Understanding the messages and motivation of vaccine hesitant or refusing social media influencers

Leader, Amy; Burke‐Garcia, Amelia; Massey, Philip M.; Roark, Jill

doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.11.058

Cited by 36 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Building on research on social media network and information flow (Boutyline & Willer, 2017;Primario et al, 2017), we found that users with large audience size talked more favorably toward COVID-19 vaccine, possibly due to the heterogeneity of their audience. On the contrary, users with a large audience are less likely to mention specific vaccination concerns-side effects, medical mistrust, and conspiracy theories-which, again, might be due to consideration of avoiding alienating some group of followers or creasing combative discourses (Leader et al, 2021), as well as normative pressure due to having large audience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the Twitter platform, research indicated political elite users' discourses resolve around particular types of topics (Green et al, 2020), which may be different from tweets of users with more modest following. Study also found vaccine hesitant influencers may think about their followers' reactions when posting about vaccinerelated content (Leader et al, 2021). Yet, it remains unclear whether users of a large following exhibit more favorable vaccine attitudes, as well as disseminating different sets of hesitancy concerns.…”

Section: Follower Scope and Expression On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In addition, individuals may ascertain influence through growing follower counts (Dubois & Gaffney, 2014); these semi-public individuals have come to occupy an important niche on social media (Burke-Garcia, 2019). By establishing their online profiles about a topic or set of topics they are familiar with, these users often have a cohort of followers ready to trust and disseminate their thoughts, opinions, and perspectives (Leader et al, 2021).…”

Section: Follower Scope and Expression On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Understanding the discursive practices of these users with large follower scope is important for several reasons. First, while millions of people post content on social media, users with a large audience are more capable of inserting their narratives into the online information ecosystem, attracting engagement, and heightening the visibility of their viewpoints (Burke-Garcia, 2019; Leader et al, 2021). From this perspective, an account's social media following serves as their audience that is critical for information diffusion (Zhang et al, 2021).…”

Section: Follower Scope and Expression On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Polarization Over Vaccination: Ideological Differences in Twitter Expression About COVID-19 Vaccine Favorability and Specific Hesitancy Concerns

Xiao-ya

Hwang

et al. 2021

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Vaccine hesitancy has been a growing public health issue, but during COVID-19, understanding vaccine hesitancy and promote vaccine favorability takes on a troubling immediacy. With the growing political polarization on scientific issues, the COVID-19 vaccine-related sentiment has recently been divided across ideological lines. This study aims to understand how vaccine favorability and specific vaccine-related concerns including possible side effects, distrust in medical professionals, and conspiratorial beliefs concerning COVID-19 vaccines were articulated and transmitted by Twitter users from opposing ideological camps and with different follower scopes. Using a combination of computational approaches, including supervised machine-learning and structural topic modeling, we examined tweets surrounding COVID-19 vaccination ( N = 16,959) from 1 March to 30 June 2020. Results from linear mixed-effects models suggested that Twitter users high on conservative ideology and with a standard instead of large follower scope tend to express less favorable vaccine-related sentiments and talk more about vaccine side effects, distrust of medical professionals, and conspiracy theories. There is also an interaction effect where liberals with large follower scope expressed the least amount of distrust of medical professionals, whereas extreme conservatives expressed greater distrust for health professionals, regardless of their follower scope. Finally, structural topic modeling revealed distinct topical focuses among liberal and conservative users. Theoretical and practical implications for leveraging social media in effective health communication practice were discussed.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Follower Scope and Expression On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Follower Scope and Expression On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Follower Scope and Expression On Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Polarization Over Vaccination: Ideological Differences in Twitter Expression About COVID-19 Vaccine Favorability and Specific Hesitancy Concerns

Xiao-ya

Hwang

et al. 2021

Social Media + Society

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Even in China, considered to be one of the countries with the smoothest vaccination program [ 6 ], as of 5 August 2021, China had only reported a total of 223 million people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 across the country [ 7 ], which is far less than the total population of China (1.41 billion). Many people in China are still reluctant and hesitant to be vaccinated, as evidenced by widespread social media posts showing public concern about the vaccine [ 8 , 9 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is It All a Conspiracy? Conspiracy Theories and People’s Attitude to COVID-19 Vaccination

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A large body of research has found that people’s beliefs in conspiracy theories about infectious diseases negatively impacts their health behaviors concerning vaccination. Conspiracy belief-based vaccination hesitancy has become more rampant after the global outbreak of COVID-19. However, some important questions remain unanswered. For instance, do different versions of conspiracy theories—particularly conspiracy theories about the origin of the epidemic (e.g., that the SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a Wuhan virology laboratory or that the virus was of foreign origin) and the general theories about vaccine conspiracies (e.g., pharmaceutical companies covered up the danger of vaccines or people are being deceived about the effectiveness of vaccines)—have the same effect on vaccination intentions? Through a national survey adopting quota sampling in China, the current study tested the relationship between people’s conspiracy beliefs and their intention to receive the COVID-19 vaccination. The findings show that people’s embrace of conspiracy theories did indeed affect their intention to take COVID-19 shots. However, only conspiracy theories related to vaccines had a significant impact, while belief in more general theories about COVID-19 did not significantly affect vaccination intentions. People’s knowledge of vaccines (vaccine literacy) played an important role in this relationship. People with lower beliefs in vaccines conspiracy theories and higher levels of vaccine literacy were more likely to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.

show abstract

The way forward: Adult educators combating mis/disinformation via formal and informal education

Wright

2023

New Dir Adult Contin Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article, I discuss the academic field of adult education as it relates to critical media literacy, critical public pedagogy, social and civic activism, and higher education in this era many have labeled "post-truth." I ask readers to reconsider the traditional university tenure process and the academic publishing industry as outdated systems that indirectly support disinformation and misinformation by ignoring the impact of media on adult learning and participatory democracy. After discussing alternative methods for disseminating research and expertise, I close with thoughts on Paulo Freire's view of education as humanization in this time of technological domination.

show abstract

Understanding the messages and motivation of vaccine hesitant or refusing social media influencers

Cited by 36 publications

References 27 publications

Polarization Over Vaccination: Ideological Differences in Twitter Expression About COVID-19 Vaccine Favorability and Specific Hesitancy Concerns

Polarization Over Vaccination: Ideological Differences in Twitter Expression About COVID-19 Vaccine Favorability and Specific Hesitancy Concerns

Is It All a Conspiracy? Conspiracy Theories and People’s Attitude to COVID-19 Vaccination

The way forward: Adult educators combating mis/disinformation via formal and informal education

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About