Perception of COVID-19 vaccine due to media influence and its impact

Background & Aims : Social media/mobile mass communications, while providing an unprecedented capacity for the masses to communicate, has also been a major drivers in the rise of fringe opinions very damaging to public health. Reconciling principles of freedom of speech with the usage of social media for damaging falsehoods remains a conundrum for nations. Hence it was desired to conduct a study with objective of determining the influence of social media on the perception of COVID-19 vaccine. Materials & Methods : An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted from May - July 2021 (duration three months) on those who gave consent and were eligible for vaccination according to the guidelines by ICMR (Indian council of medical research) and GOI (Government of India) Result : The majority of study participants 76.7% were aware of covid appropriate behaviour and preventive measures and around 61.8% of participants were aware of covid vaccination. The vast majority of the participants stated that they had obtained information about vaccinations (61.8%). The preferred method for acquiring information was social media (56.6%), followed by community health workers (15.6%), media-internet/news/television (15.3%) and very little importance to national guidelines through miking, pamphlets (5.6%). Conclusion: The impact of social media on the influence of covid vaccination was very disturbingly negative as a vast majority of study participants 60.7% tried to convince people to avoid vaccines after hearing about adverse events following vaccination through the social media platform.