Content Themes and Influential Voices Within Vaccine Opposition on Twitter, 2019

Bibliographic Data

ID11019540
AuthorsErika Bonnevie (0000-0001-8068-5123, Erika Bonnevie, Jaclyn Goldbarg, Allison K. Gallegos-Jeffrey, Sarah D. Rosenberg, and Joe Smyser were with The Public Good Projects, Alexandria, VA, at the time the work was conducted. Ellen Wartella is with The Northwestern School of Communication, Evanston, IL.), Jaclyn Goldbarg (Erika Bonnevie, Jaclyn Goldbarg, Allison K. Gallegos-Jeffrey, Sarah D. Rosenberg, and Joe Smyser were with The Public Good Projects, Alexandria, VA, at the time the work was conducted. Ellen Wartella is with The Northwestern School of Communication, Evanston, IL.), Allison K Gallegos-Jeffrey (Erika Bonnevie, Jaclyn Goldbarg, Allison K. Gallegos-Jeffrey, Sarah D. Rosenberg, and Joe Smyser were with The Public Good Projects, Alexandria, VA, at the time the work was conducted. Ellen Wartella is with The Northwestern School of Communication, Evanston, IL.), Allison Gallegos-Jeffrey (Northwestern University), Sarah D Rosenberg, Sarah Rosenberg (0000-0001-8130-3238, Erika Bonnevie, Jaclyn Goldbarg, Allison K. Gallegos-Jeffrey, Sarah D. Rosenberg, and Joe Smyser were with The Public Good Projects, Alexandria, VA, at the time the work was conducted. Ellen Wartella is with The Northwestern School of Communication, Evanston, IL.), Ellen Wartella (0000-0001-6687-5422, Erika Bonnevie, Jaclyn Goldbarg, Allison K. Gallegos-Jeffrey, Sarah D. Rosenberg, and Joe Smyser were with The Public Good Projects, Alexandria, VA, at the time the work was conducted. Ellen Wartella is with The Northwestern School of Communication, Evanston, IL.), Joe Smyser (Erika Bonnevie, Jaclyn Goldbarg, Allison K. Gallegos-Jeffrey, Sarah D. Rosenberg, and Joe Smyser were with The Public Good Projects, Alexandria, VA, at the time the work was conducted. Ellen Wartella is with The Northwestern School of Communication, Evanston, IL.)
Year2020
Volume110
IssueS3
PagesS326-S330
Publication date2020-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Public Health (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-0036 • E-ISSN: 1541-0048
PublisherAmerican Public Health Association (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2105/ajph.2020.305901
PMID33001733
OpenAlexW3091031447
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited21

Objectives. To report on vaccine opposition and misinformation promoted on Twitter, highlighting Twitter accounts that drive conversation. Methods. We used supervised machine learning to code all Twitter posts. We first identified codes and themes manually by using a grounded theoretical approach and then applied them to the full data set algorithmically. We identified the top 50 authors month-over-month to determine influential sources of information related to vaccine opposition. Results. The data collection period was June 1 to December 1, 2019, resulting in 356 594 mentions of vaccine opposition. A total of 129 Twitter authors met the qualification of a top author in at least 1 month. Top authors were responsible for 59.5% of vaccine-opposition messages. We identified 10 conversation themes. Themes were similarly distributed across top authors and all other authors mentioning vaccine opposition. Top authors appeared to be highly coordinated in their promotion of misinformation within themes. Conclusions. Public health has struggled to respond to vaccine misinformation. Results indicate that sources of vaccine misinformation are not as heterogeneous or distributed as it may first appear given the volume of messages. There are identifiable upstream sources of misinformation, which may aid in countermessaging and public health surveillance

Conversation · Misinformation · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Public relations · Communication · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Law · Medicine · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy

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