ArticleScientific reports2022
Cable news and COVID-19 vaccine uptake.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Susceptibility to online misinformation: A systematic meta-analysis of demographic and psychological factors.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Pooled it
- Health disinformation: a call to action for the hemostasis and thrombosis community.Research and practice in thrombosis and haemostasis · 2025Article
- Dual decision-making routes for COVID-19 and influenza vaccines uptake in parents: A mixed-methods study.British journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Healthcare provider recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination: Prevalence, disparities, and correlates.Patient education and counseling · 2025Article
- Self-rated health of Latino day laborers during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study.Research square · 2024Article
- A population level study on the determinants of COVID-19 vaccination rates at the U.S. county level.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Anti-science conspiracies pose new threats to US biomedicine in 2023.FASEB bioAdvances · 2023Article
- Rational and irrational vaccine hesitancy.Israel journal of health policy research · 2023Article
- The political polarization of COVID-19 treatments among physicians and laypeople in the United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
COVID-19 vaccines have reduced infections and hospitalizations across the globe, yet resistance to vaccination remains strong. This paper investigates the role of cable television news in vaccine hesitancy and associated local vaccination rates in the United States. We find that, in the earlier stages of the vaccine roll-out (starting May 2021), higher local viewership of Fox News Channel has been associated with lower local vaccination rates. We can verify that this association is causal using exogenous geographical variation in the channel lineup. The effect is driven by younger individuals (under 65 years of age), for whom COVID-19 has a low mortality risk. Consistent with changes in beliefs about the effectiveness of the vaccine as a mechanism, we find that Fox News increased reported vaccine hesitancy in local survey responses. We can rule out that the effect is due to differences in partisanship, to local health policies, or to local COVID-19 infections or death rates. The other two major television networks, CNN and MSNBC, have no effect. That, in turn, indicates that more differentiated characteristics, like the networks' messaging or tendency for controversy, matter and that the effect of Fox News on COVID-19 vaccine uptake is not due to the general consumption of cable news. We also show that there is no historical effect of Fox News on flu vaccination rates, suggesting that the effect is COVID-19-specific and not driven by general skepticism toward vaccines.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.