Abstract
Social media offers an increasingly important source of health-related content, but is also a fertile ground for misinformation, especially surrounding controversial topics. Accordingly, examining data across social media platforms can enable rhetoricians to identify both patterns of argument and points of rhetorical intervention. However, the unstable nature of social media creates obstacles in this process. In this article, we draw from our experience conducting a study to identify social media misinformation about vaccination in order to identify four specific methodological challenges we have faced. These include challenges related to identifying and collecting relevant data as well as the analytical challenges posed by the multimodal and networked nature of social media posts. We hope these insights can help to facilitate more effective strategies for addressing these hurdles in future research.
Keywords
misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, social media, data collection
How to Cite
Tillery, D. & Carrion, M., (2026) “The Circulation of Vaccine Misinformation on Social Media Platforms: New Challenges Require New Methods”, POROI 20(1): 6. doi: https://doi.org/10.17077/2151-2957.33956
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