May 2021 Newsletter

PRISM 2021 Attendance Survey

Planning on joining us in San Francisco for the in-person PRISM Health Symposium? Won’t be able to attend? Fill out our attendance survey or visit bit.ly/attend-prism! Please share with folks you think may be interested in attending.

Opportunities

Participate in Research

Researchers at the University of Connecticut are seeking US-based professors who conduct public health or behavioral research and are employed full-time at a college or university to participate in a survey on the ethical use of social media in human subjects research. You do not need to have experience with social media to participate. You will be compensated for your time. Click this link to read more about the study and complete the screening survey.

Social Media Research in the News

How kids can buy drugs and other dangerous items via social media

Featuring PRISM Steering Committee Member, Dr. Timothy Mackey, this Today Show segment describes how criminals peddling illegal goods are using social media to reach customers, sometimes putting young people in grave danger.

A few simple tricks make fake news stories stick in the brain

This ScienceNews article highlights researchers who study misinformation, including PRISM Steering Committee Member, Dr. Tim Mackey. These experts explain how we are more likely to believe false social media posts if they are surprising, emotional, or repeated.

Recent Social Media and Health Publications

Cuomo RE, Purushothaman V, Li J, Cai M, Mackey TK. A longitudinal and geospatial analysis of COVID-19 tweets during the early outbreak period in the United States. BMC Public Health. 2021 Apr 24;21(1):793. doi: 10.1186/s12889-021-10827-4. PMID: 33894745; PMCID: PMC8067788.

Co-authored by PRISM Steering Committee Member, Dr. Tim Mackey, this study collected tweets filtered for keywords related to COVID-19 and geocoded tweets with characteristics of users self-reporting COVID-19 symptoms, concerns, and experiences. Results showed that COVID-19 symptoms or concerns appeared to be more predictive of active COVID-19 cases as temporal distance increased. This suggests that social media communication during the early stages of a global pandemic may exhibit a number of geospatial-specific variations among different communities and that targeted pandemic communication is warranted.

Haupt M, Li J, Mackey TK. Identifying and Characterizing Scientific Authority-related Misinformation Discourse about Hydroxychloroquine on Twitter using Unsupervised Machine Learning. Big Data & Society. 2021;8(1): https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211013843.

This study co-authored by PRISM Steering Committee Member, Dr. Tim Mackey, examined tweets generated after former U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted misinformation about the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. It was revealed that a much higher volume of tweets featured medical endorsements and used supportive scientific information compared to accurate and updated scientific evidence. Results also showed that misinformation-related tweets propagated for a longer time frame and the majority of hydroxychloroquine Twitter discourse expressed positive views about the drug.

Islam MS, Kamal AM, Kabir A, Southern DL, Khan SH, Hasan SMM, Sarkar T, Sharmin S, Das S, Roy T, Harun MGD, Chughtai AA, Homaira N, Seale H. COVID-19 vaccine rumors and conspiracy theories: The need for cognitive inoculation against misinformation to improve vaccine adherence. PLoS One. 2021 May 12;16(5):e0251605. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251605. PMID: 33979412.

After examining COVID-19 vaccine rumors and conspiracy theories circulating online from sources including Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and television/newspaper websites, this study found that of the 637 COVID-19 vaccine-related items identified, 91% were rumors and 9% were conspiracy theories from 52 countries. Of those rumors, 36% were related to vaccine development, availability, and access; 20% related to morbidity and mortality; and 8% to safety, efficacy, and acceptance.

Piltch-Loeb R, Savoia E, Goldberg B, Hughes B, Verhey T, Kayyem J, Miller-Idriss C, Testa M. Examining the effect of information channel on COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. PLoS One. 2021 May 12;16(5):e0251095. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251095. PMID: 33979370.

Given the expansive information environment about the COVID-19 vaccine, this study characterized the use of different media channels for vaccine information and determined the relationship between information channel and vaccine acceptance. Individuals who received information from traditional media channels (national/local TV and newspapers) had a higher likelihood of vaccine acceptance compared to those who received information from social media or both traditional and social media. This implies that social media plays a role in educating the hesitant to accept the vaccine, while traditional media channels should continue to promote data-driven and informed vaccine content.