Infodemic Crisis: Measuring Social Media Covid-19 Vaccine Misinformation in the United States Population

Social media platforms started becoming the breeding ground of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and have raised significant public health concerns worldwide, particularly in relation to COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. This dissertation is comprised of three interconnected studies which examined the landscape of social media misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines through a systematic literature review, a meta-analysis, and the development of a psychometric measurement tool known as the Social Media COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Scale (SMCov-19VMS-46). The first study was a systematic literature review that rigorously synthesized existing research on online COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, conspiracy theories, rumors, disinformation and religious fatalistic beliefs across the world. This study identified key themes of dissemination patterns while highlighting the psychological and social factors contributing to the spread and acceptance of misinformation on COVID-19 vaccines. The second study was a meta-analysis that quantitatively assessed the relationship between social media exposure to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and vaccine hesitancy. By aggregating data on effect sizes from ten empirical studies, this analysis provided a comprehensive estimate of the strength and consistency of the effects of social media misinformation on COVID-19 vaccine confidence. The third study focused on the development and validation of the Social Media COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Scale (SMCov-19VMS-46). This scale assesses an individuals’ online behavior on how they consume, trust and share information about COVID-19 vaccines from various social media platforms. Through confirmatory factor analyses, reliability testing, and validation against related constructs, this study provides evidence in establishing this scale as a reliable and valid tool for future research. Together, these three studies provide evidence on how misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines proliferates on social media, its impact on public health, and how it can be measured. The findings contribute to both theoretical and practical discourses on tackling misinformation, suggesting strategies for healthcare policymakers, social workers, health communicators, and researchers in developing targeted interventions to mitigate vaccine misinformation and promote informed decision-making.

Keywords: COVID-19, vaccine misinformation, social media, systematic literature review, meta-analysis, SMCov-19VMS-46 scale, vaccine hesitancy