Observational studyJournal of medical Internet research2024
Wellness Influencer Responses to COVID-19 Vaccines on Social Media: A Longitudinal Observational Study.
Observational study in Journal of medical Internet research, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Politics matter more than credentials in laypeople's judgments of expertise.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Practices, Management and Resource Preferences of Backyard (Hobby) Poultry Owners in Central North Carolina: A Qualitative Study.Veterinary medicine and science · 2026Article
- A community-centered approach to psychedelics.Discover mental health · 2025Review
- Framing Pro-Anorexia Discourse on YouTube in South Korea: Social Network and Exponential Random Graph Model Analysis of Video Communities.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Impact of Social Media Influencers on Amplifying Positive Public Health Messages.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOnline wellness influencers (individuals dispensing unregulated health and wellness advice over social media) may have incentives to oppose traditional medical authorities. Their messaging may decrease the overall effectiveness of public health campaigns during global health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
objectiveThis study aimed to probe how wellness influencers respond to a public health campaign; we examined how a sample of wellness influencers on Twitter (rebranded as X in 2023) identified before the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter took stances on the COVID-19 vaccine during 2020-2022. We evaluated the prevalence of provaccination messaging among wellness influencers compared with a control group, as well as the rhetorical strategies these influencers used when supporting or opposing vaccination.
methodsFollowing a longitudinal design, wellness influencer accounts were identified on Twitter from a random sample of tweets posted in 2019. Accounts were identified using a combination of topic modeling and hand-annotation for adherence to influencer criteria. Their tweets from 2020-2022 containing vaccine keywords were collected and labeled as pro- or antivaccination stances using a language model. We compared their stances to a control group of noninfluencer accounts that discussed similar health topics before the pandemic using a generalized linear model with mixed effects and a nearest-neighbors classifier. We also used topic modeling to locate key themes in influencer's pro- and antivaccine messages.
resultsWellness influencers (n=161) had lower rates of provaccination stances in their on-topic tweets (20%, 614/3045) compared with controls (n=242 accounts, with 42% or 3201/7584 provaccination tweets). Using a generalized linear model of tweet stance with mixed effects to model tweets from the same account, the main effect of the group was significant (β
conclusionsWellness influencers showed higher rates of vaccine opposition compared with other accounts that participated in health discourse before the pandemic. This pattern supports the theory that unregulated wellness influencers have incentives to resist messaging from establishment authorities such as public health agencies.
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