Bad robot? The benevolent use of automated software and social bots by influencers in the #antivaxx discourse on Twitter
| Date | 29 January 2025 |
| Pages | 44-61 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-06-2024-0376 |
| Published date | 29 January 2025 |
| Author | Antonia Egli,Theo Lynn,Pierangelo Rosati,Gary Sinclair |
Bad robot? The benevolent use of
automated software and social bots by
influencers in the #antivaxx discourse
on Twitter
Antonia Egli and Theo Lynn
DCU Business School, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Pierangelo Rosati
J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, University of Galway,
Galway, Ireland, and
Gary Sinclair
DCU Business School, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Abstract
Purpose –Automated social media messaging tactics can undermine trust in health institutions and public
health advice. As such, we examine automated software programs (ASPs) and social bots in the Twitter anti-
vaccine discourse before and after the release of COVID-19 vaccines.
Design/methodology/approach –We compare two Twitterdatasets comprising user accounts and associated
English-language tweets featuring the keywords “#antivaxx” or “anti-vaxx.” The first dataset, from 2018 (pre-
COVID vaccine), includes 3,154 user accounts and 6,380 tweets. The second comprises 327,067 accounts and
545,268 tweets published during the 12 months following December 1, 2020 (post-COVID vaccine). Using
Information Laundering Theory (ILT), the datasets were examined manually and through user analytics and
machine learning to identify activity, visibility, verification status, vaccine position, and ASP or bot
technology use.
Findings –The post-COVID vaccine dataset showed an increase in highly probable bot accounts (31.09%) and
anti-vaccine accounts. However, both datasets were dominated by pro-vaccine accounts; most highly active
(59%) and highly visible (50%) accounts classified as probable bots were pro-vaccine.
Originality/value –This research is the first to compare bot behaviors in the “#antivaxx” discourse before and
after the release of COVID-19 vaccines. The prevalence of mostly benevolent probable bot accounts suggests a
potential overstatement of the threat posed by anti-vaccine accounts using ASPs or bot technologies. By
highlighting bots as intermediaries that disseminate both pro- and anti-vaccine content, we extend ILT by
identifying a benevolent variant and offering insights into bots as “pathways” to generating mainstream
information.
Keywords Twitter, Social bots, COVID-19, Social media, Anti-Vaccine, Information laundering theory
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Global vaccination rates have declined since the COVID-19 pandemic despite substantial
evidence that vaccines are safe and contribute to disease prevention and control (WHO and
OIR
49,8
44
© Antonia Egli, Theo Lynn, Pierangelo Rosati and Gary Sinclair. Published by Emerald Publishing
Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone
may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and
non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full
terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
Research funding: This study was partially funded by the Irish Institute of Digital Business in Dublin,
Ireland. There is no other funding to report.
Data Availability:The datasets generated andanalyzed for this study were done so using a paid Twitter
license and therefore cannot be published.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1468-4527.htm
Received 4 July 2024
Revised 23 October 2024
Accepted 30 November 2024
OnlineInformation Review
Vol.49 No. 8, 2025
pp.44-61
EmeraldPublishing Limited
e-ISSN:1468-4535
p-ISSN:1468-4527
DOI10.1108/OIR-06-2024-0376
UNICEF, 2022). Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported the largest
regression in childhood vaccinations in 30 years (WHO and UNICEF, 2022). Over the same
30-year period, the Internet and social media have become powerful alternative sources of
health information to the public (Lynn et al., 2020). Online social platforms facilitate the
implementation of public health interventions and provide valuable support in promoting
health advice, advancing rapid responses to health crises, and tracking disease outbreaks
(Moorhead et al., 2013). During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media was used widely to
educate and influence public opinion (Kothari et al., 2022). However, public health monitoring
and advocacy on social media are simultaneously endangered by a lack of accuracy in and
regulation of shared health information (Sinapuelas and Ho, 2019). Manipulative and
deceptive communication practices on social media, propagated, for example, by automated
software programs (ASPs) and social bots, can interfere with public health communication by
creating a false sense of uniformity and validity (Lynn et al., 2020). Combined with inadequate
regulatory structures surrounding health-related content, social bots, which aim to influence
discussions online, and other automated messaging tactics stand to endanger public consensus
by obscuring sound health advice and legitimizing unverified, false, or misleading information
(Ferrara et al., 2016;Broniatowski et al., 2018).
Todate, only few studies (e.g. Yuan et al., 2019) have addressed the role of ASPs and social
bots in the anti-vaccine (anti-vaxx) discourse and none have compared the prevalence of
specific bot-like behaviors before and after the release of COVID-19 vaccines. Studies that
examine social bots in the overall vaccine discourse focus on the content published rather than
the actors themselves (Suarez-Lledo and Alvarez-Galvez, 2022;Duan et al., 2022;Zhang
et al., 2023). Furthermore, little attention has been paid to the social media user accounts
contributing to the #antivaxx discourse to discern whether these are truly anti-vaxx or, instead,
represent pro-vaccine (pro-vaxx) actors countering anti-vaxx positions or attempting to sway
the vaccine hesitant (for a pre-COVID-19 analysis, see Dunn et al., 2020). This is deserving of
deeper investigation, as a better understanding of probable bot accounts and the bot-like
behaviors they exhibit informs both public health and platform policy and supports the
development of countermeasures to information originating from potentially malicious
accounts.
Against this backdrop and expanding on existing research, this study investigates the extent
to which user accounts involved in the #antivaxx discourse on Twitter presented potentially
manipulative communication behaviors before and after the release of COVID-19 vaccines.
This study builds on existing findings by (1) analyzing a global sample of English-language
tweets and (2) comparing two distinct periods that include a time in which the topic of vaccines
became notably more prominent. It also applies a novel theoretical lens to the study of social
bots within the discourse by means of Information Laundering Theory (Klein, 2012), which
describes how information is made available and gains credibility in mainstream online spaces
by progressively passing through digital intermediaries.
Weexamineincreases in social bot volume across two distinct periods, detect specific bot-
like behavior within the discourse, and determine the vaccine positions of the datasets’ most
active and most influential actors. Analyses suggest that probable bot accounts participating in
the Twitter#antivaxx discourse werelargely benevolent and that numerous pro-vaxx accounts
exhibited bot-like behavior.
Literature review
The impact of social media misinformation on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy
COVID-19 vaccines present an opportunity to control a highly transmissible disease that, in
addition to unprecedented social and economic crises, resulted in approximately 700 million
infections and over six million deaths worldwide (WHO, 2023). However, false, misleading,
and inaccurate information on social media has led to increased vaccine hesitancy, thereby
reducing the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccination programs. Vaccine hesitancy, otherwise
Online
Information
Review
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