Description/Abstract
Vaccine hesitancy is one of the most significant threats to global public health efforts. Despite the rapid development and deployment of effective vaccines, resistance to vaccination has persisted in many communities, undermining collective immunity and prolonging health crises, including most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief summarizes findings from a study that used data from over 50 million tweets (later rebranded as X) from 2020 to 2022 to investigate the patterns, justifications, and socioeconomic roots of vaccine hesitancy in the United States. The authors find that Twitter users in states with lower levels of education, higher poverty and unemployment rates, and stronger support for Trump in 2020 were significantly more likely to exhibit vaccine resistance.
Document Type
Research Brief
Keywords
COVID-19, vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, social media
Disciplines
COVID-19 | Public Health | Sociology
Date
1-14-2025
Language
English
Acknowledgements
Coauthors of the published study include: Huzeyfe Ayaz, Muhammed Hasan Celik, and Ibrahim Emre Yanik. The author thanks Alyssa Kirk and Shannon Monnat for their edits on a previous draft of this brief.
Recommended Citation
Koytak, Huseyin Zeyd. (2025). What Factors Influenced COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy? Evidence from Social Media. Lerner Center Population Health Research Brief Series. Research Brief #125. Accessed at: https://doi.org/10.14305/rt.lerner.2025.1.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
