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. 2021 Sep 2;17(9):2868-2872.
doi: 10.1080/21645515.2021.1911216. Epub 2021 May 10.

Changes in legislator vaccine-engagement on Twitter before and after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic

Eden Engel-Rebitzer  1   2 , Daniel Camargo Stokes  2 , Alison Buttenheim  3   4 , Jonathan Purtle  5 , Zachary F Meisel  1   4   6   7
Affiliations

Changes in legislator vaccine-engagement on Twitter before and after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic

Eden Engel-Rebitzer et al. Hum Vaccin Immunother. .

Abstract

Widespread SARS-CoV-2 vaccine uptake will be critical to resolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. Politicians have the potential to impact vaccine sentiment and uptake through vaccine-related communication with the public. We used tweets (n = 6,201), abstracted from Quorum, a public affairs software platform, to examine changes in the frequency of vaccine-related communication by legislators on the social media platform, Twitter. We found an increase in vaccine-related tweets by legislators following the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States. In the pre-COVID-19 era the majority of vaccine-related tweets were generated by Democrat and state senators. The increase in tweets following the arrival of COVID-19, however, was greater among Republican and federal legislators than Democrat or state legislators. This suggests that legislators who were previously less engaged in public discussion of vaccination, became engaged following the arrival of SARS-CoV-2, which may have implications for COVID-19 vaccine uptake among their followers.

Keywords: COVID-19 vaccine; Social media; Twitter; legislators; politicians.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Vaccine-related tweets per week overall and that mention a COVID-related term
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Vaccine-related tweet percentage per month by political party and legislator level
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Percent of Twitter-active legislators that were vaccine-engaged per month by political party and legislator level
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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