their impacts. [Jun 2020]
   
• 17.A Field Guide to "Fake News" and Other Information Disorders
  This field guide explores the use of digital methods to study false viral news, political memes, trolling practices, and their social life online. Public Data Lab, with support from First Draft, created it in response to an increasing demand for understanding the interplay between digital platforms, misleading information, propaganda, and viral content practices, and their influence on politics and public life in democratic societies. The guide aims to be an accessible learning resource for digitally savvy students, journalists, and researchers interested in this topic. [Updated Apr 2019]
   
• See also:
  Vaccine Messaging Guide
  

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