Vaccination Persuasion Online: A Qualitative Study of Two Provaccine and Two Vaccine-Skeptical Websites

Abstract

BackgroundCurrent concerns about vaccination resistance often cite the Internet as a source of vaccine controversy. Most academic studies of vaccine resistance online use quantitative methods to describe misinformation on vaccine-skeptical websites. Findings from these studies are useful for categorizing the generic features of these websites, but they do not provide insights into why these websites successfully persuade their viewers. To date, there have been few attempts to understand, qualitatively, the persuasive features of provaccine or vaccine-skeptical websites.ObjectiveThe purpose of this research was to examine the persuasive features of provaccine and vaccine-skeptical websites. The qualitative analysis was conducted to generate hypotheses concerning what features of these websites are persuasive to people seeking information about vaccination and vaccine-related practices.MethodsThis study employed a fully qualitative case study methodology that used the anthropological method of thick description to detail and carefully review the rhetorical features of 1 provaccine government website, 1 provaccine hospital website, 1 vaccine-skeptical information website focused on general vaccine safety, and 1 vaccine-skeptical website focused on a specific vaccine. The data gathered were organized into 5 domains: website ownership, visual and textual content, user experience, hyperlinking, and social interactivity.ResultsThe study found that the 2 provaccine websites analyzed functioned as encyclopedias of vaccine information. Both of the websites had relatively small digital ecologies because they only linked to government websites or websites that endorsed vaccination and evidence-based medicine. Neither of these websites offered visitors interactive features or made extensive use of the affordances of Web 2.0. The study also found that the 2 vaccine-skeptical websites had larger digital ecologies because they linked to a variety of vaccine-related websites, including government websites. They leveraged the affordances of Web 2.0 with their interactive features and digital media.ConclusionsBy employing a rhetorical framework, this study found that the provaccine websites analyzed concentrate on the accurate transmission of evidence-based scientific research about vaccines and government-endorsed vaccination-related practices, whereas the vaccine-skeptical websites focus on creating communities of people affected by vaccines and vaccine-related practices. From this personal framework, these websites then challenge the information presented in scientific literature and government documents. At the same time, the vaccine-skeptical websites in this study are repositories of vaccine information and vaccination-related resources. Future studies on vaccination and the Internet should take into consideration the rhetorical features of provaccine and vaccine-skeptical websites and further investigate the influence of Web 2.0 community-building features on people seeking information about vaccine-related practices.

“Mommy Blogs” and the Vaccination Exemption Narrative: Results From A Machine-Learning Approach for Story Aggregation on Parenting Social Media Sites

“…Our method not only shows that these pairwise relations are the key part of the conversations, but also reveals how actants are related in a context-dependent manner. Grant et al [5] provide clear evidence for the impact of personal experience narrative on vaccination attitudes through the qualitative comparison of 4 websites. Kitta [22], who worked with a similar structural model for vaccine narrative, develops an important typology of vaccine stories, whereas Kata [3] determines the tropes that are functional on anti-vaccine websites.…”

“…Importantly, people are inclined to believe first-hand accounts from members of their community, as opposed to official pronouncements [5]. Social network theory has established a strong tendency toward homophily in online communities that often results in shared trust between community members [47].…”

“…Various sites dedicated to conversations about child rearing and parenting, colloquially referred to as “mommy blogs,” attract millions of users [3,5]. Although straightforward data mining techniques such as topic modeling exist for determining what parents are talking about on these sites and other similar sites, few techniques exist for determining how they are talking about those topics.…”

Vaccine criticism on the internet: Propositions for future research

“…This has mostly been done by investigating the rhetorical strategies used by vaccine critics to convince their audience, such as reliance on anecdotes rather than statistics, emotive appeals, use of pictures, selfpresentations as "martyrs" or "underdogs" or representatives of "real Science," etc. 3,7,8,40,43,47,48,54,68 Most of these studies have focused on the discourse published by vaccine critics (tone, arguments, themes, style) with a focus on one specific form of internet use: active research of information by the individual in order to make a decision on the subject of vaccination. One way to move forward, building on the results obtained through this perspective, would be to shift the gaze toward the many ways in which vaccine criticism can circulate on the Internet in more complex and interactive ways than by just being available via the common tools of web research.…”

“…constitutes another open avenue of research on vaccine criticism on the Internet. While many studies have suggested that vaccine critics rely in some way on interactive ways to mobilize on the Internet, 3,5,7,38,39,42,43,48,50 for instance via the administration of private forums or the setting up of petitions, few researchers have investigated this phenomenon further (for exceptions, see refs. 34,40,51,52,54,56 ) and none have done so in a systematic way.…”