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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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Online social networks and media Vol. 20; p. 100105
Main Authors: Featherstone, Jieyu D., Barnett, George A., Ruiz, Jeanette B., Zhuang, Yurong, Millam, Benjamin J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 01-11-2020
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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.
ISSN:2468-6964
2468-6964
DOI:10.1016/j.osnem.2020.100105