Background: Supporters of the antivaccination movement can easily spread information that is not scientifically proven on social media. Therefore, learning more about their posts and activities is instrumental in effectively reacting and responding to the false information they publish, which is aimed at discouraging people from taking vaccines. Objective: This study aims to gather, assess, and synthesize evidence related to the current state of knowledge about antivaccine social media users’ web-based activities. Methods: We systematically reviewed English-language papers from 3 databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed). A data extraction form was established, which included authors, year of publication, specific objectives, study design, comparison, and outcomes of significance. We performed an aggregative narrative synthesis of the included studies. Results: The search strategy retrieved 731 records in total. After screening for duplicates and eligibility, 18 articles were included in the qualitative synthesis. Although most of the authors analyzed text messages, some of them studied images or videos. In addition, although most of the studies examined vaccines in general, 5 focused specifically on human papillomavirus vaccines, 2 on measles vaccines, and 1 on influenza vaccines. The synthesized studies dealt with the popularity of provaccination and antivaccination content, the style and manner in which messages about vaccines were formulated for the users, a range of topics concerning vaccines (harmful action, limited freedom of choice, and conspiracy theories), and the role and activity of bots in the dissemination of these messages in social media. Conclusions: Proponents of the antivaccine movement use a limited number of arguments in their messages; therefore, it is possible to prepare publications clarifying doubts and debunking the most common lies. Public health authorities should continuously monitor social media to quickly find new antivaccine arguments and then create information campaigns for both health professionals and other users.

Social media allow anti-vaxxers to quickly spread misinformation and false statements. This situation may lead to an increase in vaccine hesitancy. We wanted to characterize what arguments against COVID-19 vaccines run on Facebook in Poland. We analyzed Facebook comments related to the five events of the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines—announcements of the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech (09.11.2020), Moderna (16.11.2020), and AstraZeneca (23.11.2020) vaccines, registration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by the European Medicines Agency (21.12.2020), and the first vaccination in Poland (27.12.2020). We collected the comments from fanpages of the biggest Polish media and then established their main anti-vaccine themes. We found that the negative arguments about COVID-19 vaccines can be divided into 12 categories. Seven of them are universal and also apply to other vaccines but five are new and COVID-19’ specific. The frequency of arguments from a given category varied over time. We also noticed that, while the comments were mostly negative, the reactions were positive. Created codebook of anti-vaccine COVID-19 arguments can be used to monitor the attitude of society towards COVID-19 vaccines. Real-time monitoring of social media is important because the popularity of certain arguments on Facebook changes rapidly over time.

Background: Adherence by diabetic patients to dietary recommendations is important for effective therapy. Considering patients’ expectations in case of diet is significant in this regard. The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between selected independent variables (eg, regular blood glucose testing) and patients’ adherence to dietary recommendations, bearing in mind that the degree of disease acceptance might play a mediation role. Subjects and methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 91 patients treated for type 2 diabetes mellitus in a public medical facility. Paper-and-pencil interviewing was administered ahead of the planned visit with a diabetes specialist. Two measures were applied in the study: the Acceptance and Action Diabetes Questionnaire and the Patient Diet Adherence in Diabetes Scale. Additionally, data related to sociodemographic characteristics, lifestyle-related factors, and the course of the disease (management, incidence of complications, and dietician’s supervision) were also collected. The regression method was used in the analysis, and Cohen’s methodology was used to estimate partial mediation. Significance of the mediation effect was assessed by the Goodman test. P-values of <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: Patients’ non-adherence to dietary recommendations was related to a low level of disease acceptance (standardized regression coefficient =−0.266; P=0.010). Moreover, failure to perform regular blood glucose testing was associated with a lack of disease acceptance (standardized regression coefficient =−0.455; P=0.000). However, the lack of regular blood glucose testing and low level of acceptance had only partially negative impacts on adherence to dietary recommendations (Goodman mediation test, Z=1.939; P=0.054). This dependence was not seen in patients treated with diet and concomitant oral medicines and/or insulin therapy. Conclusion: Effective dietary education should include activities promoting a more positive attitude toward the disease. This may be obtained by individual counseling, respecting the patient’s needs, and focus on regular blood glucose testing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media content analysis allowed for tracking attitudes toward newly introduced vaccines. However, current evidence is limited to single social media platforms. Our objective was to compare arguments used by anti-vaxxers in the context of COVID-19 vaccines across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. We obtained the data set of 53,671 comments regarding COVID-19 vaccination published between August 2021 and February 2022. After that, we established categories of anti-vaccine content, manually classified comments, and compared the frequency of occurrence of the categories between social media platforms. We found that anti-vaxxers on social media use 14 categories of arguments against COVID-19 vaccines. The frequency of these categories varies across different social media platforms. The anti-vaxxers’ activity on Facebook and Twitter is similar, focusing mainly on distrust of government and allegations regarding vaccination safety and effectiveness. Anti-vaxxers on TikTok mainly focus on personal freedom, while Instagram users encouraging vaccination often face criticism suggesting that vaccination is a private matter that should not be shared. Due to the differences in vaccine sentiment among users of different social media platforms, future research and educational campaigns should consider these distinctions, focusing more on the platforms popular among adolescents (i.e., Instagram and TikTok).