Abstract
Misinformation about vaccines on social media is a growing concern among healthcare professionals, medical experts, and researchers. Although such concerns often relate to the total sum of information flows generated online by many groups of stakeholders, vaccination controversies tend to vary across time, place, and the vaccine at issue. We studied content generated by administrators on three Facebook pages in Denmark established to promote critical debate about Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. We developed a qualitative coding frame allowing us to analyze administrators’ posts in terms of prevalent topics and intertextual material incorporated by linking and sharing. We coded more than a third of the posts (n = 699) occurring in the period from November 2012, when the first page was founded, to May 2019. We found that the pages mainly addressed the reports of adverse events following HPV vaccination and the (perceived) inadequate response of healthcare systems. To construct their central message, the pages assembled different sources, mostly reporting from Danish news media, but also personal narratives, scientific information, political assertions, and more. We conclude that HPV vaccination assemblages such as these pages are heterogeneous and contextual. They are not uniform sites of vaccine criticism, but rather seem to respond to and exchange information and misinformation within the communication environment in which they are embedded.
Highlights
Misinformation about vaccines is a widespread concern among researchers and healthcare professionals
To study vaccine assemblages on Facebook, we identified three Facebook pages in Denmark established to facilitate and promote critical debate about the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine
Facebook content seems to have played an important role in the HPV controversy in Denmark where the vaccine information environment became ‘polluted’ as news media and social media increasingly reported on adverse events following HPV vaccination that were not substantiated by scientific evidence
Summary
Misinformation about vaccines is a widespread concern among researchers and healthcare professionals. Expert groups, and individual researchers worry that vaccine misinformation flourishing in media environments may lead to vaccine hesitancy and ill-informed political or juridical decisions (e.g., Burki, 2019; Ghebreyesus, 2019; Larson, 2018). The sources of vaccine misinformation on the web range from small, but often well-organized interest groups, which deliberately spread false information about vaccines, to well-meaning individuals who take it upon themselves to act as “nonprofessional risk communicators” (Kahan, 2017). In 2007, a working group commissioned by The Danish Health Authority (Sundhedsstyrelsen) carried out a medical technology assessment. Based on available empirical evidence, they estimated that around 70% of all cervical cancer cases, accountable for approximately 175 deaths annually in Denmark, could be prevented by offering Danish girls the quadrivalent HPV vaccine Gardasil through the childhood immunization program (Sundhedsstyrelsen, 2007). Similar stories appeared in national and local media with girls, their families, and a few health professionals as sources (Smith, 2018; Suppli et al, 2018)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
