This paper quantifies the impact of online vaccine skepticism on pediatric vaccine uptake and health outcomes. We propose a novel methodology that combines Natural Language Processing and an instrumental variable strategy that leverages the intransitivity of the social network's connections. By...

This paper investigates the factors that contributed to the proliferation of online COVID skepticism on Twitter across Italian municipalities. We demonstrate that socio-demographic factors are likely to mitigate the emergence of skepticism, while populist political leanings were more likely to...

We quantify the effects of online vaccine skepticism on vaccine uptake and health complications for individuals not targeted by immunization campaigns. We collect the universe of Italian vaccine-related tweets for 2013-2018, label anti-vax stances using NLP, and match them with vaccine coverage...

This paper quantifies the impact of online vaccine skepticism on pediatric vaccine uptake, vaccine-preventable hospitalizations, and their related costs. We propose an instrumental variable strategy that leverages the complex structure of social networks. By matching Italian vaccine-related...