  COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has increased concerns about vaccine uptake
required to overcome the pandemic and protect public health. A critical factor
associated with anti-vaccine attitudes is the information shared on social
media. In this work, we investigate misinformation communities and narratives
that can contribute to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. During the pandemic,
anti-science and political misinformation/conspiracies have been rampant on
social media. Therefore, we investigate misinformation and conspiracy groups
and their characteristic behaviours in Twitter data collected on COVID-19
vaccines. We identify if any suspicious coordinated efforts are present in
promoting vaccine misinformation, and find two suspicious groups - one
promoting a 'Great Reset' conspiracy which suggests that the pandemic is
orchestrated by world leaders to take control of the economy, with vaccine
related misinformation and strong anti-vaccine and anti-social messages such as
no lock-downs; and another promoting the Bioweapon theory. Misinformation
promoted is largely from the anti-vaccine and far-right communities in the
3-core of the retweet graph, with its tweets proportion of conspiracy and
questionable sources to reliable sources being much higher. In comparison with
the mainstream and health news, the right-leaning community is more influenced
by the anti-vaccine and far-right communities, which is also reflected in the
disparate vaccination rates in left and right U.S. states. The misinformation
communities are also more vocal, either in vaccine or other discussions,
relative to remaining communities, besides other behavioral differences.
