Analysis of communication in social networks of the influenza vaccine campaign in Spain

Abstract

Background: After arising of anti-vaccine groups and their dissemination, it is necessary to carry out communication campaigns on the benefits of vaccination aimed at citizens, and social networks are a good way to reach a large population. The objective of this article is to determine the communication on Twitter social network during the influenza vaccine campaign in 2018 in Spain.
Methods: Big data methods were used to collect all tweets about the influenza vaccine during October 23 to December 15. They were determined by cluster analysis, eigenvector and pagerank calculations to determinate who were the most important influencers during the campaign.
Results: A total of 9,147 tweets were collected, of which 71.94% were retweets (RT). Ten groups generated 69.92% of the message traffic on vaccines. The main emotion expressed in the messages about vaccines is the fear of consequences if people do not get vaccinated.
Conclusions: It was determined that the information on the campaign is favorable to vaccination but is mainly directed by (supposedly) doctors, nurses or anonymous patients who tweet and are followed by many users. The official and institutional campaigns, some of which are re-disseminated in a possibly organized way, are very neglected in the monitoring of society in the networks.