Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Messaging on TikTok: Social Media Content Analysis

Abstract

Background The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is viewed as a critical tool to protect against six HPV-related cancers. Vaccination is recommended from early adolescence through age 26 years. As young people have become increasingly involved in personal health-related decisions, there is a need to tailor HPV vaccine messaging and reach this priority population on social media and digital outlets. TikTok is a growing social media platform with approximately 70% of its users between the ages of 13 and 24 years. Purpose The aim of this study was to understand HPV vaccine messaging and interactions on TikTok as a needed first step to identifying effective strategies to reach young people with important health messaging. Methods Content analysis was performed on 170 top TikToks focused on the HPV vaccine. TikToks were assessed for content, classification type, and number of interactions. Results Most TikToks were provaccine, while antivaccine TikToks had more user interactions. Cancer and prevention were the main content areas of the analyzed provaccine TikToks, while the side effects were the primary focus of antivaccine messages. Approximately 30% of all top TikToks analyzed were developed by health professionals. TikToks without an explicit vaccine opinion primarily described personal experiences and mentioned side effects most often. Implications TikTok is a growing social media platform that can be used to reach young people and encourage HPV vaccine uptake. Health professionals need to consider the interest that users have in personal experiences and address antivaccine narratives related to side effects.

Facebook’s shared articles on HPV vaccination: analysis of persuasive strategies

“…Existing literature was consulted to identify specific types of evidence and persuasive arguments or strategies that are common in online public discourse about vaccination. Common types of evidence included: narratives; statistics; simple arguments; and scientific evidence [17,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Initial team review of the dataset also resulted in the addition of codes to describe different types of evidence, such as lawsuits/legal arguments and hyperlinks to other sources.…”

Professionally Created Content Related to HPV Vaccination on TikTok

“…In a TikTok study of both professional and non-professional videos that varied in pro/anti vaccine stance, it was determined that cancer and prevention messaging on HPV was more prevalent among pro-vaccine videos ( 39 ). Our findings are in concert with these in that all videos included in our sample were created by professionals and were pro-vaccine.…”

“…Many manuscripts in the published literature document that HPV content is prevalent on social media. Research has identified specific platforms such as Instagram ( 32 – 34 ), YouTube ( 35 – 37 ), Twitter ( 38 ), and Facebook ( 12 ) but we were only able to identify a single paper that examined HPV vaccine content on TikTok but was not limited to professionals ( 39 ). Examination of professional videos can help guide future health promotion efforts as this population begins to deliver more information on social media.…”

Política, sanidad y desinformación: argumentos en Instagram de los partidos de extrema derecha europea sobre las vacunas contra la COVID-19

“…El análisis incluyó 150 publicaciones de cada partido, obtenidas aleatoriamente mediante la función "=RAND()" de Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corp.) para todas las publicaciones de los perfiles de Instagram de los partidos. El número de unidades de análisis es análogo al de las investigaciones actuales sobre análisis de contenido de plataformas de redes sociales (Li et al, 2021;Boatman et al, 2021;Unni & Weinstein, 2021). Además de conocer la tasa de participación de cada partido, se obtuvieron datos sobre el número de seguidores de la cuenta oficial del partido, el número de me gusta de cada publicación con contenido visual relacionado con la investigación y el número de comentarios.…”