COVID-19 vaccine perceptions: An observational study on Reddit
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Abstract
Objectives
As COVID-19 vaccinations accelerate in many countries, narratives skeptical of vaccination have also spread through social media. Open online forums like Reddit provide an opportunity to quantitatively examine COVID-19 vaccine perceptions over time. We examine COVID-19 misinformation on Reddit following vaccine scientific announcements.
Methods
We collected all posts on Reddit from January 1 2020 - December 14 2020 (n=266,840) that contained both COVID-19 and vaccine-related keywords. We used topic modeling to understand changes in word prevalence within topics after the release of vaccine trial data. Social network analysis was also conducted to determine the relationship between Reddit communities (subreddits) that shared COVID-19 vaccine posts, and the movement of posts between subreddits.
Results
There was an association between a Pfizer press release reporting 90% efficacy and increased discussion on vaccine misinformation. We observed an association between Johnson and Johnson temporarily halting its vaccine trials and reduced misinformation. We found that information skeptical of vaccination was first posted in a subreddit (r/Coronavirus) which favored accurate information and then reposted in subreddits associated with antivaccine beliefs and conspiracy theories (e.g. conspiracy, LockdownSkepticism).
Conclusions
Our findings can inform the development of interventions where individuals determine the accuracy of vaccine information, and communications campaigns to improve COVID-19 vaccine perceptions. Such efforts can increase individual- and population-level awareness of accurate and scientifically sound information regarding vaccines and thereby improve attitudes about vaccines. Further research is needed to understand how social media can contribute to COVID-19 vaccination services.
Funding
Study was funded by the Yale Institute for Global Health and the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. The funding bodies had no role in the design, analysis or interpretation of the data in the study.
Article activity feed
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.09.21255229: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethics statement: Our work did not require institutional review board approval as we used publicly accessible and deidentified posts from Reddit without any interaction with the posts’ authors. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Cell Line Authentication Authentication: Topic interpretation was influenced by authors’ first reading the top 100 most-cited COVID-19 peer-reviewed research articles and the top 10 most cited peer-reviewed research articles around topic modeling. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Data acquisition and processing: Using the … SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.09.21255229: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethics statement: Our work did not require institutional review board approval as we used publicly accessible and deidentified posts from Reddit without any interaction with the posts’ authors. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Cell Line Authentication Authentication: Topic interpretation was influenced by authors’ first reading the top 100 most-cited COVID-19 peer-reviewed research articles and the top 10 most cited peer-reviewed research articles around topic modeling. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Data acquisition and processing: Using the Pushshift API and the Python Reddit API Wrapper [36, 37], we collected all posts on the entire Reddit, across all subreddits from January 1 2020 - December 14 2020 that contained both COVID-19 and vaccine keywords (see Supplement, only posts that had COVID-19 AND vaccine-related keywords were collected) derived from systematic reviews on the topic. Pythonsuggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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