Aleksandric Ana, Anderson Henry Isaac, Melcher Sarah, Nilizadeh Shirin, Wilson Gabriela Mustata
Multi-Interprofessional Center for Health Informatics, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, USA.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX 76019, USA.
Vaccines (Basel). 2022 Oct 14;10(10):1713. doi: 10.3390/vaccines10101713.
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.
接种疫苗是一项主要的公共卫生干预措施，旨在预防新冠病毒感染和住院治疗。然而，由于错误信息/虚假信息导致的疫苗犹豫情绪，尤其是在少数族裔群体中，对这种干预措施的有效性产生了负面影响。本研究的目的是了解如何利用从社交媒体收集的信息来改善对疫苗接种的态度，并减少疫苗犹豫情绪。这项工作聚焦于西班牙语帖子，并将突出德克萨斯州不同县的疫苗接种率与脸书数据（西班牙裔人群中最受欢迎的平台）的情绪和情感内容之间的关系。对这个有价值的数据集的分析表明，这一少数群体的疫苗接种率与负面情绪和恐惧呈负相关，这意味着负面和恐惧帖子的较高流行率表明这些县的疫苗接种率较低。这项针对西班牙裔人群疫苗犹豫情绪的首次研究表明，观察社交媒体可以成为衡量对公共卫生干预措施态度的宝贵工具。
