"This research demonstrates the complexity of the vaccine information ecosystem, where a cacophony of voices and narratives have coalesced to create an environment of extreme uncertainty. Two topics are driving a large proportion of the current global vaccine discourse, especially around a Covid-19 vaccine: the “political and economic motives” of actors and institutions involved in vaccine development and the “safety, efficacy and necessity” concerns around vaccines. Narratives challenging the safety of vaccines have been perennial players in the online vaccine debate. Yet this research shows that narratives related to mistrust in the intentions of institutions and key figures surrounding vaccines are now driving as much of the online conversation and vaccine skepticism as safety concerns. This issue is compounded by the complexities and vulnerabilities of this information ecosystem. It is full of “data deficits” — situations where demand for information about a topic is high, but the supply of credible information is low — that are being exploited by bad actors. These data deficits complicate efforts to accurately make sense of the development of a Covid-19 vaccine and vaccines more generally. When people can’t easily access reliable information around vaccines and when mistrust in actors and institutions related to vaccines is high, misinformation narratives rush in to fill the vacuum." (Page 2)

"Methodology overview: To examine online narratives about vaccines, First Draft collected social media posts from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook Pages and public Facebook Groups that included the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” in English, Spanish and French from June 15, 2020 to September 15, 2020. We focused on these three months because in June attention shifted to the race to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. Over this period, we gathered a total of 14,394,320 posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook Pages and public Facebook Groups that included the words “vaccine” or “vaccination” in English, Spanish and French. While this number is important to note, only a fraction of these posts received a serious level of engagement. We therefore pulled out this subsection of posts for deeper analysis. The dataset included the top 100 posts (as measured by engagement) on each platform and in each language, resulting in a sample of 1,200 of the most engaged-with posts related to vaccines. Between them, these 1,200 posts generated a total of 13,136,911 interactions." (Page 7)