# Misinformation versus Facts: Understanding the Influence of News Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines on Vaccine Uptake

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.07435 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07435/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 Jun 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [CoVaxNet: An Online-Offline Data Repository for COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01505/) (2022)
- [Human Behavior in the Time of COVID-19: Learning from Big Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13452/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

There is a lot of fact-based information and misinformation in the online discourses and discussions about the COVID-19 vaccines. Using a sample of nearly four million geotagged English tweets and the data from the CDC COVID Data Tracker, we conducted the Fama-MacBeth regression with the Newey-West adjustment to understand the influence of both misinformation and fact-based news on Twitter on the COVID-19 vaccine uptake in the U.S. from April 19 when U.S. adults were vaccine eligible to June 30, 2021, after controlling state-level factors such as demographics, education, and the pandemic severity. We identified the tweets related to either misinformation or fact-based news by analyzing the URLs. One percent increase in fact-related Twitter users is associated with an approximately 0.87 decrease (B = -0.87, SE = 0.25, p<.001) in the number of daily new vaccinated people per hundred. No significant relationship was found between the percentage of fake-news-related users and the vaccination rate. The negative association between the percentage of fact-related users and the vaccination rate might be due to a combination of a larger user-level influence and the negative impact of online social endorsement on vaccination intent.