Thread by @jessbrandt

.@SecureDemocracy looked at more than 35K vaccine-related messages from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian diplomats, government officials, and state media outlets on Twitter, YouTube, and state-sponsored news websites get a handle on their narratives.

What did we find? THREAD

FIRST: While there were few instances of any studied country promoting verifiably false info about vaccines, reports of safety concerns related to certain Western vaccines were often sensationalized while key contextual info was omitted or downplayed.

For EX: Iran’s Fars News Agency tweeted that the Pfizer vaccine “kill[ed] six people in America,” omitting (and never correcting) that:

- 4 of the 6 ppl who died had received a placebo
- authorities determined no causal connection b/w vaccines and the deaths of the other 2

SECOND: Of the three COVID-19 vaccines authorized for use by the European Commission, Pfizer was mentioned more often by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian accounts than the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines combined.

THIRD: Pfizer received by far the most unfavorable coverage of any vaccine, particularly from Kremlin-funded outlets and Iranian state media and government accounts.

Of the 50 most-retweeted tweets mentioning Pfizer posted by Russian state media, 43 (86%) mentioned either an adverse reaction to the vaccine or negative information about the producer.

In Iranian gov't and state media tweets, 92% of mentions of Pfizer were negative.

But the notion that Russian, Chinese, and Iranian diplomats and state media outlets seek to disparage and undermine Western vaccines writ large is not entirely accurate. Coverage of Moderna was mixed and reporting on Oxford-AstraZeneca was largely neutral or positive.

FOURTH: Russia was the most likely to suggest linkages between the Pfizer vaccine and the subsequent deaths of vaccine recipients.

Unclear why Pfizer received more negative coverage than Moderna. Possible explanations:
- As first Western vaccine, viewed as primary competition
- Safety concerns made it an easy target
- As a more globally recognizable US brand, a better target for anti-Big Pharma campaigns

FIFTH: Russia’s coverage of AstraZeneca took a noticeable U-turn after a December announcement of a deal to test a combo of the AstraZeneca & Sputnik V vaccines.

After the announcement, there was an increase in positive reporting and a reduction in negative coverage of AstraZeneca in Russian diplomatic and state media outputs.

SIXTH: Russia and China aggressively promoted their own vaccines, but not one another’s.

>> In Russian tweets that mentioned a vaccine by name, just over 6% mentioned 1 of the 2 Chinese vaccines

>> In Chinese tweets that mentioned a vaccine by name, <3% mentioned Sputnik V

SEVENTH: Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media outlets all promoted the theory that “mainstream” or “Western” media outlets provided biased coverage of Russian and Chinese vaccines and ignored safety concerns related to Western vaccines.

These claims were not supported by a review of tweets from @SecureDemocracy's control group of global media outlets.

For example:

Of the 23 tweets from USG funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that mentioned Sputnik V, only 4 (17%) were negative.

Major incidents that the western press was accused of ignoring—most notably, deaths in a Norwegian nursing home after the administration of the Pfizer vaccine—were covered by surveyed Western outlets, and with far more context.

EIGHTH: #Iran’s coverage of Pfizer and Moderna took a decidedly more negative turn after Khamenei’s decision on Jan 8 to ban importation of all vaccines produced in the US and UK.

Despite the ban, Iran continues to move forward w/plans to import Oxford-AstraZeneca, a contradiction that state media justified by claiming that the vaccine Swedish not British.

Relatedly: Iran's coverage of the AstraZeneca vaccine was entirely positive, suggesting that its government's message shaping is motivated by need as much as geopolitics.

NINTH: Twitter accounts affiliated w/Russian and Chinese embassies in countries that either approved Russian or Chinese vaccines or were in the process of doing so gained more followers and received substantially more engagement than diplomatic accounts in other countries.

TENTH: On a per-tweet basis, vaccine-related tweets from the Russian Embassy in Mexico received the most retweets and likes of the >900 accounts surveyed—outpacing state media accounts w/100x more followers.

Mexico granted emergency approval for the Sputnik V vaccine in Feb.

All of this, and so much more, is available in @SecureDemocracy's latest report, available here:

securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/russia-china-i…

Huge kudos to Bret Schafer, Amber Frankland, @nkohlenberg and @EtienneSoula!

Thanks to @dnvolz and @mgordonwsj of the @WSJ for featuring some of these findings here: wsj.com/articles/russi…

As always, you can find the underlying data on @SecureDemocracy's Hamilton 2.0 Dashboard. We want to be a resource for other researchers, journalists, interested citizens. Play around with it yourselves.

securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-dashb…