Changes in legislator vaccine-engagement on Twitter before and after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT: Widespread SARS-CoV-2 vaccine uptake will be critical to resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. Politicians have the potential to impact vaccine sentiment and uptake through vaccine-related communication with the public. We used tweets (n = 6,201), abstracted from Quorum, a public affairs software platform, to examine changes in the frequency of vaccine-related communication by legislators on the social media platform, Twitter. We found an increase in vaccine-related tweets by legislators following the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. In the pre-COVID-19 era the majority of vaccine-related tweets were generated by Democrat and state senators. The increase in tweets following the arrival of COVID-19, however, was greater among Republican and federal legislators than Democrat or sta

SUBMITTER: Engel-Rebitzer E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8381804 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature