Healthcare Professionals’ Role in Social Media Public Health Campaigns: Analysis of Spanish Pro Vaccination Campaign on Twitter

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a great impact worldwide both on the population health but also on an economic and social level. In this health emergency, a key element has been and still is the need for information, which has become a daily concern for many people. Social media represent powerful tools for searching and gathering health-related information, thus becoming a new place where health authorities need to be present to disseminate information of preventive measures like vaccines against COVID-19, as well as try to block information against these public health measures. The main goal of this study was to analyze the role that healthcare professionals have in Twitter to support the campaign of public institutions on vaccination against COVID-19. To address this study, an analysis of the messages sent on Twitter containing the hashtag #yomevacuno, between 12 December 2020 was developed using the NodeXL software (Social Media Research Foundation, Redwood, CA, USA), focusing on content analysis of tweets and users’ accounts to identify healthcare professionals. The results show that healthcare professionals represent only 11.38% of users, being responsible for 6.35% of impressions generated by the network #yomevacuno. We can observe that traffic information generated by healthcare professionals is not significant in comparison with institutions (p = 0.633), but it is compared to common users (p = 0.0014). The most active healthcare professionals were pharmacists (40.17%), nurses (27.17%), and physicians (12.14%). Their activity (90.43% of messages) was mainly focused on sharing messages generated by other users’ accounts. From original content generated by healthcare professionals, only 78.95% had a favorable storytelling on the vaccine, but without sharing information about vaccines or vaccination. As a conclusion for this study, the participation of healthcare professionals in the dissemination and generation of information within the #yomevacuno communication strategy, led by the Spanish Ministry of Health, has been scarce. We emphasize the need to enhance communication skills in social networks to support public health campaigns through these increasingly important social media.

A Social Network Analysis of Tweets Related to Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination in Poland

“…10 days later, Omicron unexpectedly appeared, and Pfizer said it would take about 100 days to have a new vaccine”), and about a Jewish conspiracy to control Poland (“Then you have your Polin”, where “Polin” is the traditional name of Poland in Yiddish and Hebrew). This result is similar to the results obtained in studies performed in Spain [ 25 , 26 ].…”

“…Pre-pandemic studies in the US showed that the popularity of medical conspiracy theories (e.g., regarding cancer cures, vaccines, and cell phones) correlated with problematic health behaviours, such as greater use of alternative medicine and the avoidance of vaccination [ 24 ]. These conclusions are corroborated by the results of studies on the anti-vaccine movement and COVID-19 negationism, as well as public health campaigns in Spanish social media discourse [ 25 , 26 ].…”

Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature

“…80 On the other hand, an analysis of tweets containing #yomevacuno hashtag found that healthcare professionals comprise only 11.38% of users, generating only 6.35% of impressions, and that although the traffic information produced by them is not significant compared with institutions it is compared with regular users. 81 Ninestudies were classified as miscellaneous regarding the thematic discussions obtained from social media data. Lee and co-workers observed a high negative sentiment towards COVID-19 vaccines from posts obtained from Korean Instagram and NAVER users -namely the proportion of negative words for AstraZeneca vaccine was 71%, while for Pfizer it was 56.3%.…”

Global and Local Trends Affecting the Experience of US and UK Healthcare Professionals during COVID-19: Twitter Text Analysis

“…First, HCPs’ frequent use of social media suggests that this platform could also be used as a means of education and for distributing information [ 61 ]. Healthcare professionals are considered by the population as an essential element for the understanding of health-related messages, and their absence in social networks as reference elements may generate distrust and even disaffection toward truthful healthcare information [ 11 ]. As advocated by the WHO [ 58 ] in a recent strategic report, social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook) could be used for monitoring and provisioning training and educational materials for healthcare professionals and the evaluation of action plans.…”

“…Studies that measured HCPs’ involvement in professional conversations about health during the COVID-19 pandemic found their involvement to be insufficient. For example, Herrera-Peco et al [ 11 ] observed very limited participation of HCPs in the dissemination and generation of information led by the Spanish Ministry of Health. In view of the central role of social media in public discussion during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 12 ], it is important to understand whether and how HCPs are emotionally and professionally involved in public discourse during this period.…”