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How News Agencies’ Twitter Posts on COVID-19 Vaccines Attract Audiences’ Twitter Engagement: A Content Analysis

Author

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  • Di Wang

    (Faculty of Humanities and Arts, Macau University of Science and Technology, R322, Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macao 999078, China)

  • Jiahui Lu

    (School of New Media and Communication, Tianjin University, No. 92, Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072, China)

Abstract

As the most important global news distributors, the big three international news agencies’ reports about COVID-19 vaccines have a great influence on people’s understanding of them. Based on the health belief model (HBM), we examined which constructs in the HBM were related to audiences’ Twitter engagement and the differences among the agencies. We content-analyzed 1162 COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets from three international news agencies’ Twitter accounts (@AFPespanol, @AP, @Reuters) from 2 December 2020 to 31 January 2021. The results showed that the most-used HBM construct was barriers, followed by benefits, susceptibility, cues to action, severity, and self-efficacy. About half of the tweets used a positive tone and nearly half of the tweets used a neutral tone, while only 3.1% of the tweets used a negative tone. Reuters used a significantly more negative tone, more neutral tone, and less positive tone than was expected. AFP used a significantly more positive tone and less neutral tone than was expected. The effectiveness of utilizing HBM constructs for vaccination promotion strongly depends on the audience context. The use of HBM constructs for vaccination was generally effective for Reuters but seems to have backfired for AFP.

Suggested Citation

  • Di Wang & Jiahui Lu, 2022. "How News Agencies’ Twitter Posts on COVID-19 Vaccines Attract Audiences’ Twitter Engagement: A Content Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(5), pages 1-20, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:5:p:2716-:d:759048
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Wang, Di & Mao, Zhifei, 2021. "A comparative study of public health and social measures of COVID-19 advocated in different countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(8), pages 957-971.
    2. Heidi Ledford & David Cyranoski & Richard Van Noorden, 2020. "The UK has approved a COVID vaccine — here’s what scientists now want to know," Nature, Nature, vol. 588(7837), pages 205-206, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Di & Lu, Jiahui & Zhong, Ying, 2023. "Futile or fertile? The effect of persuasive strategies on citizen engagement in COVID-19 vaccine-related tweets across six national health departments," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    2. Furst, Rodrigo & Goldszmidt, Rafael & Andrade, Eduardo B. & Vieites, Yan & Andretti, Bernardo & Ramos, Guilherme A., 2024. "Longitudinal attenuation in political polarization: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination adherence in Brazil," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 348(C).
    3. Qiong Dang & Shixian Li, 2022. "Exploring Public Discussions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccinations on Microblogs in China: Findings from Machine Learning Algorithms," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-16, October.

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