Health Topics Dissemination and Public Opinions across Nations and Media: A Case Study of HPV Vaccine

• Main Authors: Chieh Chen, 陳潔
• Other Authors: Ji-Lung Hsieh
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/2n779s

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 新聞研究所 === 106 === Ever since its introduction in 2006, the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine has been included in the National Vaccination Program (NIP) in more than 80 countries and is publicly funded among 30 countries. In Taiwan, HPV vaccine was officially approved in late 2006 but has been budgeted and promoted by individual municipalities only. Recently, the government has decided to roll out a new policy in November 2018 to make it a nationally-funded vaccine for all female students in Grade 7. The discussions and controversies regarding the vaccine''s safety, effectiveness, and side effects have been widely debated on public media and called for research upon public attitudes toward relevant policies in many countries. However, there has been little attention to the public responses toward the upcoming national vaccine program in Taiwan despite the presence and local promotion of the HPV vaccine within the past 11 years. This research uncovers and examines the dissemination of HPV vaccine-relevant information across major media and online communities through collecting and analyzing news articles and corresponding comments. The overarching objective is to assist the government, the media, and other involved actors in understanding public attitudes, identifying potential concerns, and responding accordingly to emerging discussions through policy communication or adjustment in a timely and effective manner. The research first discusses how foreign news and social media information are reproduced and transmitted in domestic coverage and online discussions. Second, the research investigates how the HPV vaccine is discussed in mainstream paper media and online communities in Taiwan and identifies important topics of such discussions. Next, it dives into the characteristics among different media platforms (i.e., traditional paper media and social platforms). These differences are revealed in the types of information that are spread across and the ways the audience discuss the various topics. Finally, popular events and topics that trigger more discussions, as well as the stances in them, are highlighted and analyzed. This study adopts text-mining and content analysis methods. For example, it extracts important international HPV vaccine side-effect cases that appear in domestic discussions and uses topic models to induce major topics. Finally, qualitative context analysis is conducted to sort out the contexts and motivations beneath the debates. The study found that the types of foreign information that enters domestic media platforms include academic publications, policy implementations, and side-effect cases. For example, reported cases of side effects not only became key issues followed up by domestic media coverage but also contributed to the budget freeze of the national HPV vaccination program. Furthermore, among the 18 identified topics, there are noticeable differences in what and how they are being discussed between social platforms and the mainstream paper media. The topic surrounding the vaccination program in Yunlin County, for example, showed the cross-platform information transmission of the same coverage from social platforms to paper media with a time lag of 1 to 2 days. There are also examples, such as the topic regarding the combination of Pap test and HPV vaccine, that yield similar but non-repetitive information. Among all disscussions, the “FAQ” topic, which covers the eligibility, benefits, and procedures of the vaccination, is the most popular one. It can be further divided into three categories: information shared by celebrities, personal experiences, and discussions of whether to vaccinate or not. Teenage girls and postpartum women are especially worried about the efficacy of the vaccine due to preceding sexual behavior and hospital recommendations respectively. Finally, the opposing and questioning opinions toward the national HPV vaccination program in the discussion are mainly derived from the unresolved side effects and unclear secret profits potentially benefitting the pharmaceutical companies.