92,686
Views
593
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Commentary

Social media and vaccine hesitancy: new updates for the era of COVID-19 and globalized infectious diseases

, , &
Pages 2586-2593 | Received 20 Jan 2020, Accepted 04 Jun 2020, Published online: 21 Jul 2020

References

  • Andre F, Booy R, Bock H, Clemens J, Datta SK, John TJ, Lee BW, Lolekha S, Peltola H, Ruff TA, et al Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide. Bull World Health Organ. 2008;86(2):140–46. doi:10.2471/BLT.07.040089.
  • Callender D. Vaccine hesitancy: more than a movement. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2016;12(9):2464–68. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2016.1178434.
  • World Health Organization. Top ten threats to global health in 2019. 2019.[accessed 2019 Dec 12]. https://www.who.int/emergencies/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019.
  • Carrieri V, Madio L, Principe F. Vaccine hesitancy and (fake) news: quasi‐experimental evidence from italy. Health Econ. 2019;28(11):1377–82. doi:10.1002/hec.3937.
  • Wilson K, Atkinson K, Deeks S. Opportunities for utilizing new technologies to increase vaccine confidence. Expert Rev Vaccines. 2014;13(8):969–77. doi:10.1586/14760584.2014.928208.
  • Tustin JL, Crowcroft NS, Gesink D, Johnson I, Keelan J, Lachapelle B. User-driven comments on a Facebook advertisement recruiting Canadian parents in a study on immunization: content analysis. JMIR Public Health Surveillance. 2018;4(3):e10090. doi:10.2196/10090.
  • Coomes EA, Haghbayan H, Finken LR, Quadros KK, Bagai A, Cheema AN. Information on cardiovascular disease in the digital era: results from a cross-sectional patient survey. Can J Cardiol. 2019;35(6):791–94. doi:10.1016/j.cjca.2019.03.015.
  • Warren KE, Wen LS. Measles, social media and surveillance in Baltimore city. J Public Health (Bangkok). 2016;39(3):e73–e78. doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdw076.
  • Daley MF, Narwaney KJ, Shoup JA, Wagner NM, Glanz JM. Addressing parents’ vaccine concerns: A randomized trial of a social media intervention. Am J Prev Med. 2018;55(1):44–54. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2018.04.010.
  • Gunaratne K, Haghbayan H, Coomes EA. Tweeting authors: impact on research publicity and downstream citations. J Gen Intern Med. 2019. doi:10.1007/s11606-019-05454-0.
  • Faasse K PhD, Chatman CJ, BA M LR, PhD. A comparison of language use in pro- and anti-vaccination comments in response to a high profile Facebook post. Vaccine. 2016;34(47):5808–14. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2016.09.029.
  • Lou M, Ahmed S. The American medical association is asking tech companies to stop the spread of vaccine misinformation. CNN Wire Service. [accessed 2019 Mar 14]. https://search.proquest.com/docview/2191086633
  • Al-Shamsi HO, Alhazzani W, Alhuraiji A, Coomes EA, Chemaly RF, Almuhanna M, Wolff RA, Ibrahim NK, Chua MLK, Hotte SJ, Meyers BM, Elfiki T, Curigliano G, Eng C, Grothey A, Xie C. A practical approach to the management of cancer patients during the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: an international collaborative group. Oncologist. 2020;25(6):e936-e945. doi:10.1634/theoncologist.2020-0213.
  • Limaye RJ, Sauer M, Ali J, Bernstein J, Wahl B, Barnhill A, Labrique A. Building trust while influencing online COVID-19 content in the social media world. Lancet Digital Health. 2020;2(6):e277–e278. doi:10.1016/S2589-7500(20)30084-4.
  • Donovan J. Social-media companies must flatten the curve of misinformation. Nature. 2020. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01107-z.
  • Covid-19 updates: “Covid hoaxes are using a loophole to stay alive—even after content is deleted. Erkan’s Field Diary [BLOG] Web site. https://search.proquest.com/docview/2397362298. 2020.
  • Pew Research Center. Social media fact sheet. 2019.
  • The history of social media: A timeline. https://phrasee.co/the-history-of-social-media-a-timeline/. 2018. accessed 2020 Jan 5.
  • Ortiz-Ospina E The rise of social media. 2019. [accessed 2020 Jan 5]. https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-social-media.
  • Lua A 21 top social media sites to consider for your brand. 2019. [accessed 2020 Jan 5]. https://buffer.com/library/social-media-sites.
  • Betsch C, Brewer NT, Brocard P, Davies P, Gaissmaier W, Haase N, Leask J, Renkewitz F, Renner B, Reyna VF. Opportunities and challenges of web 2.0 for vaccination decisions. Vaccine. 2012;30(25):3727–33. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.02.025.
  • Wilson K, Keelan J. Social media and the empowering of opponents of medical technologies: the case of anti-vaccinationism. J Med Internet Res. 2013;15(5):e103. doi:10.2196/jmir.2409.
  • Buller DB, Walkosz BJ, Berteletti J, Pagoto SL, Bibeau J, Baker K, Hillhouse J, Henry KL. Insights on HPV vaccination in the united states from mothers’ comments on facebook posts in a randomized trial. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2019;15(7–8):1479–87. doi:10.1080/21645515.2019.1581555.
  • Meleo-Erwin Z, Basch C, MacLean SA, Scheibner C, Cadorett V. “To each his own”: discussions of vaccine decision-making in top parenting blogs. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2017;13(8):1895–901. doi:10.1080/21645515.2017.1321182.
  • Massey PM, Budenz A, Leader A, Fisher K, Klassen AC, Yom-Tov E. What drives health professionals to tweet about #HPVvaccine? Identifying strategies for effective communication. Prev Chronic Dis. 2018;15:E26. doi:10.5888/pcd15.170320.
  • Charles-Smith LE, Reynolds TL, Cameron MA, Conway M, Lau EHY, Olsen JM, Pavlin JA, Shigematsu M, Streichert LC, Suda KJ. Using social media for actionable disease surveillance and outbreak management: A systematic literature review. PLoS One. 2015;10(10):e0139701. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0139701.
  • Blankenship EB, Goff ME, Yin J, Tse ZTH, Fu K-W, Liang H, Saroha N, Fung ICH. Sentiment, contents, and retweets: a study of two vaccine-related twitter datasets. Perm J. 2018;22:17–138. doi:10.7812/TPP/17-138.
  • Schmidt AL, Zollo F, Scala A, Betsch C, Quattrociocchi W. Polarization of the vaccination debate on Facebook. Vaccine. 2018;36(25):3606–12. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.05.040.
  • Salathé M, Khandelwal S, Meyers LA. Assessing vaccination sentiments with online social media: implications for infectious disease dynamics and control. PLoS Comput Biol. 2011;7(10):e1002199. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002199.
  • Del Vicario M, Bessi A, Zollo F, Petroni F, Scala A, Caldarelli G, Stanley HE, Quattrociocchi W. The spreading of misinformation online. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016;113(3):554–59. doi:10.1073/pnas.1517441113
  • Getman R, Helmi M, Roberts H, Yansane A, Cutler D, Seymour B. Vaccine hesitancy and online information: the influence of digital networks. Health Educ Behav. 2018;45(4):599–606. doi:10.1177/1090198117739673.
  • Ekram S, Debiec KE, Pumper MA, Moreno MA. Content and commentary: HPV vaccine and YouTube. J Pediatr Adolesc Gynecol. 2019;32(2):153–57. doi:10.1016/j.jpag.2018.11.001.
  • Basch CH, MacLean SA. A content analysis of HPV related posts on Instagram. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2019;15(7–8):1476–78. doi:10.1080/21645515.2018.1560774.
  • Gunaratne K, Coomes EA, Haghbayan H. Temporal trends in anti-vaccine discourse on twitter. Vaccine. 2019;37(35):4867–71. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.06.086.
  • Davies P, Chapman S, Leask J. Antivaccination activists on the world wide web. Arch Dis Child. 2002;87(1):22–25. doi:10.1136/adc.87.1.22.
  • Arif N, Al-Jefri M, Bizzi IH, Perano GB, Goldman M, Haq I, Chua KL, Mengozzi M, Neunez M, Smith H. Fake news or weak science? Visibility and characterization of antivaccine webpages returned by google in different languages and countries. Front Immunol. 2018;9:1215. doi:10.3389/fimmu.2018.01215.
  • Odone A, Ferrari A, Spagnoli F, Visciarelli S, Shefer A, Pasquarella C, Signorelli C. Effectiveness of interventions that apply new media to improve vaccine uptake and vaccine coverage. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2015;11(1):72. doi:10.4161/hv.34313.
  • Basch CH, Zybert P, Reeves R, Basch CE. What do popular YouTube TM videos say about vaccines? Child Care Health Dev. 2017;43(4):499. doi:10.1111/cch.12401.
  • Li HO, Bailey A, Huynh D, Chan J. YouTube as a source of information on COVID-19: A pandemic of misinformation? BMJ Global Health. 2020;5(5):e002604. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002604.
  • Yuan X, Schuchard RJ, Crooks AT. Examining emergent communities and social bots within the polarized online vaccination debate in twitter. Social Media + Society. 2019;5(3):205630511986546. doi:10.1177/2056305119865465.
  • Josephson A, Lambe E Brand communications in time of crisis. 2020. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/Brand-communications-in-time-of-crisis.html.
  • Cinelli M, Quattrociocchi W, Galeazzi A, Valensise CM, Brugnoli E, Schmidt AL, Zola P, Zollo F, Scala S. The COVID-19 social media infodemic. 2020. https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.05004.
  • Brennen S, Simon F, Howard P, Nielsen R Types, sources, and claims of COVID-19 misinformation. 2020. https://search.proquest.com/docview/2387269560.
  • Kouzy R, Abi Jaoude J, Kraitem A, El Alam MB, Karam B, Adib E, Zarka J, Traboulsi C, Akl EW, Baddour K. Coronavirus goes viral: quantifying the COVID-19 misinformation epidemic on twitter. Cureus. 2020;12(3):e7255. doi:10.7759/cureus.7255.
  • Broniatowski DA, Jamison AM, Qi S, AlKulaib L, Chen T, Benton A, Quinn SC, Dredze M. Weaponized health communication: twitter bots and russian trolls amplify the vaccine debate. Am J Public Health. 2018;108(10):1378–84. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567.
  • Ferrara E COVID-19 on twitter: bots, conspiracies, and social media activism. 2020. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09531.
  • Ahmed W, Vidal-Alaball J, Downing J, López Seguí F. COVID-19 and the 5G conspiracy theory: social network analysis of twitter data. J Med Internet Res. 2020;22(5):e19458. doi:10.2196/19458.
  • Oehler RL. On measles, vaccination, social media activism and how to win back our role as our patients’ best advocates. Clinical Infectious Diseases: An Official Publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. 2019. doi:10.1093/cid/ciz656.
  • Ortiz RR, Smith A, Coyne-Beasley T. A systematic literature review to examine the potential for social media to impact HPV vaccine uptake and awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about HPV and HPV vaccination. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2019;15(7–8):1465–75. doi:10.1080/21645515.2019.1581543.
  • Betsch C, Renkewitz F, Betsch T, Ulshöfer C. The influence of vaccine-critical websites on perceiving vaccination risks. J Health Psychol. 2010;15(3):446–55. doi:10.1177/1359105309353647.
  • Nan X, Madden K. HPV vaccine information in the blogosphere: how positive and negative blogs influence vaccine-related risk perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. Health Commun. 2012;27(8):829–36. doi:10.1080/10410236.2012.661348.
  • Ahmed N, Quinn SC, Hancock GR, Freimuth VS, Jamison A. Social media use and influenza vaccine uptake among white and african american adults. Vaccine. 2018;36(49):7556–61. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.10.049.
  • Bhattacharyya S, Vutha A, Bauch CT. The impact of rare but severe vaccine adverse events on behaviour-disease dynamics: A network model. Sci Rep. 2019;9(1):7164–13. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-43596-7.
  • Salmon DA, Moulton LH, Omer SB, deHart MP, Stokley S, Halsey NA. Factors associated with refusal of childhood vaccines among parents of school-aged children: A case-control study. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005;159(5):470–76. doi:10.1001/archpedi.159.5.470.
  • Dredze M, Broniatowski DA, Smith MC, Hilyard KM. Understanding vaccine refusal: why we need social media now. Am J Prev Med. 2016;50(4):550–52. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2015.10.002.
  • Shelby A, Ernst K. Story and science. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2013;9(8):1795–801. doi:10.4161/hv.24828.
  • Robichaud P, Hawken S, Beard L, Morra D, Tomlinson G, Wilson K, Keelan J. Vaccine-critical videos on YouTube and their impact on medical students’ attitudes about seasonal influenza immunization: A pre and post study. Vaccine. 2012;30(25):3763–70. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.03.074.
  • Chen T, Dredze M. Vaccine images on twitter: analysis of what images are shared. J Med Internet Res. 2018;20(4):e130. doi:10.2196/jmir.8221.
  • Broniatowski DA, Hilyard KM, Dredze M. Effective vaccine communication during the disneyland measles outbreak. Vaccine. 2016;34(28):3225–28. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2016.04.044.
  • Dubé E, Gagnon D, Clément P, Bettinger JA, Comeau JL, Deeks S, Guay M, MacDonald S, MacDonald NE, Mijovic H. Challenges and opportunities of school-based HPV vaccination in canada. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2019;15(7–8):1650–55. doi:10.1080/21645515.2018.1564440.
  • Jones AM, Omer SB, Bednarczyk RA, Halsey NA, Moulton LH, Salmon DA. Parents’ source of vaccine information and impact on vaccine attitudes, beliefs, and nonmedical exemptions. Adv Prev Med. 2012;2012:932741–48. doi:10.1155/2012/932741.
  • Giese H, Neth H, Moussaïd M, Betsch C, Gaissmaier W. The echo in flu-vaccination echo chambers: selective attention trumps social influence. Vaccine. 2019. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.11.038.
  • Kortum P, Edwards C, Richards-Kortum R. The impact of inaccurate internet health information in a secondary school learning environment. J Med Internet Res. 2008;10(2):e17. doi:10.2196/jmir.986.
  • Perkins RB, Fisher-Borne M, Brewer NT. Engaging parents around vaccine confidence: proceedings from the national HPV vaccination roundtable meetings. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2019;15(7–8):1639–40. doi:10.1080/21645515.2018.1520592
  • Mohanty S, Leader AE, Gibeau E, Johnson C. Using facebook to reach adolescents for human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. Vaccine. 2018;36(40):5955–61. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2018.08.060.
  • Yammine S. Going viral: how to boost the spread of coronavirus science on social media. Nature. 2020;581(7808):345–46. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-01356-y.
  • Chen Q, Min C, Zhang W, Wang G, Ma X, Evans R. Unpacking the black box: how to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis. Comput Human Behav. 2020;110:106380. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2020.106380.
  • Basch CE, Basch CH, Hillyer GC, Jaime C. The role of YouTube and the entertainment industry in saving lives by educating and mobilizing the public to adopt behaviors for community mitigation of COVID-19: successive sampling design study. JMIR Public Health Surveillance. 2020;6(2):e19145. doi:10.2196/19145.
  • D’Souza RS, D’Souza S, Strand N, Anderson A, Vogt MNP, Olatoye O. YouTube as a source of medical information on the novel coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Glob Public Health. 2020:1–8. doi:10.1080/17441692.2020.1761426.
  • Ortiz RR, Shafer A, Cates J, Coyne-Beasley T. Development and evaluation of a social media health intervention to improve adolescents’ knowledge about and vaccination against the human papillomavirus. Global Pediatr Health. 2018;5:2333794X18777918. doi:10.1177/2333794X18777918.
  • Shoup JA, Wagner NM, Kraus CR, Narwaney KJ, Goddard KS, Glanz JM. Development of an interactive social media tool for parents with concerns about vaccines. Health Educ Behav. 2015;42(3):302–12. doi:10.1177/1090198114557129.
  • Chou WS, Oh A, Klein WMP. Addressing health-related misinformation on social media. JAMA. 2018;320(23):2417–18. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.16865.
  • Ozoma I Bringing authoritative vaccine results to Pinterest search. 2019. [accessed2020 Jan 5].
  • WHO director-general statement on the role of social media platforms in health information. 2019. [accessed2019 Dec 10]. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/28-08-2019-who-director-general-statement-on-the-role-of-social-media-platforms-in-health-information
  • Combatting vaccine misinformation. accessed 2019 Mar 8]. allAfrica.com (English).
  • Harvey D Helping you find reliable public health information on twitter. [2019. accessed Dec 12 2019]. https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/helping-you-find-reliable-public-health-information-on-twitter.html.
  • Roth Y, Pickles N Updating our approach to misleading information. 2020.
  • At home #WithMe. YouTube Web site. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK8qVjkRMI1lRcYp6_W_1qw.
  • Pennycook G, McPhetres J, Zhang Y, Rand D. Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention. MIT Initiative Digital Economy. 2020.
  • Too much information: A public guide. First Draft Web site. Updating our Approach to Misleading Information.
  • Lee MJ, Cho J. Promoting HPV vaccination online: message design and media choice. Health Promot Pract. 2017;18(5):645–53. doi:10.1177/1524839916688229.
  • Massey PM, Leader A, Yom-Tov E, Budenz A, Fisher K, Klassen AC. Applying multiple data collection tools to quantify human papillomavirus vaccine communication on twitter. J Med Internet Res. 2016;18(12):e318. doi:10.2196/jmir.6670.
  • Zhang EJ, Chughtai AA, Heywood A, MacIntyre CR. Influence of political and medical leaders on parental perception of vaccination: A cross-sectional survey in australia. BMJ Open. 2019;9(3):e025866. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-025866.
  • Rufai SR, Bunce C. World leaders’ usage of twitter in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a content analysis. J Public Health (Oxford, England). 2020. doi:10.1093/pubmed/fdaa049.
  • Haghbayan H, Coomes EA, Cheema AN, Shojania KG. Media dissemination of the montreal cognitive assessment after president donald trump’s medical evaluation. JAMA Neurol. 2018;75(10):1286–87. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2018.1777.
  • Elliott J Trump vs. himself: how he dismissed the coronavirus, in his own words. [accessed 2020 Apr 15.https://globalnews.ca/news/6820223/coronavirus-donald-trump-timeline/.
  • Vrdelja M, Kraigher A, Vercic D, Kropivnik S. The growing vaccine hesitancy: exploring the influence of the internet. Eur J Public Health. 2018;28(5):934–39. doi:10.1093/eurpub/cky114.
  • Greenberg J, Dubé E, Driedger M. Vaccine hesitancy: in search of the risk communication comfort zone. PLoS Curr. 2017:9. doi:10.1371/currents.outbreaks.0561a011117a1d1f9596e24949e8690b.
  • Kagashe I, Yan Z, Suheryani I. Enhancing seasonal influenza surveillance: topic analysis of widely used medicinal drugs using twitter data. J Med Internet Res. 2017;19(9):e315. doi:10.2196/jmir.7393.
  • Kata A. Anti-vaccine activists, web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm – an overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement. Vaccine. 2011;30(25):3778–89. doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.112.
  • Dannetun E, Tegnell A, Hermansson G, Giesecke J. Parents’ reported reasons for avoiding MMR vaccination. Scand J Prim Health Care. 2005;23(3):149–53. doi:10.1080/02813430510031306.
  • Rosselli R, Martini M, Bragazzi NL. The old and the new: vaccine hesitancy in the era of the web 2.0. challenges and opportunities. J Prev Med Hyg. 2016; 57(1): E47–E50. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27346940
  • Reiter PL, Katz ML, Bauermeister JA, Shoben AB, Paskett ED, McRee A. Recruiting young gay and bisexual men for a human papillomavirus vaccination intervention through social media: the effects of advertisement content. JMIR Public Health Surveillance. 2017;3(2):e33. doi:10.2196/publichealth.7545.
  • Tustin JL, Crowcroft NS, Gesink D, Johnson I, Keelan J, Lachapelle B. Facebook recruitment of vaccine-hesitant canadian parents: cross-sectional study. JMIR Public Health Surveillance. 2017;3(3):e47. doi:10.2196/publichealth.6870.
  • UAlberta Medicine. Are you interested in being part of a trial for the prevention of COVID-19? 2020 https://twitter.com/UAlberta_DoM/status/1259902360824025088.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.