Influence of Experts in Antivaccine Discourse
Perceived experts (i.e. medical professionals and biomedical scientists) are trusted sources of medical information who are especially effective at encouraging vaccine uptake. The role of perceived experts acting as potential antivaccine influencers has not been characterized systematically.
Problem Statement
No study has systematically examined the size and influence of the group of antivaccine perceived experts, despite several high-profile instances of such individuals spreading vaccine misinformation.
​For this study, we collected over 4.2 million unique posts to Twitter containing keywords about COVID-19 vaccines during April 2021.
And we tagging the data to see the pattern.
Result
The network revealed two primary communities: provaccine and antivaccine, with perceived experts present in both but more prevalent in the provaccine community (17.2%) than the antivaccine community (9.8%). Perceived experts played influential roles, disproportionately occupying central and bridging positions in the network. In the antivaccine community, they shared both low-quality and academic sources at higher rates compared to perceived nonexperts, with 10% sharing a mix of these sources. Perceived experts in the antivaccine community were significantly overrepresented among the most central users, underscoring their role in amplifying vaccine-related discourse. These findings highlight the critical influence of perceived experts in shaping vaccine narratives online.
