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One Year of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation on Twitter: Longitudinal Study.

Francesco PierriMatthew R DeVernaKai-Cheng YangDavid AxelrodJohn BrydenFilippo Menczer
Published in: Journal of medical Internet research (2023)
The wide spread of misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter during 2021 shows that there was an audience for this type of content. Our findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that superspreaders are driven by financial incentives that allow them to profit from health misinformation. Despite high-profile cases of deplatformed misinformation superspreaders, our results show that in 2021, a few individuals still played an outsized role in the spread of low-credibility vaccine content. As a result, social media moderation efforts would be better served by focusing on reducing the online visibility of repeat spreaders of harmful content, especially during public health crises.
Keyphrases
  • social media
  • public health
  • health information
  • coronavirus disease
  • sars cov
  • healthcare
  • mental health
  • quality improvement
  • smoking cessation
  • global health
  • hiv infected
  • antiretroviral therapy