Objective
The intensifying vaccine debate in Turkey continued when the vaccines developed to contain the pandemic were being implemented. Twenty-three thousand families refused childhood vaccines in 2017. Because of the Internet’s importance as a medium of information exchange, this study aimed to quantify the content and design attributes of Turkish vaccine critical websites and list the arguments used. The study conducted in the pre-pandemic era would serve as a reference point for further research.
Methods
Websites were screened by two researchers using Google, between October 30, 2017 and November 23, 2017. Every researcher screened 30 results for every word query. Exclusion criteria were implemented based on Wolfe’s (2002) and Kata’s (2010) research. A third researcher acted as a referee if the two researchers disagreed and produced a final list on February 04, 2018. The resultant list included 16 websites. To evaluate the vaccine critical websites, criteria developed in Kata’s study (2010) was used. The criteria contained 50 items under content and design headings. The websites were analyzed according to the criteria between April 2, 2018 and August 28, 2018.
Results
Most websites were not vaccine specific and were relay sites that transmitted already available information. Criteria searched for vaccine criticism were generally less frequent in Turkish websites than in English and French websites. Especially low presence of criteria regarding criticism of biomedicine, superiority of alternative medicine, sharing of personal stories and use of imagery was observed. Criteria concerning commercialization were observed less and religious reasons were observed higher in Turkish websites. The websites that supported religious tenets were usually sites about halal food that borrowed heavily from American anti-vaccine websites.
Conclusion
Turkish vaccine critical websites referring to foreign resources were usually less developed than their foreign counterparts. Network analysis of vaccine critical websites would yield more in-depth knowledge of the relationship between the content providers and the resources of these websites. Ministry of Health should invest more in the Web, specifically targeting its response according to the criteria available in vaccine critical websites.
