Exploring childhood anti-vaccine and pro-vaccine communities on twitter – a perspective from influential users
•Influencers on the topic of childhood vaccines were clustered into one anti-vaccine and two pro-vaccine communities.•Semantic network analysis showed that anti-vaccine community discussed more harms of vaccines whereas pro-vaccine communities talked more about prevention.•Sentiment results showed t...
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Published in: | Online social networks and media Vol. 20; p. 100105 |
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Main Authors: | , , , , |
Format: | Journal Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Elsevier B.V
01-11-2020
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | •Influencers on the topic of childhood vaccines were clustered into one anti-vaccine and two pro-vaccine communities.•Semantic network analysis showed that anti-vaccine community discussed more harms of vaccines whereas pro-vaccine communities talked more about prevention.•Sentiment results showed that anti-vaccine community had the highest negative sentiments and lowest positive sentiments.•All three communities showed geo-location clusters based on their country of origins.
Anti-vaccine information online continues to deter optimum childhood vaccination coverage. Tweets from influential users about childhood vaccines are assessed to determine vaccine information on Twitter. Results indicate a well-connected anti-vaccine community where influential users widely share vaccine misinformation. Sentiment analysis finds negative tweets populate both pro- and anti-vaccine communities confirming the popularity of negative sentiment on social media. Geo-location clusters for influential users were identified. The identification of influential users and their geo-locations may provide useful information to assist with curving online vaccine misinformation and detecting areas of potential disease outbreak. |
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ISSN: | 2468-6964 2468-6964 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.osnem.2020.100105 |