Opinion: Vaccine hesitancy is about much more than misinformation
Huseyin Zeyd Koytak and his colleagues analyzed 50 million vaccine-related social media posts to find root causes. They found that misinformation is not the primary reason people question vaccination.
When the first Covid-19 vaccines were developed, I felt cautiously optimistic. As a sociologist focused on public health, I believed these scientific breakthroughs would mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic.
Yet vaccine hesitancy presented an ongoing obstacle to public health efforts. Public discussion names misinformation and political polarization as the primary culprits. Media outlets amplified this narrative, framing vaccine hesitancy as a product of gullibility or partisan identity.
