Mechanisms Driving Online Vaccine Debate During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Published in: Social media + society Vol. 10; no. 1
• Main Authors: Seckin, Ozgur Can, Atalay, Aybuke, Otenen, Ege, Duygu, Umut, Varol, Onur
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-01-2024; Sage Publications Ltd; SAGE Publishing
• Subjects: COVID-19; COVID-19 vaccines; Debates; Health behavior; Immunization; Language attitudes; Modes of production; Pandemics; Political systems; Public health; Skepticism; Social media; natural language processing; political polarization; Twitter; coronavirus; bot detection; network science; vaccination
• ISSN: 2056-3051; 2056-3051
• DOI: 10.1177/20563051241229657

The prevalence of the anti-vaccine movement in today’s society has become a pressing concern, largely amplified by the dissemination of vaccine skepticism. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination debate sparked controversial debates on social media platforms such as Twitter, which can lead to serious consequences for public health. What determines anti-vax attitudes is an important question for understanding the source of the campaigns and mitigating the misinformation spread. Compared with other countries, Türkiye differentiates itself with high vaccination rates and lack of political support for anti-vaxxers despite its highly polarized political system. Analyzing Turkish Twittersphere, we explore several mechanisms capturing content production and behaviors of accounts within the pro- and anti-vax segments in online vaccine-related discussions. Our findings indicate there is no relation between political stance and anti-vaccine attitude. Both supporters of vaccination (pro-vaxxers) and opponents (anti-vaxxers) can be found across the political spectrum. Moreover, linguistic differences reveal that anti-vaxxers employ more emotional language, while pro-vaxxers express more skepticism. Notably, automated accounts are less prevalent leading to difficulty in assessing genuine support for vaccines, while anti-vaccine bots produce slightly more content. These findings have crucial implications for vaccine policy, emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse language patterns and beliefs among anti-vaxxers and pro-vaxxers to develop effective communication strategies at the national level.