School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, 906 8th Avenue S.W. 5th Floor, Calgary, AB, T2P 1H9, Canada.
Provincial Population and Public Health, Alberta Health Services, Holy Cross Centre, 2210 2 St SW, Calgary, AB, T2S 3C3, Canada.
BMC Public Health. 2023 Apr 14;23(1):694. doi: 10.1186/s12889-023-15615-w.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased online interactions and the spread of misinformation. Some researchers anticipate benefits stemming from improved public awareness of the value of vaccines while others worry concerns around vaccine development and public health mandates may have damaged public trust. There is a need to understand whether the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine development, and vaccine mandates have influenced HPV vaccine attitudes and sentiments to inform health communication strategies.
We collected 596,987 global English-language tweets from January 2019-May 2021 using Twitter's Academic Research Product track. We determined vaccine confident and hesitant networks discussing HPV immunization using social network analysis. Then, we used a neural network approach to natural language processing to measure narratives and sentiment pertaining to HPV immunization.
Most of the tweets in the vaccine hesitant network were negative in tone (54.9%) and focused on safety concerns surrounding the HPV vaccine while most of the tweets in the vaccine confident network were neutral (51.6%) and emphasized the health benefits of vaccination. Growth in negative sentiment among the vaccine hesitant network corresponded with legislative efforts in the State of New York to mandate HPV vaccination for public school students in 2019 and the WHO declaration of COVID-19 as a Global Health Emergency in 2020. In the vaccine confident network, the number of tweets concerning the HPV vaccine decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic but in both vaccine hesitant and confident networks, the sentiments, and themes of tweets about HPV vaccine were unchanged.
Although we did not observe a difference in narratives or sentiments surrounding the HPV vaccine during the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed a decreased focus on the HPV vaccine among vaccine confident groups. As routine vaccine catch-up programs restart, there is a need to invest in health communication online to raise awareness about the benefits and safety of the HPV vaccine.
COVID-19 大流行增加了在线互动和错误信息的传播。一些研究人员预计，公众对疫苗价值的认识会有所提高，而另一些人则担心疫苗开发和公共卫生强制接种令可能会损害公众信任。有必要了解 COVID-19 大流行、疫苗开发和疫苗强制接种令是否影响了 HPV 疫苗态度和情绪，以为健康传播策略提供信息。
我们使用 Twitter 的学术研究产品跟踪系统，从 2019 年 1 月至 2021 年 5 月，共收集了 596987 条全球英语推文。我们通过社会网络分析，确定了讨论 HPV 免疫接种的疫苗信心和犹豫网络。然后，我们使用自然语言处理的神经网络方法来衡量与 HPV 免疫接种相关的叙述和情绪。
疫苗犹豫网络中的大多数推文语气消极（54.9%），重点关注 HPV 疫苗的安全性问题，而疫苗信心网络中的大多数推文语气中立（51.6%），强调接种疫苗的健康益处。疫苗犹豫网络中负面情绪的增长与纽约州在 2019 年为公立学校学生强制接种 HPV 疫苗的立法努力以及世界卫生组织在 2020 年宣布 COVID-19 为全球卫生紧急事件相对应。在疫苗信心网络中，与 HPV 疫苗相关的推文数量在 COVID-19 大流行期间减少了，但在疫苗犹豫和信心网络中，有关 HPV 疫苗的推文的情绪和主题都没有改变。
尽管我们没有观察到 COVID-19 大流行期间 HPV 疫苗的叙述或情绪有差异，但我们观察到疫苗信心群体对 HPV 疫苗的关注减少了。随着常规疫苗补种计划的重启，需要在网上投资健康传播，提高公众对 HPV 疫苗的益处和安全性的认识。
