Ann Arbor Times

Wellness influencers on social media have shown a higher tendency to oppose COVID-19 vaccinations compared to other users, according to a study conducted by the University of Michigan. The research was led by Elle O’Brien, a lecturer at the U-M School of Information, along with student Ronith Ganjigunta and assistant professor Paramveer Dhillon.

The study examined Twitter posts from 2020 to 2022 and found that wellness influencers were more likely to express anti-vaccination sentiments during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. This research was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Elle O’Brien explained that the aim of the paper was to gain insight into the role of wellness influencers online. She suggested that these influencers might serve as alternatives to traditional authorities when public trust in institutions is low. "One hypothesis is that wellness influencers serve as an alternative to traditional authorities like medical professionals and health scientists when trust in public institutions is low," she stated. "And indeed, we found support for this idea."

The study highlighted that approximately 50% of wellness influencer accounts identified before the pandemic later posted anti-vaccine messages, which was about twice as frequent as a control group. These messages often urged followers to protect children from vaccines or opposed government measures perceived as authoritarian.

O’Brien’s interest in public attitudes towards science stems from her background in neuroscience. She noted her curiosity about how people perceive scientific validity without specialized knowledge: “I’m interested in how people present themselves as scientific, even if they’re not engaging with research in the way that working scientists would,” she said.