Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Mar 8, 2022
Date Accepted: Jun 21, 2022
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jun 22, 2022
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Impact of COVID-19 vaccine fake news topics and manifestation strategies on public engagement on social media
ABSTRACT
Background:
Vaccines serve an integral role in containing pandemics, yet vaccine hesitancy is prevalent globally. One key reason for this is the pervasiveness of fake news on social media. Prior research has shown that exposure to fake news is closely associated with vaccine hesitancy, but little scholarly attention has been given to the investigation or robust theorising of the various content themes pertaining to antivaccine fake news about COVID-19 and the strategies in which these content themes are manifested. Public association with such content on social media exhibited in the form of comments, shares, and reactions, has implications for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.
Objective:
We investigated whether there were differences in the content topics and strategies used to disseminate antivaccine fake news about COVID-19 on social media and its impact on different levels of public engagement.
Methods:
This study constructed an antivaccine fake news database on major social media platforms from September 2019-August 2021 to examine how fake news exhibited in the form of content themes and manifestation strategies used were associated with public response in terms of likes, comments, and shares. Antivaccine fake news was retrieved from two global fake news databases – COVID Global Misinformation Dashboard and Corona Virus Facts Alliance Database. We primarily focused on 152 Facebook posts since most antivaccine fake news posts on COVID-19 were found on Facebook. Then, we employed quantitative content analysis to examine the content themes (safety concerns, conspiracy theories, efficacy concerns) and manifestation strategies of fake news (i.e. use of sources, use of linguistic features, emotional appeal, and amplification) in these posts and their association with public engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares.
Results:
Our study revealed that safety concern was the most prominent content theme and a negative predictor of likes, comments, and shares. Most importantly, linguistic features that enhanced the memorability of posts were frequently employed in antivaccine fake news about COVID-19, being positive predictors of likes, while posts that employed linguistic features to enhance credibility and used emotional appeal were positive predictors of likes and shares.
Conclusions:
This study contributes to a richer research-informed understanding of which concerns about content theme and strategy need to be countered on antivaccine fake news circulating on social media so that accurate information on COVID-19 vaccines can be disseminated to the public, ultimately reducing vaccine hesitancy. The sharing of COVID-19 antivaccine posts on social media is perturbing since a large audience can be reached, exacerbating the spread of fake news and hampering global efforts to combat the virus.
Citation
