Social Media and Vaccine Hesitancy

The authors of this study globally evaluated the effect of social media and online foreign disinformation campaigns on vaccination rates and attitudes towards vaccine safety.

They found that the use of social media to organize offline action to be highly predictive of the belief that vaccinations are unsafe, with such beliefs mounting as more organization occurs on social media. In addition, the prevalence of foreign disinformation is highly statistically and substantively significant in predicting a drop in mean vaccination coverage over time.

They conclude that there is a significant relationship between organization on social media and public doubts of vaccine safety. In addition, there is a substantial relationship between foreign disinformation campaigns and declining vaccination coverage.

Last modified: February 15, 2021

Language: English