Version 1
: Received: 25 March 2024 / Approved: 26 March 2024 / Online: 26 March 2024 (14:18:46 CET)
How to cite:
Inchi, L.; Rottman, A.; Zarecki, C. “The Right to Our Own Body Is Over”: Justifications of COVID-19 Vaccine Opponents on Israeli Social Media. Preprints2024, 2024031576. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1576.v1
Inchi, L.; Rottman, A.; Zarecki, C. “The Right to Our Own Body Is Over”: Justifications of COVID-19 Vaccine Opponents on Israeli Social Media. Preprints 2024, 2024031576. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1576.v1
Inchi, L.; Rottman, A.; Zarecki, C. “The Right to Our Own Body Is Over”: Justifications of COVID-19 Vaccine Opponents on Israeli Social Media. Preprints2024, 2024031576. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1576.v1
APA Style
Inchi, L., Rottman, A., & Zarecki, C. (2024). “The Right to Our Own Body Is Over”: Justifications of COVID-19 Vaccine Opponents on Israeli Social Media. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1576.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Inchi, L., Amit Rottman and Chen Zarecki. 2024 "“The Right to Our Own Body Is Over”: Justifications of COVID-19 Vaccine Opponents on Israeli Social Media" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1576.v1
Abstract
Vaccines decrease morbidity and mortality. Nevertheless, their benefits depend on public response. During COVID-19, vaccine hesitancy and refusal were rampant, threatening public health. A thorough understand-ing of opponents' arguments is required to address the diffusion of unreliable information on social media and prevent vaccine hesitancy from developing into vaccine refusal. Accordingly, the article examines vac-cine opponents' justifications on social media. Textual content analysis of reader comments on three health-related Israeli Facebook pages was conducted. Data collection encompassed the Israeli COVID-19 vaccination period from October 2020 to May 2022. The comments were analyzed according to the health beliefs model (HBM). We found that vaccine opponents were characterized by low perceptions of the severity of the disease combined with high perceptions of the damages of the vaccine; low perceived benefits of vac-cine compliance; vaccine hesitancy and fear along with public distrust as barriers to change; and call for ac-tion to resist the vaccine and spread related anti-establishment views on the web. As vaccination hesitancy was found to develop into public distrust in the state systems and escalate into conspiracy beliefs and an-ti-vaccination activism, its early detection may prevent future vaccine resistance.
Keywords
Vaccine hesitancy; vaccine opponents; COVID-19; public trust; health behavior; health beliefs model (HBM); social media; reader comments; Israel; conspiracy theories
Subject
Public Health and Healthcare, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
