Global Misinformation Spillovers in the Vaccination Debate Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Multilingual Twitter Study (Preprint)

• DOI: 10.2196/preprints.44714
• Publication Date: 2023-05-24T13:45:34Z
• Authors: Jacopo Lenti; Yelena Mejova; Kyriaki Kalimeri; André Panisson; Daniela Paolotti; Michele Tizzani; Michele Starnini
• Keywords: Misinformation; Pandemic; Moderation

<sec> <title>BACKGROUND</title> Antivaccination views pervade online social media, fueling distrust in scientific expertise and increasing the number of vaccine-hesitant individuals. Although previous studies focused on specific countries, COVID-19 pandemic has brought vaccination discourse worldwide, underpinning need to tackle low-credible information flows a global scale design effective countermeasures. </sec> <title>OBJECTIVE</title> This study aimed quantify cross-border misinformation among users exposed antivaccination (no-vax) content effects moderation vaccine-related misinformation. <title>METHODS</title> We collected 316 million Twitter (Twitter, Inc) messages 18 languages from October 2019 March 2021. geolocated 28 different countries reconstructed retweet network cosharing for each country. identified communities no-vax by detecting via hierarchical clustering manual annotation. list low-credibility domains quantified interactions countries. <title>RESULTS</title> The findings showed that during pandemic, became more central country-specific debates their connections strengthened, revealing network. US are this network, whereas Russian also net exporters rollout. Interestingly, we found Twitter’s efforts, particular suspension following January 6 Capitol attack, had worldwide impact reducing spread about vaccines. <title>CONCLUSIONS</title> These may help public health institutions media platforms mitigate health-related, vulnerable web-based communities.