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Africa: Vaccine Distrust Pervades Social Media Posts in Six African Nations

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4 years ago

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Cape Town — A new analysis of online content in six African nations referring to Covid-19 vaccines has revealed that posts reflecting distrust of, or hesitancy over, vaccinations are dominating social media.

The analysis was carried out by a South African research group dedicated to combating fake news and misinformation, and advocating healthy online dialogue, on the internet.

While content promoted by South African social media users dominated the group’s survey, it also included posts by users in Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria and Tanzania.

The Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change (CABC) at the University of Cape Town surveyed vaccine sentiment on social media during the period mid-June to mid-August.

The centre filtered its results to determine the geographical origin of the posts, and analysed groups of hashtags used to spread both pro- and anti-vaccine content on social media platforms.

Analysing 4,648 mentions of vaccines, the centre found that:

  • More than one-third (35.3 percent) reflected vaccine hesitancy;
  • Just under a quarter (21.4 percent) promoted fringe conspiracy theories; and
  • A fifth (20.3 percent) reflected views sceptical of vaccines.

Against a total of three-quarters of mentions revealing distrust of vaccines, 10.3 percent were neutral on the issue, only 8 percent advocated vaccines and only 4.8 percent were enthusiastic about vaccines.

The centre concluded that “the vaccine conversation is a polarised and combative space. Misinformation and disinformation is rife, driven mainly by minority clusters that have an overt distrust of institutions, government, elites and experts”.

It said that during the survey period, about four in five posts were from users who said they were in South Africa, but the number of those engaged in posting there, in Tanzania, and in Senegal, was declining. In contrast, the number of authors of posts was trending upwards in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria.