The DOI matches its Crossref record; 17 of the 17 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A global pandemic in the time of viral memes: COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and disinformation on TikTok
Open accessAbstract
Misinformation and disinformation regarding COVID-19 and vaccination against it may be contributing to vaccine hesitancy. Social media outlets have reportedly made efforts to limit false information yet untruths related to COVID-19 persist online. The purpose of this study was to describe the content on COVID-19 vaccination on TikTok, an emerging social media platform. One-hundred trending videos were identified from the hashtag #covidvaccine and were coded for content. Collectively, these videos garnered over 35 million views. The coding category with the highest number of videos was "Discouraged a Vaccine" (n = 38), followed by "Encouraged a Vaccine" (n = 36). While only 36 videos encouraged a vaccine, these videos garnered over 50% of the total cumulative views and just under 50% of the total likes; the 38 videos that discouraged a vaccine garnered 39.6% of the total cumulative views, 44.3% of likes, and 47.4% of comments. Of the 38 videos discouraging the vaccine, 25 (65.79%) showed a parody of an adverse reaction and, collectively, received 71.07% of the total views among videos in this category. Twenty-two of these 38 videos (57.89%) falsely conveyed that a vaccine was available, as they were not at the time of the study. Anti-vaccination messaging may undermine efforts to ensure widespread uptake of the various COVID-19 vaccines, particularly for young people who are more likely than other age cohorts to use TikTok.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Vaccine hesitancy: Definition, scope and determinants
MacDonald, N. E. (2015) · Vaccine · doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.04.036 · Cited by 5,573
Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S.
Romer, D., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113356 · Cited by 1,060
Paul, E., Steptoe, A., & Fancourt, D. (2021) · The Lancet Regional Health - Europe · doi:10.1016/j.lanepe.2020.100012 · Cited by 1,013
Chou, W.-Y. S., & Budenz, A. (2020) · Health Communication · doi:10.1080/10410236.2020.1838096 · Cited by 675
Strategies intended to address vaccine hesitancy: Review of published reviews
Dubé, E., Gagnon, D., & MacDonald, N. E. (2015) · Vaccine · doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.04.041 · Cited by 647
Palamenghi, L., Barello, S., Boccia, S., & Graffigna, G. (2020) · European Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/s10654-020-00675-8 · Cited by 483
Vaccine confidence in the time of COVID-19
Harrison, E. A., & Wu, J. W. (2020) · European Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1007/s10654-020-00634-3 · Cited by 477
eHealth Literacy Among College Students: A Systematic Review With Implications for eHealth Education
Stellefson, M., Hanik, B., Chaney, B., Chaney, D., Tennant, B., & Chavarria, E. A. (2011) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/jmir.1703 · Cited by 361
Basch, C. H., Hillyer, G. C., & Jaime, C. (2022) · International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health · doi:10.1515/ijamh-2020-0111 · Cited by 244
Self-citationRestoring confidence in vaccines in the COVID-19 era
Verger, P., & Dubé, E. (2020) · Expert Review of Vaccines · doi:10.1080/14760584.2020.1825945 · Cited by 221
Cited by
Using TikTok for public and youth mental health - A systematic review and content analysis
McCashin, D., & Murphy, C. M. (2023) · Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry · doi:10.1177/13591045221106608 · Cited by 219
Understanding and combatting misinformation across 16 countries on six continents
Arechar, A. A., Allen, J., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., Gully, A., Lu, J. G., Ross, R. M., Stagnaro, M. N., et al. (2023) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01641-6 · Cited by 188
Lan, D. H., & Tung, T. M. (2024) · Cogent Social Sciences · doi:10.1080/23311886.2024.2302216 · Cited by 55
Re-meme-bering Tiananmen? From collective memory to meta-memory on TikTok
Seet, S., & Tandoc, E. C. (2024) · Media, Culture & Society · doi:10.1177/01634437231191413 · Cited by 28
Understanding and Combating Misinformation Across 16 Countries on Six Continents
Arechar, A. A., Allen, J. N. L., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., Gully, A., Lu, J. G., Ross, R. M., Stagnaro, M., et al. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/a9frz · Cited by 25
Metadata
- Authors
- Basch, C. H., Meleo-Erwin, Z., Fera, J., Jaime, C., & Basch, C. E.
- Venue
- Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2021-03-25
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 2373-2377
- ISSN
- 2164-5515 (ISSN-L)
- 2164-554X
- OpenAlex
- W3138656580
- Cited by
- 265
- References
- 17
- FWCI
- 66.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A global pandemic in the time of viral memes: COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and disinformation on TikTok. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/21645515.2021.1894896
- The paper
- Basch, C. H., Meleo-Erwin, Z., Fera, J., Jaime, C., & Basch, C. E. (2021). A global pandemic in the time of viral memes: COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and disinformation on TikTok. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics. https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2021.1894896
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
