ArticleHuman vaccines & immunotherapeutics2022
Cross-platform spread: vaccine-related content, sources, and conspiracy theories in YouTube videos shared in early Twitter COVID-19 conversations.
Article in Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Prevalence, Features, Influencing Factors, and Solutions for COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation: Systematic Review.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Pooled it
- Psychological crisis and emergency response in public health emergencies: a case study of the Mpox epidemic.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Social opinions prediction utilizes fusing dynamics equation with LLM-based agents.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A study on the practical logic and promotion path of agile governance of distorted health information on the internet: A review.Medicine · 2025Review
- Conspiracy narratives and vaccine hesitancy: a scoping review of prevalence, impact, and interventions.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Response of Unvaccinated US Adults to Official Information About the Pause in Use of the Johnson & Johnson-Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine: Cross-Sectional Survey Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Correlation of geopolitics, education, democracy with COVID-19 vaccination rate.BMC public health · 2024Article
- YouTube and COVID-19 vaccines: A mini scoping review.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2023Article
- Designing and testing social media campaign messages to promote COVID-19 vaccine confidence among rural adults: A community-engaged approach featuring rural community leader and clinician testimonials.Preventive medicine reports · 2023Article
- Social Media Sentiment about COVID-19 Vaccination Predicts Vaccine Acceptance among Peruvian Social Media Users the Next Day.Vaccines · 2023Article
- Applications of Social Media and Digital Technologies in COVID-19 Vaccination: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Network embedding aided vaccine skepticism detection.Applied network science · 2023Article
- COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Spain and associated factors.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- 'Vaccine as aFrontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Public Opinion Manipulation on Social Media: Social Network Analysis of Twitter Bots during the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Assessment of training of general practice interns in motivational interviews about vaccination.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2022Article
- Determinants of university students' COVID-19 vaccination intentions and behavior.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Exploring Public Discussions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccinations on Microblogs in China: Findings from Machine Learning Algorithms.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Revealing Public Opinion towards the COVID-19 Vaccine with Weibo Data in China: BertFDA-Based Model.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature.EClinicalMedicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
High uptake of vaccinations is essential in fighting infectious diseases, including severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Social media play a crucial role in propagating misinformation about vaccination, including through conspiracy theories and can negatively impact trust in vaccination. Users typically engage with multiple social media platforms; however, little is known about the role and content of cross-platform use in spreading vaccination-related information. This study examined the content and dynamics of YouTube videos shared in vaccine-related tweets posted to COVID-19 conversations before the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. We screened approximately 144 million tweets posted to COVID-19 conversations and identified 930,539 unique tweets in English that discussed vaccinations posted between 1 February and 23 June 2020. We then identified links to 2,097 unique YouTube videos that were tweeted. Analysis of the video transcripts using Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling and independent coders indicate the dominance of conspiracy theories. Following the World Health Organization's declaration of the COVID-19 outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern, anti-vaccination frames rapidly transitioned from claiming that vaccines cause autism to pandemic conspiracy theories, often featuring Bill Gates. Content analysis of the 20 most tweeted videos revealed that the majority (n = 15) opposed vaccination and included conspiracy theories. Their spread on Twitter was consistent with spamming and coordinated efforts. These findings show the role of cross-platform sharing of YouTube videos over Twitter as a strategy to propagate primarily anti-vaccination messages. Future policies and interventions should consider how to counteract misinformation spread via such cross-platform activities.
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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.