Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jun 3, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 13, 2023
Date Submitted to PubMed: Jan 17, 2023
Applications of social media and digital technology in COVID-19 vaccination: a scoping review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Social media and digital technology have played an important role in disseminating information and promoting vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, no attempts have been made to spotlight COVID-19 vaccination, summarizing the specific forms and analytical techniques of social media and digital technology in monitoring vaccine attitudes and administering vaccines.
Objective:
This review aims to identify the global evidence on the applications of social media and digital technologies in COVID-19 vaccination, intending to explore avenues of social media and digital technology to promote COVID-19 vaccination.
Methods:
We searched six databases (Pubmed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, EBSCO, and IEEE Xplore) for English-language articles from December 2019 to August 2021. Included publications provided original descriptions of applications of social media or digital health technologies or solutions in COVID-19 vaccination. Editorials, letters, comment/opinion, conference abstracts, protocol, news, systematic review, or meta-analysis were excluded.
Results:
Sixty-six articles were identified, including 51 social media articles and 15 digital technology articles. Social media had been applied for sentiment/emotion analysis, topic analysis, behavioral analysis, dissemination and engagement analysis, and information quality analysis around COVID-19 vaccination. Of these, sentiment analysis and topic analysis were the most applied, with social media data being primarily analyzed by lexicon-based and machine learning techniques. Digital technologies have been applied for model prediction, vaccination strategies, vaccination services, vaccination certification, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. AI technology has been widely applied in the above four fields except for vaccination certification, blockchain mainly used in the distribution of vaccines, and mHealth mainly used in vaccination services and certification.
Conclusions:
Social media has focused on public attitudes and sentiments about COVID-19 vaccination while neglecting the quality of information on social media. More studies are needed to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of social media information. Digital technologies such as AI and blockchain provide new modalities for model prediction, vaccination strategies, vaccination services, vaccination certification, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Still, attention needs to be paid to the legal and ethical issues implicated in promoting these technologies.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.