HPV vaccine narratives on Twitter during COVID-19: social network, theme, and sentiment analysis 2023

Twitter conversations about HPV vaccines during the COVID-19 epidemic were subjected to a social network, theme, and sentiment analysis.

Introduction

COVID-19 has increased online exchanges and misinformation. Some experts expect vaccine awareness to increase public trust, while others worry vaccine development and public health mandates may have eroded it. Health communication strategies should consider if the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine development, and mandates have affected HPV vaccine attitudes and sentiments.

Methods

Twitter’s Academic Research Product tracked 596,987 global English-language tweets from January 2019 to May 2021. Social network research identified HPV immunization-confident and hesitant networks. We then measured HPV immunization narratives and sentiment using neural network natural language processing.

Results

The vaccine-hesitant network’s tweets were negative (54.9%) and focused on HPV vaccine safety, while the vaccine-confident networks were neutral (51.6%) and promoted vaccination’s health advantages. The vaccine-hesitant network’s unfavorable sentiment increased alongside New York’s 2019 HPV vaccination mandate for public school pupils and the 2020 WHO classification of COVID-19 as a global health emergency. During the COVID-19 pandemic, HPV vaccine tweets were reduced in the vaccine confident network, but their sentiments and themes did not.

Conclusions

During the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccine-confident organizations focused less on the HPV vaccine, but narratives and feelings did not change. To promote HPV vaccination safety and advantages during routine vaccine catch-up campaigns, online health communication is needed.