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A Multi-Platform Approach to Monitoring Negative Dominance for COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Information Online

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2021

Paola Pascual-Ferrá ,
Neil Alperstein Open the ORCID record for Neil Alperstein [Opens in a new window]  and
Daniel J. Barnett
Paola Pascual-Ferrá
Affiliation:
Communication Department, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Neil Alperstein
Affiliation:
Communication Department, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Daniel J. Barnett*
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
*
Corresponding Author: Daniel J. Barnett, Email: dbarnet4@jhu.edu.
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Abstract

Objective:

The aim of this study was to test the appearance of negative dominance in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine-related information and activity online. We hypothesized that if negative dominance appeared, it would be a reflection of peaks in adverse events related to the vaccine, that negative content would attract more engagement on social media than other vaccine-related posts, and posts referencing adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination would have a higher average toxicity score.

Methods:

We collected data using Google Trends for search behavior, CrowdTangle for social media data, and Media Cloud for media stories, and compared them against the dates of key adverse events related to COVID-19. We used Communalytic to analyze the toxicity of social media posts by platform and topic.

Results:

While our first hypothesis was partially supported, with peaks in search behavior for image and YouTube videos driven by adverse events, we did not find negative dominance in other types of searches or patterns of attention by news media or on social media.

Conclusion:

We did not find evidence in our data to prove the negative dominance of adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination on social media. Future studies should corroborate these findings and, if consistent, focus on explaining why this may be the case.

Keywords

COVID-19health communicationnegative dominancerisk communicationsocial mediatoxicityvaccine
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 16 , Issue 6 , December 2022 , pp. 2471 - 2479
Copyright
© Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2021

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