Association of COVID Vaccine Hesitancy and Vaccine Misinformation Using Google Trends Analytics Vaccine Hesitancy

• Activity Number: 443 - SPEED: Statistical Methods and Applications in Medical Research, Risk Analysis, and Marketing Part 2
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 10, 2022 : 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM
• Sponsor: International Chinese Statistical Association
• Author(s): Lan Gao*
• Companies: The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
• Keywords: COVID ; Vaccine Hesitation ; Google Trends Data ; Data Visualization; Health Communication; vaccine misinformation

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have been exposed to information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading. Misconceptions about the COVID-19 vaccines have caused confusion and led people to decline vaccines, reject public health measures such as masking and physical distancing, and use unproven treatments. In this project we investigate the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and misinformation on vaccine and their potential association via analytics of user online web search activities from Google Trends data.