Infodemic Crisis: Measuring Social Media Covid-19 Vaccine Misinformation in the United States Population

Background

The relentless escalation of misinformation that ensued on social media platforms since the contagion of the novel corona virus in 2019, led the World Health Organization (WHO) to conceive the term “Infodemic” emphasizing the role of social media in disseminating anti-vaccine discourse within the global population (Cruickshank et al., 2021; Puri et al., 2020). From recent studies conducted by (Del Riccio et al., 2022; Roozenbeek et al., 2020), we can assume that that social media emits the potential to increase vulnerability to misinformation and worsen vaccine hesitancy, leading to reduced adherence to guidance measures.

Objective

The aim of this paper to synthesize the existing field of literature on social media misinformation on Covid-19 vaccines and its ramifications on the Covid-19 vaccine uptake.

Methodology

A literature search was conducted on 5^th of March 2024 in conformity with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines (Page et al., 2021) to find out the prominent social media platforms that disseminated misinformation related to Covid-19 vaccines and also understand the types of misinformation spread. Databases such as PubMed, Academic Search Complete, CINAHL Complete, ERIC, Health and Psychosocial Instruments, ProQuest APA Psych info, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane library, Cochrane Covid-19 study register were searched for relevant journal articles. Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Tool was utilized to assess the risk of bias in the final extracted articles and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation Working Group (GRADE) score was utilized to rate the certainty of evidence of the studies.

Results

40 peer-reviewed empirical journal articles were extracted from 579 articles which met inclusion criteria for this review. 4 main themes of misinformation were identified i.e. vaccine development, medical misinformation, conspiracy theories and religious fatalism. 16 studies assessed the effect of Covid-19 vaccine infodemic and anti-vaccine sentiment/vaccine hesitancy and the findings imply that social media misinformation has a negative effect on Covid-19 vaccine uptake or confidence. The most prominent social media platforms used for misinformation spread worldwide are Twitter/X, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok.

Conclusion

Public health efforts should be enhanced to counter the root causes of vaccine hesitancy i.e. distrust in information sources and conspiracy beliefs perpetuated by social media through collaboration of policy makers, health care professionals and social media houses to implement stricter policies for watchdogging social media content and create evidence-based strategies aimed at fostering culturally sensitive, accurate and transparent information dissemination and empowering individuals/communities to make informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccination.