Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories, Social Media and Response to Vaccination Campaigns (Published)
Following the outbreak of the novel COVID-19 virus in Wuhan City, China in 2019 and the subsequent metamorphose into a global pandemic in the first quarter of 2020; the world was thrown into frenzy due to information overload about the cause, nature, origin, aim, effect and likely solution to the virus. There was a preponderance of conspiracy theories from all quarters: health, academic, religion, politics, cosmology and mythology about the subject matter. The media, especially social media played a huge role to fan the embers of the theories. Four years on from the outbreak, a lot of the propositions have been proven while many have become obsolete and others have been discovered as false alarm. In addition, globally the fight against the pandemic has moved to the vaccination stage. Accordingly, this study sought to find out the extent and influence of the different conspiracy theories on the vaccination campaigns. 393 adult and educationally advanced residents of Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria were sampled via an online Google questionnaire. The questionnaire was purposefully distributed through social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram etc. Findings from the study revealed first, high level of exposure to conspiracy theories about COVID-19 on social media. Second, despite the high level of exposure to such fake news on the subject matter, the exposure did not influence the acceptance or otherwise of the COVID-19 vaccines by the respondents. The study recommended among other things, promotion of media literacy education among the citizenry and strengthening of legal framework to detect and prosecute erring members of society or who originate fake news.
Keywords: COVID-19, Social media, conspiracy theories, fake news and vaccination campaign.