An analysis of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and fear mongering on Twitter

Jemielniak, D.; Krempovych, Y.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to analyse the media discourse about the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Twitter. STUDY DESIGN: The study design used in this study is data scraping, media analysis, social network analysis, and botometer. METHODS: We collected 221,922 tweets containing ‘#AstraZeneca’ from 1 January 2021 to 22 March 2021. From 50,080 tweets in the English language, we analysed the linked media sources and conducted a network detection study. RESULTS: We found that the most frequently retweeted tweets were full of negative information, and in many cases came from media sources that are well-known for misinformation. Our analysis identified large coordination networks involved in political astroturfing and vaccine diplomacy in South Asia but also vaccine advocacy networks associated with European Commission employees. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study show that Twitter discourse about #AstraZeneca is filled with misinformation and bad press, and may be distributed not only organically by anti-vaxxer activists but also systematically by professional sources.