Participación ciudadana en TwitterPolémicas anti-vacunas en tiempos de COVID-19

  1. Rafael Carrasco Polaino 1
  2. Miguel Ángel Martín Cárdaba 2
  3. Ernesto Villar Cirujano 2
  1. 1 Universidad Complutense de Madrid
    info

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

    Madrid, España

    ROR 02p0gd045

  2. 2 Universidad Villanueva
    info

    Universidad Villanueva

    Madrid, España

Journal:
Comunicar: Revista Científica de Comunicación y Educación

ISSN: 1134-3478

Year of publication: 2021

Issue Title: Participación ciudadana en la esfera digital

Issue: 69

Pages: 21-31

Type: Article

DOI: 10.3916/C69-2021-02 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

More publications in: Comunicar: Revista Científica de Comunicación y Educación

Abstract

Twitter has transformed into one of the main platforms for citizen engagement today. However, even though previous studies have focused on opinions about vaccines in general or about specific vaccines, opinions towards COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter have not been researched to date. The objective of this research is, by using social network analysis and language processing tools, to examine the degree to which the opinions and interactions present on Twitter are favorable or unfavorable towards the main COVID-19 vaccines. In addition, the relevance of each of the vaccines is studied, as well as their level of controversy. Likewise, the present study investigates, for the first time, the conversation from different perspectives including the content and also the participants, by analyzing in detail the verified accounts and using tools for the detection of bots. In global terms, the results from verified accounts show a moderate favorability towards the COVID-19 vaccines, the most accepted being those of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sputnik V. On the other hand, the vaccine that attracts the most attention is the Russian Sputnik V, which is also the most controversial, behind those developed in China. Finally, verified users are shown to be relevant agents in the conversation due to their greater capacity for dissemination and reach, while the presence of bots is practically non-existent.

€ View funding

Funding information

Los resultados de esta investigación forman parte del proyecto de investigación con nombre «Sentimiento y popularidad de los mensajes pro y anti-vacunas en redes: análisis de respuestas explicitas e implícitas mediante EGG, GSR, reconocimiento facial y eyetracking» y referencia RTI2018-097670-B-I00 perteneciente a la CONVOCATORIA 2018 DE PROYECTOS I+D+I «RETOS INVESTIGACIÓN» DEL PROGRAMA ESTATAL DE I+D+I ORIENTADA A LOS RETOS DE LA SOCIEDAD, financiado por el Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

Funders

Bibliographic References

  • Hansen, D, Shneiderman, B & Smith, M A . 2010. Analyzing social media networks with NodeXL: Insights from a connected world. Graduate Journal of Social Science .
  • A.L., Schmidt,, Zollo, Fabiana, Scala, Antonio, Betsch, Cornelia & Quattrociocchi, Walter . 2018. Polarization of the vaccination debate on Facebook. Vaccine 36:3606–3612.
  • C.M., López-Rico,, J.L., González-Esteban, & A., Hernández-Martínez, . 2020. Consumo de información en redes sociales durante la crisis de la COVID-19 en España. Revista de Comunicación y Salud 10(2):461–481.
  • A.A., Dror,, Eisenbach, Netanel, Taiber, Shahar, Morozov, Nicole G., Mizrachi, Matti, Zigron, Asaf, Srouji, Samer & Sela, Eyal . 2020. Vaccine hesitancy: The next challenge in the fight against COVID-19. European Journal of Epidemiology 35(8):775–779.
  • Xiong, Ying, Cho, Moonhee & Boatwright, Brandon . 2019. Hashtag activism and message frames among social movement organizations: Semantic network analysis and thematic analysis of Twitter during the #MeToo movement. Public Relations Review 45:10–23.
  • Bertin, Paul, Nera, Kenzo & Delouvée, Sylvain . 2020. Conspiracy beliefs, rejection of vaccination, and support for hydroxychloroquine: A conceptual replication-extension in the COVID-19 pandemic context. Frontiers in Psychology 11:1–9.
  • World Economic Forum (Ed.) 2021. More people now plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine than in December.
  • Loria, S . 2020. TextBlob: Simplified text processing (0.16.0).
  • Yang, S, Quan-Haase, A & Rannenberg, K . 1983. The changing public sphere on Twitter: Network structure, elites and topics of the #righttobeforgotten. New Media & Society 19(12):1983–2002.
  • Mcknight, P E & Najab, J . 2010. Mann-Whitney U Test. In: Weiner, I.B. & Craighead, W.E. , eds. The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology. John Wiley & Sons https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470479216.corpsy0524
  • Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) 2021. Barómetro de febrero 2021.
  • T.S., Tomeny,, Vargo, Christopher J. & El-Toukhy, Sherine . 2017. Geographic and demographic correlates of autism-related anti-vaccine beliefs on Twitter, 2009-15. Social Science & Medicine 191:168–175.
  • Yelin, Dana, Wirtheim, Eytan, Vetter, Pauline, Kalil, Andre C, Bruchfeld, Judith, Runold, Michael, Guaraldi, Giovanni, Mussini, Cristina, Gudiol, Carlota, Pujol, Miquel, Bandera, Alessandra, Scudeller, Luigia, Paul, Mical, Kaiser, Laurent & Leibovici, Leonard . 2020. Long-term consequences of COVID-19: Research needs. The Lancet Infectious Diseases 20:1115–1117.
  • The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) (Ed.) 2020. A Timeline of COVID-19 Developments in 2020.
  • Dubé, Eve, Vivion, Maryline & MacDonald, Noni E . 2015. Vaccine hesitancy, vaccine refusal and the anti-vaccine movement: Influence, impact and implications. Expert Review of Vaccines 14(1):99–117.
  • Puente, S N, Maceiras, S D & Romero, D F . 2021. Twitter activism and ethical witnessing: Possibilities and challenges of feminist politics against gender-based violence. Social Science Computer Review 39(2):295–311.
  • Manfredi-Sánchez, Juan-Luis, Amado-Suárez, Adriana & Waisbord, Silvio . 2021. Presidential Twitter in the face of COVID-19: Between populism and pop politics. [Twitter presidencial ante la COVID-19: Entre el populismo y la política pop] Comunicar 29(66):83–94.
  • G.A., Auger, . 2013. Fostering democracy through social media: Evaluating diametrically opposed nonprofit advocacy organizations’ use of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Public Relations Review 39(4):369–376.
  • Organización de Naciones Unidas (Ed.) 2020a. Cronología de la respuesta de la OMS a la COVID-19.
  • Gintova, Maria . 2019. Understanding government social media users: An analysis of interactions on immigration, refugees and citizenship Canada Twitter and Facebook. Government Information Quarterly 36(4):101388.
  • Botometer (Ed.) 2020. Botometer® by OSoMe. FAQ
  • H.T., Vu,, H.V., Do,, Seo, Hyunjin & Liu, Yuchen . 2020. Who leads the conversation on climate change? A study of a global network of NGOS on Twitter. Environmental Communication 14(4):450–464.
  • Denia, Elena . 2020. The impact of science communication on Twitter: The case of Neil deGrasse Tyson. [El impacto del discurso científico en Twitter: El caso de Neil deGrasse Tyson] Comunicar 28(65):21–30.
  • G.E., Sued-Palmeiro, & M., Cebral-Loureda, . 2020. Voces autorizadas en Twitter durante la pandemia de COVID-19: Actores, léxico y sentimientos como marco interpretativo para usuarios ordinarios. Revista de Comunicación y Salud 10(2):549–568.
  • Serrano-Contreras, Ignacio-Jesús, García-Marín, Javier & O.G., Luengo, . 2020. Measuring online political dialogue: Does polarization trigger more deliberation? Media and Communication 8:63–72.
  • Zimmer, C, Corum, J & Wee, S L . 2021. Coronavirus vaccine tracker. The New York Times
  • Milani, Elena, Weitkamp, Emma & Webb, Peter . 2020. The visual vaccine debate on Twitter: A social network analysis. Media and Communication 8:364–375.
  • Organización de Naciones Unidas (Ed.) 2020. Covid-19. Impact of the Pandemic on Trade and Development.
  • Twitter (Ed.) 2021. Acerca de las cuentas verificadas de Twitter.
  • A., Fauziyyah, . 2020. Analisis sentiment pandemi Covid19 pada streaming Twitter dengan text mining Python. Jurnal Ilmiah SINUS 18(2):31.
  • Bosch, T . 2017. Twitter activism and youth in South Africa: The case of #RhodesMustFall. Information, Communication & Society 20(2):221–232.
  • S.B., Meyer,, Violette, Richard, Aggarwal, Reenika, Simeoni, Michelle, MacDougall, Heather & Waite, Nancy . 2019. Vaccine hesitancy and Web 2.0: Exploring how attitudes and beliefs about influenza vaccination are exchanged in online threaded user comments. Vaccine 37(13):1769–1774.
  • Friedrich, M J . 2019. WHO’s Top Health Threats for 2019. JAMA (11) 321.
  • Puri, Neha, Coomes, Eric A., Haghbayan, Hourmazd & Gunaratne, Keith . 2020. Social media and vaccine hesitancy: New updates for the era of COVID-19 and globalized infectious diseases. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics 16(11):2586–2593.
  • Andre, FE, Booy, R, Bock, HL, Clemens, J, Datta, SK, John, TJ, Lee, BW, Lolekha, S, Peltola, H, Ruff, TA, Santosham, M & Schmitt, HJ . 2008. Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 86(2):140–146.
  • Organización de Naciones Unidas (Ed.) 2020b. Draft landscape and tracker of COVID-19 candidate vaccines.
  • Colleoni, Elanor, Rozza, Alessandro & Arvidsson, Adam . 2014. Echo chamber or public sphere? Predicting political orientation and measuring political homophily in Twitter using big data. Journal of Communication 64(2):317–332.
  • Tornos-Inza, E . 2020. Tasa de interacción (engagement) en Twitter. Related: Marketing
  • G., François,, Duclos, Philippe, Margolis, Harold, Lavanchy, Daniel, Siegrist, Claire-Anne, Meheus, Andr??, Lambert, Paul-Henri, N., Emiroglu,, Badur, Selim & Damme, Pierre Van . 2005. Vaccine safety controversies and the future of vaccination programs. The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal 24(11):953–961.
  • M.J., Hornsey,, E.A., Harris, & K.S., Fielding, . 2018. The psychological roots of anti-vaccination attitudes: A 24-nation investigation. Health Psychology 37(4):307–315.
  • G.A., Poland, & Spier, Ray . 2010. Fear, misinformation, and innumerates: How the Wakefield paper, the press, and advocacy groups damaged the public health. Vaccine 28(12):2361–2362.
  • Brand, E & Gomez, H . 2006. Análisis de redes sociales como metodología de investigación. Elementos básicos y aplicación. Repositorio Institucional Universidad de Antioquia
  • Spier, R.E. . 2001. Perception of risk of vaccine adverse events: A historical perspective. Vaccine 20(1):S78–S84.
  • YouGov (Ed.) 2021. COVID-19 Public Monitor. COVID-19 Public Monitor
  • Cuesta-Cambra, Ubaldo, Martínez-Martínez, Luz & Niño-González, José-Ignacio . 2019. An analysis of pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine information on social networks and the internet: Visual and emotional patterns. Profesional de la Información 28.
  • T.E., Oliphant, . 2007. Python for scientific computing. Computing in Science & Engineering 9(3):10–20.
  • Subrahmanian, V.S., Azaria, Amos, Durst, Skylar, Kagan, Vadim, Galstyan, Aram, Lerman, Kristina, Zhu, Linhong, Ferrara, Emilio, Flammini, Alessandro & Menczer, Filippo . 2016. The DARPA Twitter Bot Challenge. Computer 49(6):38–46.
  • Micu, Adrian, A.E., Micu,, Geru, Marius & R.C., Lixandroiu, . 2017. Analyzing user sentiment in social media: Implications for online marketing strategy. Psychology & Marketing 34(12):1094–1100.
  • Bello-Orgaz, Gema, J., Hernandez-Castro, & Camacho, David . 2017. Detecting discussion communities on vaccination in Twitter. Future Generation Computer Systems 66:125–136.
  • Kouzy, Ramez, Jaoude, Joseph Abi, Kraitem, Afif, Alam, Molly B El, Karam, Basil, Adib, Elio, Zarka, Jabra, Traboulsi, Cindy, Akl, Elie & Baddour, Khalil . 2020. Coronavirus goes viral: Quantifying the COVID-19 misinformation epidemic on Twitter. Cureus (3) 12.
  • Graells-Garrido, E, Baeza-Yates, R & Lalmas, M . 2019. How representative is an abortion debate on Twitter. Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Web Science - WebSci ’19 133–134.
  • Himelboim, Itai, Xiao, Xizhu, Lee, Danielle Ka Lai, Wang, Meredith Y. & Borah, Porismita . 2020. A social networks approach to understanding vaccine conversations on Twitter: Network clusters, sentiment, and certainty in HPV social networks. Health Communication 35(5):607–615.
  • D.K., Flaherty, . 2011. The vaccine-autism connection: A public health crisis caused by unethical medical practices and fraudulent science. Annals of Pharmacotherapy 45(10):1302–1304.
  • Ostertagova, E, Ostertag, O & Kovác, J . 2014. Methodology and application of the Kruskal-Wallis test. Applied Mechanics and Materials 611:115–120.
  • Dixon, G. & Clarke, C. . 2013. The effect of falsely balanced reporting of the autism-vaccine controversy on vaccine safety perceptions and behavioral intentions. Health Education Research 28(2):352–359.
  • Burnap, Pete, Gibson, Rachel, Sloan, Luke, Southern, Rosalynd & Williams, Matthew . 2016. 140 characters to victory? Using Twitter to predict the UK 2015 general election. Electoral Studies 41:230–233.
  • Broniatowski, David A., Jamison, Amelia M., Qi, SiHua, AlKulaib, Lulwah, Chen, Tao, Benton, Adrian, Quinn, Sandra C. & Dredze, Mark . 2018. Weaponized health communication: Twitter bots and russian trolls amplify the vaccine debate. American Journal of Public Health 108(10):1378–1384.
  • Callaway, E . 2020. Russia announces positive COVID-vaccine results from controversial trial. Nature .
  • Jolley, Daniel & Douglas, Karen M. . 2014. The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions. PLoS ONE 9(2):e89177
Data source: Dialnet