2021/08/15 by Soojong Kim, Kim, Soojong, Kwanho Kim +1
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2108.06641
openalex publication_date 2021/08/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Opposition and hesitancy to vaccination have been one of the major threats to global health. Social media sites have been suspected as a breeding ground of misleading narratives about vaccines, but little is known about how pervasive anti-vaccine views are on the world's largest social media, Facebook. Here, we study the prevalence of online groups on Facebook with anti- and pro-vaccine views and the information ecosystem that enables the production and dissemination of anti-vaccine narratives, using the largest collection of Facebook data on this issue to date. The results reveal that 74% of posts each month on average were generated by anti-vaccine groups. It is also shown that anti-vaccine groups had increasingly more relied on relatively credible sources while their posts using low credibility sources were less than 2% and recently decreasing. Furthermore, anti-vaccine groups depended more on their exclusive sources and utilized sources representing more conservative or far-right political views than pro-vaccine groups did. The findings suggest that expansive and targeted interventions are urgently needed to curb the circulation of online narratives against vaccination.