Prospective associations of regional social media messages with attitudes and actual vaccination: A big data and survey study of the influenza vaccine in the United States

• Published in: Vaccine Vol. 38; no. 40; pp. 6236 - 6247
• Main Authors: Chan, Man-pui Sally, Jamieson, Kathleen Hall, Albarracin, Dolores
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Ltd 11.09.2020; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Attitudes; Behavior; Big Data; Child; Correlation analysis; Digital media; Dirichlet problem; Discussions with family and friends; False information; Fraud; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Human papillomavirus; Humans; Immunization; Influence; Influenza; Influenza vaccine; Influenza Vaccines; Influenza, Human - prevention & control; Pharmaceutical industry; Pharmaceuticals; Polls & surveys; Prospective Studies; Public health; Regional analysis; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; Social Media; Social networks; Surveys and Questionnaires; United States; Vaccination; Vaccine attitude; Vaccines; United States; United States > US; Discussions with family and friends; Influenza vaccine; Vaccination; Social media; Vaccine attitude
• ISSN: 0264-410X; 1873-2518
• DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.07.054

•Regional Twitter vaccine content was prospectively associated with attitudes.•Regional Twitter vaccine content was prospectively associated with vaccination.•Discussing the influenza vaccine with others can remove the negative effects of Twitter vaccine content. Using longitudinal methods to assess regional associations between social media posts about vaccines and attitudes and actual vaccination against influenza in the US. Geolocated tweets from U.S. counties (N = 115,330) were analyzed using MALLET LDA (Latent Dirichlet allocation) topic modeling techniques to correlate with prospective individual survey data (N = 3005) about vaccine attitudes, actual vaccination, and real-life discussions about vaccines with family and friends during the 2018–2019 influenza season. Ten topics were common across U.S. counties during the 2018–2019 influenza season. In the overall analyses, two of these topics (i.e., Vaccine Science Matters and Big Pharma) were associated with attitudes and behaviors. The topic concerning vaccine science in November-February was positively correlated with attitudes in February-March, r = 0.09, BF10 = 3. Moreover, among respondents who did not discuss the influenza vaccine with family and friends, the topic about vaccine fraud and children in November-February was negatively correlated with attitudes in February-March and with vaccination in February-March, and April-May (rs = −0.18 to −0.25, BF10 = 4–146). However, this was absent when participants had discussions about the influenza vaccine with family and friends. Regional vaccine content correlated with prospective measures of vaccine attitudes and actual vaccination. Social media have demonstrated strong associations with vaccination patterns. When the associations are negative, discussions with family and friends appear to eliminate them. Programs to promote vaccination should encourage real-life conversations about vaccines.