摘要
Background. There is a lot of fact-based information and misinformation in the online discourses and discussions about theCOVID-19 vaccines. Method. Using a sample of nearly four million geotagged English tweets and the data from the CDCCOVID Data Tracker, we conducted the Fama-MacBeth regression with the Newey-West adjustment to understand theinfluence of both misinformation and fact-based news on Twitter on the COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the US from April 19when US adults were vaccine eligible to June 30, 2021, after controlling state-level factors such as demographics, education,and the pandemic severity. We identified the tweets related to either misinformation or fact-based news by analyzing theURLs. Results. One percent increase in fact-related Twitter users is associated with an approximately 0.87 decrease (B = −0:87,SE = 0:25, and p < :001) in the number of daily new vaccinated people per hundred. No significant relationship was foundbetween the percentage of fake-news-related users and the vaccination rate. Conclusion. The negative association between thepercentage of fact-related users and the vaccination rate might be due to a combination of a larger user-level influence and thenegative impact of online social endorsement on vaccination intent.
基金
a University of Rochester Research Award and NIH grant RF1AG063811-01S2.
