Persuasive Solutions for Addressing the Impact of Internet Media on Childhood Vaccine Rejection

OpenAlex İngilizce

While vaccine hesitancy continues to grow as a global threat to public health, healthcare professionals working to protect community health are engaged in various efforts to mitigate this threat. Among the reasons parents refuse childhood vaccines, many underlying factors are attributed to medical, religious, cultural, and environmental influences. One of the contributing factors to the rejection of childhood vaccines is the information disseminated through mass media, particularly on internet-based platforms, especially on social networks. Parents often turn to social media channels to access information about vaccines. The undeniable influence of social media platforms on parents' acceptance or rejection of vaccines cannot be underestimated. This study examines how parents who refuse childhood vaccines are influenced by mass media, particularly internet-based social media networks, and discusses the efforts and solutions proposed by healthcare professionals to convince parents. The research was initiated with the approval of the Uşak University Ethics Committee under decision number 2021-104 dated May 6, 2021. Field research was conducted through qualitative interviews using semi-structured questionnaires. In this study, employing a phenomenological design, a snowball sampling model was preferred, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. At the conclusion of the study, Family Health Center (FHC) employees stated that mass media, especially social media, and the misinformation circulating on the internet have contributed to the increase in vaccine hesitancy. FHC employees expressed the need for regulating internet media (social media, blogs, personal pages, websites) to combat information pollution and emphasized the importance of implementing legal procedures and penalties to prevent mass manipulation resulting from the dissemination of messages by influencers.