Abstract
BackgroundGroups and individuals that seek to negatively influence public opinion about the safety and value of vaccination are active in online and social media and may influence decision making within some communities.ObjectiveWe sought to measure whether exposure to negative opinions about human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines in Twitter communities is associated with the subsequent expression of negative opinions by explicitly measuring potential information exposure over the social structure of Twitter communities.MethodsWe hypothesized that prior exposure to opinions rejecting the safety or value of HPV vaccines would be associated with an increased risk of posting similar opinions and tested this hypothesis by analyzing temporal sequences of messages posted on Twitter (tweets). The study design was a retrospective analysis of tweets related to HPV vaccines and the social connections between users. Between October 2013 and April 2014, we collected 83,551 English-language tweets that included terms related to HPV vaccines and the 957,865 social connections among 30,621 users posting or reposting the tweets. Tweets were classified as expressing negative or neutral/positive opinions using a machine learning classifier previously trained on a manually labeled sample.ResultsDuring the 6-month period, 25.13% (20,994/83,551) of tweets were classified as negative; among the 30,621 users that tweeted about HPV vaccines, 9046 (29.54%) were exposed to a majority of negative tweets. The likelihood of a user posting a negative tweet after exposure to a majority of negative opinions was 37.78% (2780/7361) compared to 10.92% (1234/11,296) for users who were exposed to a majority of positive and neutral tweets corresponding to a relative risk of 3.46 (95% CI 3.25-3.67, P<.001).ConclusionsThe heterogeneous community structure on Twitter appears to skew the information to which users are exposed in relation to HPV vaccines. We found that among users that tweeted about HPV vaccines, those who were more often exposed to negative opinions were more likely to subsequently post negative opinions. Although this research may be useful for identifying individuals and groups currently at risk of disproportionate exposure to misinformation about HPV vaccines, there is a clear need for studies capable of determining the factors that affect the formation and adoption of beliefs about public health interventions.
Highlights
In the last decade, vaccination refusal has increased in the United States and many countries have recorded substantial proportions of parents expressing concerns about the safety of vaccines [1,2]. variability in access to health care is an important factor influencing vaccine coverage rates, vaccination refusal directly affects these rates and is a significant contributor to outbreaks—especially where vaccination refusal is geographically clustered and population immunity is compromised [3]
During the 6-month period, 25.13% (20,994/83,551) of tweets were classified as negative; among the 30,621 users that tweeted about human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, 9046 (29.54%) were exposed to a majority of negative tweets
The likelihood of a user posting a negative tweet after exposure to a majority of negative opinions was 37.78% (2780/7361) compared to 10.92% (1234/11,296) for users who were exposed to a majority of positive and neutral tweets corresponding to a relative risk of 3.46
Summary
Vaccination refusal has increased in the United States and many countries have recorded substantial proportions of parents expressing concerns about the safety of vaccines [1,2]. variability in access to health care is an important factor influencing vaccine coverage rates, vaccination refusal directly affects these rates and is a significant contributor to outbreaks—especially where vaccination refusal is geographically clustered and population immunity is compromised [3]. Outbreaks of pertussis and measles are known to spread through populations where rates of vaccination refusal are high [4,5,6,7]. The vaccine was first licensed for use in the United States in 2006 with the purpose of reducing the incidence of HPV, to which the majority of cervical cancers are attributed, as well as genital warts and some oral, anal, and penile cancers [8]. HPV vaccination in Australia has led to a marked reduction in rates of high-grade cervical abnormalities and early evidence of herd immunity [9,10,11,12]. Uptake of HPV vaccines varies substantially across and within countries [13,14,15,16]
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