Spanish Facebook Posts as an Indicator of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Texas

• Published in: Vaccines (Basel) Vol. 10; no. 10; p. 1713
• Main Authors: Aleksandric, Ana, Anderson, Henry Isaac, Melcher, Sarah, Nilizadeh, Shirin, Wilson, Gabriela Mustata
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Attitudes; COVID-19 vaccines; Digital media; Emotions; Health promotion; Hispanic people; Immunization; Information management; interventions; Minority & ethnic groups; Public health; sentiment; Social media; Social networks; Vaccination; vaccine hesitancy; Vaccines; United States; United States > US; Texas
• ISSN: 2076-393X; 2076-393X
• DOI: 10.3390/vaccines10101713

Vaccination represents a major public health intervention intended to protect against COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. However, vaccine hesitancy due to misinformation/disinformation, especially among ethnic minority groups, negatively impacts the effectiveness of such an intervention. The aim of this study is to provide an understanding of how information gleaned from social media can be used to improve attitudes toward vaccination and decrease vaccine hesitancy. This work focused on Spanish-language posts, and will highlight the relationship between vaccination rates across different Texas counties and the sentiment and emotional content of Facebook data, the most popular platform among the Hispanic population. The analysis of this valuable dataset indicates that vaccination rates among this minority group are negatively correlated with negative sentiment and fear, meaning that a higher prevalence of negative and fearful posts indicates lower vaccination rates in these counties. This first study investigating vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic population suggests that observation of social media can be a valuable tool for measuring attitudes toward public health interventions.