Unmasking COVID-19 Vaccine “Infodemic” in the Social Media
John Demuyakor 1 * ,
Isaac Newton Nyatuame 2,
Samuel Obiri 3 More Detail
1 Institute of Communication Studies, Communication University of China, Beijing, CHINA
2 Department of Communication Studies, University of Cape Coast, GHANA
3 Department of Foreign Languages and Communication, University of Education, Winneba, GHANA
* Corresponding Author
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, Volume 11, Issue 4, Article No: e202119.
https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/11200
OPEN ACCESS 5954 Views 3285 Downloads Published online: 31 Aug 2021
ABSTRACT
The activities of the anti-vaccine crusaders and conspiracy theorists on social media platforms have influenced billions of people across the globe on the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines currently been used for immunizations. The increased social media mis/disinformation on the efficacies and safety of these vaccines developed have raised a global concern among all stakeholders. This study adopted a convenience sampling through an online survey to collect data from N=1800 participants (students) from five (5) public universities in Accra the national capital of Ghana, which is also the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine their perceptions on the overabundance COVID-19 pandemic information on social media and how these pieces information consumption impacts their trust/mistrust/distrust in the COVID-19 vaccines. The findings of our study indicate that there exist vital levels of COVID-19 vaccines “infodemic” on social media and these overabundances of COVID-19 vaccine information on social media has caused great levels of fear and panic among the students and the public. We also found that, the high exposure to COVID-19 vaccine information on social media are associated with negative perceptions and higher levels of mistrust/distrust among the population. This study recommends that stakeholders such as WHO, policymakers, and accredited health institutions must embark on public health communication campaigns to educate the public on the credible sources of COVID-19 pandemic information on social media.
CITATION
Demuyakor, J., Nyatuame, I. N., & Obiri, S. (2021). Unmasking COVID-19 Vaccine “Infodemic” in the Social Media.
Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 11(4), e202119.
https://doi.org/10.30935/ojcmt/11200
REFERENCES
- Allington, D., Duffy, B., Wessely, S., Dhavan, N., & Rubin, J. (2020). Health-protective behaviour, social media usage and conspiracy belief during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Psychological Medicine, 51(10), 1763-1769. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172000224X
- Bogart, L. M., Ojikutu, B. O., Tyagi, K., Klein, D. J., Mutchler, M. G., Dong, L., Lawrence, S. J., Thomas, D. R., & Kellman, S. (2021). Covid-19 related medical mistrust, health impacts, and potential vaccine hesitancy among black Americans living with HIV. JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 86(2), 200-207. https://doi.org/10.1097/QAI.0000000000002570
- Boyon, N. (2020). COVID-19 vaccination intent is decreasing globally. Ipsos. https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-attitudes-covid-19-vaccine-october-2020
- Chadwick, A., Kaiser, J., Vaccari, C., Freeman, D., Lambe, S., Loe, B. S., Vanderslott, S., Lewandowsky, S., Conroy, M., Ross, A. R. N., Innocenti, S., Pollard, A. J., Waite, F., Larkin, M., Rosebrock, L., Jenner, L., McShane, H., Giubilini, A., Petit, A., & Yu, L.-M. (2021). Online social endorsement and covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in the united kingdom. Social Media + Society, 7(2), 205630512110088. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211008817
- Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A., Valensise, C. M., Brugnoli, E., Schmidt, A. L., Zola, P., Zollo, F., & Scala, A. (2020). The COVID-19 social media infodemic. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 16598. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73510-5
- Germani, F., & Biller-Andorno, N. (2021). The anti-vaccination infodemic on social media: A behavioral analysis. PLOS ONE, 16(3), e0247642. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247642
- Gerts, D., Shelley, C. D., Parikh, N., Pitts, T., Ross, C. W., Fairchild, G., Chavez, N. Y. V., & Daughton, A. R. (2021). “Thought i’d share first” and other conspiracy theory tweets from the covid-19 infodemic: Exploratory study. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 7(4), e26527. https://doi.org/10.2196/26527
- Hall Jamieson, K., & Albarracín, D. (2020). The relation between media consumption and misinformation at the outset of the sars-cov-2 pandemic in us. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-012
- Ipsos. (26 November 2020a). “Infodemic” risks jeopardizing virus vaccines. https://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/infodemic-risks-jeopardising-virus-vaccines-082447684.html
- Ipsos. (October, 2020b). COVID-19 vaccination intent is decreasing globally. https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-attitudes-covid-19-vaccine-october-2020
- Jennings, W., Stoker, G., Willis, H., Valgardsson, V., Gaskell, J., Devine, D., McKay, L., & Mills, M. C. (2021). Lack of trust and social media echo chambers predict COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Health Policy. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.01.26.21250246
- Kang-Xing, J. (2020, December 18). Keeping people safe and informed about the coronavirus. About Facebook. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/coronavirus/
- Latkin, C. A., Dayton, L., Yi, G., Konstantopoulos, A., & Boodram, B. (2021). Trust in a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S.: A social-ecological perspective. Social Science & Medicine, 270, 113684. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113684
- Larson, H. J. (2018). The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation. Nature, 562(7727), 309-309. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07034-4
- Lazarus, J. V., Ratzan, S. C., Palayew, A., Gostin, L. O., Larson, H. J., Rabin, K., Kimball, S., & El-Mohandes, A. (2021). A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine. Nature Medicine, 27(2), 225-228. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-1124-9
- Loomba, S., de Figueiredo, A., Piatek, S. J., de Graaf, K., & Larson, H. J. (2021). Measuring the impact of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on vaccination intent in the UK and USA. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(3), 337-348. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01056-1
- Mega, E. R. (2021). Trust in COVID vaccines is growing. Nature, d41586-021-00368–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00368-6
- Paul, E., Steptoe, A., & Fancourt, D. (2021). Attitudes towards vaccines and intention to vaccinate against COVID-19: Implications for public health communications. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 1, 100012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100012
- Prieto Curiel, R., & González Ramírez, H. (2021). Vaccination strategies against COVID-19 and the diffusion of anti-vaccination views. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 6626. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85555-1
- Sanders, A. C., White, R. C., Severson, L. S., Ma, R., McQueen, R., Alcântara Paulo, H. C., Zhang, Y., Erickson, J. S., & Bennett, K. P. (2020). Unmasking the conversation on masks: Natural language processing for topical sentiment analysis of COVID-19 Twitter discourse. Health Informatics. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.28.20183863
- Smith, R., Cubbon, S. & Wardle, C. (2020). Under the surface: Covid-19 vaccine narratives, misinformation & data deficits on social media. First Draft. https://firstdraftnews.org/vaccinenarratives- full-report-November-2020
- Sonawane, K., Troisi, C. L., & Deshmukh, A. A. (2021). COVID-19 vaccination in the UK: Addressing vaccine hesitancy. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 1, 100016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100016
- Su, Z., Wen, J., Abbas, J., McDonnell, D., Cheshmehzangi, A., Li, X., Ahmad, J., Šegalo, S., Maestro, D., & Cai, Y. (2020). A race for a better understanding of COVID-19 vaccine non-adopters. Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health, 9, 100159. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbih.2020.100159
- Tseng, B. (17th December 2020). Combatting vaccine misinformation in the age of the internet. Institute for Global Change. https://institute.global/policy/combatting-vaccine-misinformation-age-internet
- Tsao, S.-F., Chen, H., Tisseverasinghe, T., Yang, Y., Li, L., & Butt, Z. A. (2021). What social media told us in the time of COVID-19: A scoping review. The Lancet Digital Health, 3(3), e175-e194. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30315-0
- Viswanath, K., Bekalu, M., Dhawan, D., Pinnamaneni, R., Lang, J., & McLoud, R. (2021). Individual and social determinants of COVID-19 vaccine uptake. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 818. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10862-1
- Wardle, C., & Singerman, E. (2021). Too little, too late: Social media companies’ failure to tackle vaccine misinformation poses a real threat. BMJ, n26. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n26
- WHO. (2021a, March 31). Viral Facts Africa initiative to combat dangerous health misinformation. Africa Renewal. https://www.un.org/africarenewal/news/viral-facts-africa-initiative-combat-dangerous-health-misinformation
- WHO. (2021b, 27 April). Fighting misinformation in the time of COVID-19, one clicks at a time. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/fighting-misinformation-in-the-time-of-covid-19-one-click-at-a-time
- WHO, UN, UNICEF, UNDP, UNESCO, UNAIDS, ITU, UN Global Pulse, and IFRC, (2020). Managing the COVID-19 infodemic: Promoting healthy behaviours and mitigating the harm from misinformation and disinformation.https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation
- Wilson, S. L., & Wiysonge, C. (2020). Social media and vaccine hesitancy. BMJ Global Health, 5(10), e004206. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004206