Last week we told you who’s driving the vaccine development conversation. But how do the contours of that conversation differ between reporters and the social media conversation at large?

A recent analysis by GPG’s Analytics and Data Science team in GPG’s Health Media Insights newsletter used natural language processing tools to look at the vaccine development conversation on Twitter broadly compared to online and print media.

One of the findings that most interested us was the scope of each conversation. Twitter users focused most on the vaccine development “rat race,” mostly mentioning the companies competing to produce the first viable COVID vaccine— a result in line with Twitter’s focus on breaking news. 

Print and online media, however, mentioned Congress most and frequently mentioned Twitter itself. This suggests that traditional media is focused on the bigger legislative, regulatory and political picture, tracking policy developments and offering context to the social conversation itself.

You can download the full report here. To learn more about our health media insights, email health@gpg.com.