Exploring the Importance of Social Listening to Mitigate Anti-Vax Propaganda: A Retrospective Analysis
This study was undertaken to understand anti-vaccination narratives that propagated on the Covid-19 booster related posts on Facebook page dedicated for health promotion, under the purview of Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka. Comments in the post were categorised into five broad groups: anti-vaccine, pro-vaccine, information-seeking, sarcastic, and not relevant. Eight booster related posts with a total of 6514 comments were identified, among the comments 72.78% were categorised as anti-vaccine. Comment section can be an ideal environment for propagation of anti-vaccination propaganda, therefore, both offline and online social listening should be done timely and vigorously to identify these narratives and immediate action needs to be taken.
Authors
- Malinda de Silva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8331-8257)
- Lasantha Ranwala (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2906-5732)
- Poorna Fernando (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3848-7371)
- I. K. Rasanka Ashoranga (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3806-3395)
Institutions
- University of South Australia (AU)
- Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine (LK)
- Macquarie University (AU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Studies in health technology and informatics
- Published
- 2025-04-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3233/shti250128
- Primary Topic
- Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00