ArticleAmerican journal of public health2018
Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate.
Article in American journal of public health, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 296 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
296 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Strategies and prerequisites for combating health misinformation on social media: a systematic review.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- Developing a standardized protocol for computational sentiment analysis research using health-related social media data.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Pooled it
- Characteristics of Antivaccine Messages on Social Media: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Pooled it
- Prevalence of Health Misinformation on Social Media: Systematic Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2021Pooled it
- A Web-Based Cancer Prevention Intervention for Rural Emerging Adults: Mixed Methods Development and Pilot-Testing Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Trial
- The Challenge of Debunking Health Misinformation in Dynamic Social Media Conversations: Online Randomized Study of Public Masking During COVID-19.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Trial
- Interplay between vaccine-related informational milestones, social media discourse, and vaccine administration rates for human papillomavirus and measles/mumps/rubella vaccines in the United States.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2026Article
- Beyond Accuracy: A Mixed-Methods Audit of Chain-of-Thought Failures in LLM-Based COVID-19 Vaccine Stance Detection.Journal of medical systems · 2026Article
- Sustained suppression of measles in China despite a global resurgence: drivers, risks, and strategic preparedness.World journal of pediatrics : WJP · 2026Article
- Japanese-Language AI Agent System for Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Infoveillance and Public Communication: Development and Feasibility Evaluation.JMIR infodemiology · 2026Article
- Vaccine communication: a critical review of foundations, challenges, and future directions.NPJ vaccines · 2026Review
- Community-based fact-checking reduces the spread of misleading posts on X (formerly Twitter).Nature communications · 2026Article
- Whispers of Pathogens; Social Contagion in Infectious Disease Dynamics: A Review.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Misinformation in Social Media Narratives on Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Systematic Content Analysis of Facebook and Instagram Posts.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Racial Influences, Social Media Usage, and Vaccine Hesitancy: A National Survey Across Vaccine Topics.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Utilizing the COM-B model to identify childhood routine vaccination barriers and uptake among parents and caregivers living in the frontline and Zakarpattia regions of Ukraine amidst Russia's full-scale invasion.Conflict and health · 2026Article
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of social mobilization for vaccination among healthcare and non-healthcare workers in emergency situations.NPJ vaccines · 2026Article
- Exploring the Relationship Between Susceptibility to Health Misinformation and Vaccine Hesitancy in Poland.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Understanding perceptions towards COVID-19 vaccination and strategies to increase vaccine uptake among Ebola- affected communities in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo: a qualitative study.BMC public health · 2026Article
236 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesTo understand how Twitter bots and trolls ("bots") promote online health content.
methodsWe compared bots' to average users' rates of vaccine-relevant messages, which we collected online from July 2014 through September 2017. We estimated the likelihood that users were bots, comparing proportions of polarized and antivaccine tweets across user types. We conducted a content analysis of a Twitter hashtag associated with Russian troll activity.
resultsCompared with average users, Russian trolls (χ
conclusionsWhereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination. Public Health Implications. Directly confronting vaccine skeptics enables bots to legitimize the vaccine debate. More research is needed to determine how best to combat bot-driven content.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.