JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has profound impact on different facets of our lives. In response to this, many countries have devoted efforts to encouraging vaccination in their populations to control the spread of virus.

Objective:

The primary goal of this study is to reveal the dynamic of vaccine communication on social media and the role of government agenda in advancing vaccination during COVID-19 pandemic through a case study of Macao.

Methods:

We collected vaccine-related posts from Facebook in Macao between January 2020 and August 2022. Automated content analysis was employed to identify attributes of the agenda on vaccines. Quadratic Assignment Procedure approach as well as time series analyses with vector autoregressive modelling and Granger causality analyses were also applied to measure agenda networks, detect agenda dynamics and impacts between the government and non-government agendas.

Results:

A total of 22,986 posts pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines were included in the analysis. Of these messages, a significant prevalence of co-occurrence between the topics of “vaccines importance” and “COVID-19 risk” dominated the overall vaccine communication on the platform. A discrepancy was observed in the agendas between the government and regular users, with the government being intended to the aspects of COVID-19 risk, and vaccine effectiveness, whereas regular users prioritizing their concerns on vaccine safety and distribution. The government has varying impact on different types of Facebook users with regards to agenda attributes. Regular users were impacted by the government through shaping their perceptions of vaccine importance, trust in experts, vaccine accessibility, and affordability. The agendas of the government and non-government users were intertwined with reciprocal influence.

Conclusions:

This research reveals that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public partially and selectively adopted the government’s vaccination agenda. To enhance the government’s impact on regular social media users, agenda setting should be applied in a manner that considers public concerns and the influence of other stakeholders. This research offers an overview of these conditions and serves as a foundation for further analysis in this area. It contributes to the existing knowledge on vaccine communication and provide implications for policy makers to improve health promotion communication strategies for the preparedness of future. Clinical Trial: Not required.