No Vaccine for Me: Investigating How Misinformation Targeting COVID-19 Vaccines Went Viral on Twitter

A major action to end the global pandemic of COVID-19 is the vaccine-rollout programs. However, with pervasive online misinformation targeting the vaccine, it has been difficult to reach the vaccination level required to form herd immunity. The wide spread of such misinformation can find its roots in the homophily and polarization of social media platforms, the long-lasting anti-vaccine sentiments, and the uniquely politicized narrative on pandemic in the U.S. Using an established dataset with tweets annotated with stances towards misinformation, the current research compared the features of post narrative and of their authors using natural language processing and network analysis techniques. The main findings included (1) people adopted vaccine misinformation used a less coherent but more provoking narrative, and attached more negative sentiment and concepts to the vaccines; (2) people adopted vaccine misinformation showed generally lower influence on social media; they relied more on fake news websites and followed more people holding hostile attitudes toward the vaccine, which formed newsfeeds with significantly more unreliable, anti-vaccine information that impacted their attitudes and behaviors. This research fostered the understanding of online discussion concerning vaccine misinformation, and may help platforms and public health experts to perform interventions at the right time and on the right targets when addressing vaccine hesitancy.