25% of people who rely on Facebook for news say they won't get a COVID-19 shot - slightly more than Fox News viewers, a survey suggests
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- The Washington Post surveyed people's news sources and vaccine hesitancy.
- A quarter of people relying on Facebook for their news said they wouldn't get a COVID-19 shot.
- This was slightly higher than the group who said they got their news from Fox.
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People who rely on Facebook for their news are slightly more likely to reject the COVID-19 vaccine than people who rely on Fox News, a survey conducted by the Washington Post suggests.
The Post conducted the survey as part of its ongoing "COVID States Project." It surveyed 20,699 Americans from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia in June and July.
Of the people surveyed, 16% said they got their news exclusively from Facebook. Out of those people, 47% reported being vaccinated, and 25% said they would not get a COVID-19 shot.
These people were, on the whole, slightly more hesitant about the vaccine than people who said they got their news exclusively from Fox. Out of these Fox viewers, 23% said they would not get vaccinated, and 59% said they were already vaccinated.
The differences between the two groups persisted when researchers accounted for demographic and other differences, such as age.
At time of writing, almost 57% of people in the US have been vaccinated.
Out of the entire 20,699 people surveyed by The Post, 68% said they were already vaccinated and 18% said they would not get vaccinated.
Fox News launched a push urging viewers to get vaccinated this month - but major hosts, including Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have consistently attacked COVID-19 vaccines.
The Washington Post published its findings after Facebook got into a fight with the White House over vaccine hesitancy in the US.
President Joe Biden said social media platforms were "killing people," although he later backpedaled, and said it was the people who spread misinformation on Facebook that were killing people, rather than Facebook itself.
Facebook said the Biden administration was looking for a scapegoat for its missed target of vaccinating 70% of the adult population by July 4.
Facebook also offered its own statistics, saying 85% of Facebook users in the US have been, or want to be, vaccinated.
The Washington Post analysis said this statistic wasn't helpful in trying to understand Facebook's effect on vaccine hesitancy because it didn't compare Facebook users with non-users. The Post also noted that people use Facebook in many different ways, and that it's important to specifically look at people who rely on Facebook for their news.
The Post said its survey results weren't definitive evidence that Facebook, as a news source, causes vaccine hesitancy - people who avoid mainstream media sources may also generally mistrust scientific and governmental institutions, it said.
"While we can't say that Biden is right in claiming that Facebook is actually 'killing' people, we find that relying on Facebook's informational environment is associated with lower trust in institutions, lower vaccination rates and higher vaccine resistance," the Post concluded.
Facebook did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider for comment.
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