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Wellness influencers confirmed increased charges of vaccine opposition on social media in comparison with different customers’ accounts, in response to a brand new College of Michigan examine.
New work by U-M College of Info lecturer Elle O’Brien, scholar Ronith Ganjigunta and UMSI assistant professor Paramveer Dhillon discovered that wellness influencers had been extra more likely to put up messages on Twitter in 2020–2022 (rebranded as X in 2023) expressing anti-vaccination stances throughout the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
The examine, revealed within the Journal of Medical Web Analysis, reveals increased charges of vaccination opposition amongst Twitter wellness influencers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper’s aim, O’Brien mentioned, was to higher perceive the function of wellness influencers on-line.
Why do wellness influencers exist, why do they entice such giant audiences and what void are they filling?
“One hypothesis is that wellness influencers serve as an alternative to traditional authorities like medical professionals and health scientists when trust in public institutions is low,” O’Brien mentioned. “And indeed, we found support for this idea. Part of the role of being a wellness influencer may be to fill a void left over by diminished trust in traditional experts.”
The variety of tweets containing a vaccine-related key phrase per day for every group over the investigation interval. Credit score: Journal of Medical Web Analysis (2024). DOI: 10.2196/56651
Notably, about 50% of the wellness influencer accounts recognized earlier than the pandemic went on to put up anti-vaccine messaging, which was about twice as frequent as a management group of accounts.
“They often shared posts urging followers to protect children from the harms of vaccines, or to oppose authoritarian government overreach,” she mentioned.
O’Brien’s curiosity in how the general public varieties attitudes on science started throughout her earlier work as a neuroscientist.
“I’m interested in how people present themselves as scientific, even if they’re not engaging with research in the way that working scientists would,” she mentioned. “And I’m interested in how people decide what counts as valid science when they might not have the specialized knowledge to fully understand it.”
Extra data:
Gabrielle O’Brien et al, Wellness Influencer Responses to COVID-19 Vaccines on Social Media: A Longitudinal Observational Research, Journal of Medical Web Analysis (2024). DOI: 10.2196/56651
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College of Michigan
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Wellness influencers on social media extra more likely to oppose COVID-19 vaccination, examine finds (2024, December 23)
retrieved 23 December 2024
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