BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Misinformation posted online about the COVID-19 vaccine was associated with hesitancy toward inoculation and lower vaccination rates in some geographical areas of the United States, according to a paper written by a team of researchers from Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media , known as OSoMe.
"Online misinformation is linked to early COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy and refusal," published April 26 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, also found that counties whose residents were more hesitant to receive vaccinations were more likely to have a higher number of Republican voters or Black residents.
The research was a collaboration between OSoMe and the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy. The researchers studied the relationship between misinformation, behaviors and health outcomes, specifically the way COVID-19 vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy correlate with levels of misinformation online.
"Misinformation is generally assumed to have a big impact on behavior, but there are few studies that investigate this topic," said John Bryden, executive director of OSoMe. "We hope this work adds to the picture."
Bryden said the researchers considered the question of how misinformation affects vaccination behavior after seeing a lot of misinformation posted online during the vaccine rollout and wondering why some states were lagging behind others in vaccination rates.
In 2021, the OSoMe team developed CoVaxxy, a publicly available dashboard, to explore the relationship between misinformation on Twitter and attitudes about COVID-19 vaccines. They used CoVaxxy to collect data from Twitter from Jan. 4 to March 25, 2021. The timeline was chosen because once the vaccine became available to everyone, the issue was no longer supply but demand, said Filippo Menczer, director of OSoMe.
Vaccination has been the key to fighting the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and populations must reach a threshold rate to achieve herd immunity. However, examples of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine have included claims that they genetically manipulate the population, or contain microchips that interact with 5G networks, the researchers said in the paper.