Misinformation about Covid-19 Vaccines on Social Media: Rapid Review

BACKGROUND: The development of COVID-19 vaccines has been crucial in fighting the pandemic. However, misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines is spread on social media platforms at a rate that has made the World Health Organization (WHO) coin the phrase "infodemic." Misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on social media is a major challenge, as this is thought to contribute to vaccine hesitancy. False claims about adverse vaccine side effects such as being the cause of autism was already considered a threat to global health before the outbreak of COVID-19. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to synthesize the existing research on misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines spread on social media platforms and its effect. The secondary aim is to gain insight and gather knowledge about whether misinformation about autism and COVID-19 vaccines were being spread on social media platforms. METHODS: The review is registered with the PROSPERO international register of systematic reviews (CRD42021277524). We performed a literature search on 9 September 2021 and searched PubMed, PsycINFO, ERIC, Embase, Cochrane Library, and the Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register. We included publications in peer-reviewed journals that fulfilled all following criteria: Original empirical studies, studies that assessed social media and misinformation, and studies about the COVID-19 vaccine. Thematic analysis was used to identify patterns (themes) of misinformation. The narrative qualitative synthesis was undertaken with the guidance of the PRISMA 2020 Statement and the Synthesis Without Meta-analysis reporting guideline. The risk of bias was assessed according to The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal tool. Ratings of the certainty of evidence were based on recommendations from the GRADE Working Group. RESULTS: The search amounted to 757 records, with 45 articles selected for the review. We identified three main themes of misinformation: Medical misinformation, vaccine development, and conspiracies. Twitter was the most studied social media platform, followed by Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. The vast majority of the studies were from western industrialized countries. We identified 19 studies in which the effect of social media misinformation on vaccine hesitancy was measured or discussed. These studies implied that the misinformation spread on social media had a negative effect on vaccine hesitancy and vaccine uptake. Only one study contained misinformation about autism as a side effect of COVID-19 vaccines. CONCLUSIONS: To prevent these misconceptions from taking hold, health authorities should openly address and discuss these false claims with both cultural and religious awareness in mind. Our review showed that there is a need to examine the effect of social media misinformation on vaccine hesitancy with a more robust experimental design. Furthermore, our review also demonstrated that more studies are needed from the Global South and on other social media platforms than the major platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. CLINICALTRIAL: INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT: RR2-10.31219/osf.io/tyevj.