Social Media Perspectives on a Future HIV Vaccine: Mixed Methods Analysis

Area of Science:

• Public health communication
• Social media analysis
• Vaccinology

Background:

• Understanding public discourse on an HIV vaccine is vital for effective communication strategies.
• Social media platforms significantly shape public narratives, yet HIV vaccine discourse remains under-researched, particularly on TikTok.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare and characterize public discourse surrounding a future HIV vaccine on Twitter (X) and TikTok.
• To identify prevalent themes, sentiments, and rhetorical strategies for public health communication.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of over 400,000 tweets and 65,000 TikTok comments.
• Natural language processing applied to the 1000 most-liked posts on each platform.
• Coding of the top 500 posts for rhetorical strategies, sentiment, and themes.

Main Results:

• Both platforms exhibit expressions of hope and trust in science, alongside concerns about institutional corruption and conspiracy theories.
• Tweets were more linguistically complex, while TikTok comments required video context for interpretation.
• Prevalent rhetorical strategies included conspiracy theories, post hoc reasoning, and emotional appeals.

Conclusions:

• Platform-specific communication strategies are essential for addressing misinformation and fostering public trust in an HIV vaccine.
• Findings provide timely insights into emerging HIV vaccine discourse.
• Actionable opportunities exist for public health stakeholders to build trust and combat misinformation proactively.