Journal
VACCINES
Volume 10, Issue 10, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/vaccines10101713
Keywords
social media; sentiment; vaccine hesitancy; public health; interventions
Categories
Funding
- Tarrant County Public Health/CDC [1NH75OT000054-01-00]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study reveals a negative correlation between vaccination rates among the Hispanic population and negative sentiment and fear found in social media posts. The findings suggest that monitoring social media can be a valuable tool for measuring attitudes towards public health interventions.
Vaccination represents a major public health intervention intended to protect against COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. However, vaccine hesitancy due to misinformation/ disinformation, especially among ethnic minority groups, negatively impacts the effectiveness of such an intervention. The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of how information gleaned from social media can be used to improve attitudes toward vaccination and decrease vaccine hesitancy. This work focused on Spanish-language posts, and will highlight the relationship between vaccination rates across different Texas counties and the sentiment and emotional content of Facebook data, the most popular platform among the Hispanic population. The analysis of this valuable dataset indicates that vaccination rates among this minority group are negatively correlated with negative sentiment and fear, meaning that a higher prevalence of negative and fearful posts indicates lower vaccination rates in these counties. This first study investigating vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic population suggests that observation of social media can be a valuable tool for measuring attitudes toward public health interventions.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available