Global Misinformation Spillovers in the Vaccination Debate Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Multilingual Twitter Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Antivaccination views pervade online social media, fueling distrust in scientific expertise and increasing the number of vaccine-hesitant individuals. Although previous studies focused on specific countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the vaccination discourse worldwide, underpinning the need to tackle low-credible information flows on a global scale to design effective countermeasures.

Objective

This study aimed to quantify cross-border misinformation flows among users exposed to antivaccination (no-vax) content and the effects of content moderation on vaccine-related misinformation.

Methods

We collected 316 million vaccine-related Twitter (Twitter, Inc) messages in 18 languages from October 2019 to March 2021. We geolocated users in 28 different co

SUBMITTER: Lenti J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10226529 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature