Understanding Human Papillomavirus Vaccine Promotions and Hesitancy in Northern California Through Examining Public Facebook Pages and Groups

Abstract

Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination coverage among adolescents is lower in rural regions and remains under the 80% coverage goal by Healthy People 2030. Through both sentiment analysis and topic modeling, this research examines how local health agencies and groups in nine Northern California counties promote HPV vaccines through Facebook and how target populations react to promotion posts in comments that elucidate their sentiments and hesitancy toward HPV vaccination. In January 2021, we identified 2,105 public Facebook pages and 1,065 groups related to health within the counties and collected a total of 212 posts and 505 comments related to the HPV vaccine. The posts were published between 2010 and 2021, with the majority (83%) published after 2017. There were large variations of Facebook activities across counties. We categorized four counties with HPV vaccination initiation rates below 40% as low-coverage counties and five counties with rates above 40% as high-coverage counties. In general, low-coverage counties had fewer Facebook activities in comparison to high coverage. Results showed that, on average, comments about the HPV vaccine exhibited more positive emotion, more negative emotion, and more anger than the posts. Overall, thematic topics that emerged from posts centered around awareness and screening of HPV and cervical cancer, STI testing services, information sources, and calls to action for health services. However, comment topics did not correspond to posts and were mostly related to vaccine hesitancy, discussing vaccine risks, safety concerns, and distrust in vaccine science, citing misinformation. When comparing high- versus low-coverage counties, posts expressed similar sentiments; however, comments within high-coverage counties expressed more anger than in low-coverage counties. Comments from both high- and low-coverage counties expressed concerns with vaccine safety, risks, and injury. It is important to note that commenters exchanged information sources and tried to address misinformation themselves. Our results suggest that the promotion of HPV vaccines from public Facebook pages and groups is limited in frequency and content diversity. This illustrates problems with generalized social media vaccination promotion without community tailoring and addressing specific hesitancy concerns. Public health agencies should listen to the thoughts of targeted audiences reflected through comments and design relevant messages to address these concerns for HPV vaccination promotion.

Changing Perspectives on Pediatric Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination among Dental Students and Residents Reveals Recent Increase in Vaccine Hesitancy

“…More specifically, although most students and residents reported being aware of HPV vaccination, a large shift in responses indicated that more respondents felt they had insufficient knowledge and information about the HPV vaccine specifically, which corresponded with a decrease in personal importance of HPV vaccination. This information corresponds with and supports the findings of other recent research that describes an overall increase in the number of people (and providers) who feel they have inadequate knowledge and insufficient information about the HPV vaccine to make clear, rational decisions for their children based upon evidence [37][38][39].…”

Moral expressions, sources, and frames: Examining COVID-19 vaccination posts by facebook public pages

“…According to Facebook, 1 “pages are places on Facebook where artists, public figures, businesses, brands, organizations and non-profits can connect with their fans or customers.” In contrast, “groups are a place to communicate about shared interests with certain people.” Facebook pages are often seen as broadcasting channels that send messages out to their followers while Facebook groups are deemed as communities that emphasize common interests and interactions among group members. 2 One study that examines public pages vs. groups related to vaccines concludes that “public pages may work more efficiently to have targeted vaccine campaigns for organizations or institutions than setting up public group discussions.” ( Zhang et al, 2021 , p. 10) When using the CrowdTangle API to search through its database, we included all post types in English Language, regardless whether the post was branded content or not. We only included verified accounts because we are interested in content by legitimate users.…”

Analyzing Public Conversations About Heart Disease and Heart Health on Facebook From 2016 to 2021: Retrospective Observational Study Applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation Topic Modeling

“…For example, LIWC calculates positive emotions in a given document by counting the percentage of words that appear in the dictionary indicating positive emotions. It has been widely used to analyze health-related conversations on social media and identify the public’s emotions and attitudes [ 26 ].…”