Social Media Communication about HPV Vaccine in China: A Study Using Topic Modeling and Survey

ABSTRACT

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is relatively novel to people in China. Social media is becoming an important channel for learning new health information. However, limited is known about what HPV vaccine information has been disseminated on social media, and how such online information is associated with health-related behaviors in China. Based on Longo et al.’s model of patient use of healthcare information for healthcare decision, and Longo’s model of health information seeking behaviors, this study examined HPV vaccine-related information type and information acquisition pattern. Following the mixed-methods approach, we first crawled 67,773 postings about HPV vaccine on Weibo, the largest microblogging website in China, and performed topic modeling to identify HPV vaccine-related topics that are prevalent on Weibo. The results showed six major topics about HPV vaccine, namely policy, guidance information, advertising, scandals, personal experience sharing, and HPV risks. Second, we conducted an online survey (n = 1,982) to investigate how scanning, seeking, and discussing the six HPV vaccine topics identified from big data analytics can affect HPV vaccine knowledge, safety concern, and vaccination intention. We documented significant impacts of social media health communication on users’ health knowledge, attitude and behavioral intention.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics statement

Survey respondents provided informed consent. The study protocol was approved by the Department Ethics Review Committee at National University of Singapore.

Authors contribution

Dr. Shaohai Jiang and Dr. Pianpian Wang contributed equally to this work.

Notes

1. The irrelevant posts are those whose subject matter is not mainly about HPV or HPV vaccine. People may simply insert terms or hashtags, such as “HPV” or “HPV vaccination” in their posts, because they are hot topics at the time. In this manner, the posts can attract more attention, increasing the possibility of being seen by more netizens. For example, there was a post introducing termite mushroom, but it contained a series of hashtags that were popular topics at the time, including HPV vaccine. For highly commercialized social media platforms such as Weibo, this is a common practice, especially considering that many bloggers rely on visibility or exposure for daily account operation. Another type of irrelevant posts was headline news in which HPV vaccine was only a small part. Although there might be some content related to HPV vaccine, the major part of these posts was about another issue. Also, irrelevant posts may be created by social bots as well. Therefore, for the purpose of the current study, irrelevant posts were filtered because they can affect the accuracy and efficiency of topic modeling.

2. A Chinese term expressing encouragement, incitement, or support to others.

3. The name of a commercial company offering HPV vaccination.

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Shaohai Jiang is supported by The Next Big Idea Award (Seed Category), Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk; Dr. Pianpian Wang is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant 18CXW029.