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For better or worse, social media platforms are a breeding ground for public health communication. A recent Research Article on F1000Research aimed to understand the communication climate of Facebook in the context of the COVID-19 vaccine. We spoke to author Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman (Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh) about the study and its findings.

Sayeed, can you please tell us about yourself and your research interests?

I am a lecturer in the Journalism and Media Studies Department at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. Currently, I am pursuing another master’s degree in Digital Humanities in the Department of Media and Technology Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. My research interests span digital communication and information. My specific focus is on social media, and I am researching online misinformation.

What did you explore as part of your Research Article on F1000Research?

The Research Article is an exploratory study about the communication climate of Facebook on the COVID-19 vaccine issue, including the nature of dominant content and users’ engagement patterns. Therefore, the study analyzes the 10,000 most popular Bangla language-based Facebook posts with the highest interactions related to the COVID-19 vaccine.

What inspired you to investigate COVID-19 vaccine content on Facebook, in particular?

Firstly, more than 95% of the total social media users in Bangladesh use Facebook. As a result, it has become a powerful social media platform that warrants attention for research purposes.

Secondly, due to the unmatched popularity of Facebook, it has significant political, social, and economic roles. For example, many popular social movements, including the Quota Reform Protests of 2018 and Road Safety Protests of 2018, were organized by users on Facebook.

Thirdly, it was a relatively untapped area to explore – there is not a lot of research on Facebook in Bangladesh! This is largely because data collection and cleaning on Facebook is more challenging than on other platforms, such as Twitter.

Along with the rest of the world, social media use during the pandemic increased exponentially in Bangladesh—as did the spread of misinformation. I was mainly trying to investigate COVID-19 online misinformation, and vaccine misinformation makes up a large subset of this topic. I wanted to understand how such a large community of Facebook users engage with vaccine issues.

What did you find?

My research produces a few key findings in the context of Bangladesh. Users mostly interact with news items on the COVID-19 vaccine issue. According to the timeline of interactions, positive vaccine news seems more helpful in cultivating interactions than negative news. Users react to vaccine-related Facebook content with a positive attitude, meaning they might feel optimistic regarding the vaccine and happy when something positive happens, such as a successful trial of a vaccine. The higher sharing of links or vaccine news items may indicate that users are more interested in sharing vaccine information with others and engaging in discourse.

What are the implications of your study?

The study has three types of implications: methodological, theoretical, and practical.

Methodological contributions come with analyzing Bangla Facebook text with digital tools like CrowdTangle. CrowdTangle is a public insights tool that can access public pages and groups to collect various types of data. To collect the data from relevant Facebook posts, we conducted a keyword search for Bangla keywords that can be translated as corona vaccine or vaccine of the corona. This might provide inspiration for future researchers looking to analyze content on Facebook.

Theoretically, it may help communication and public health scholars understand the pulse of the public: what they like and dislike, how they interact with others, and the contents. Understanding users’ sentiment toward various vaccine contents is valuable.

For practical implications, media organizations can benefit from these insights and set their strategies for vaccine-related news accordingly—for example, promoting stories that share positive news around the vaccine, as these posts seem to receive the most interactions from users.  

Why did you publish on an open research publishing platform like F1000Research?

I chose F1000Research because it allowed me to publish my study openly, which increases the reach of my research. Moreover, as a researcher from a developing country, I received a full waiver for the publication fee, which was a real help. Finally, F1000Research’s increasing popularity and impact in scientific publishing make it a desirable place for young researchers like me!

What’s next for this area of research?

I recommend exploring how users communicate with different vaccine-related content, such as positive news, negative news, vaccine misinformation, and vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine misinformation surged before reliable vaccines were created, and the prevalence of vaccine misinformation, although weakened, has not vanished. Moreover, vaccine hesitancy is also very much alive in many countries, preventing successful vaccination campaigns. Researchers can investigate these issues further with the help of social media.

Read the full Research Article today on F1000Research or explore our Sociology of Vaccines Collection for further insights into the social and cultural issues surrounding vaccination.