The Associations Between Sources of Vaccine News and the Intention to Change Adherence to COVID-19 Preventive Health Measures

Although the scientific literature has extensively discussed the impact of the media on people’s health-related behaviors, there is little evidence of the effect of different sources of COVID-19 vaccine news on changing the intention to adhere to health protocols. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the sources of news on the COVID-19 vaccine and the association of each of these sources with the intention of changing adherence to COVID-19 preventive health measures (ICA-COVID-19-PHM).

This cross-sectional study was conducted on 1000 public population (67.4% female and 32.6% male) of Mazandaran province (age range: 18 to 60 years). The data were collected between January and April 2021 by completing an unidentified online “Google form” questionnaire via social media platforms, such as Telegram, WhatsApp, Soroush, ETA, and Instagram. The two-level linear regression analysis was used to examine the association between the sources of news on the COVID-19 vaccine and the ICA-COVID-19-PHM (social and personal aspects).

The most common sources of receiving news were mass media (radio and television with 54%) and virtual networks with 49%. The results showed the ICA-COVID-19-PHM for the news source via virtual workgroups was positive (B=1.36; 95% CI, 0.31%, 2.41%; P=0.01) and for the news sources via virtual networks (B=-0.83; 95% CI, -1.62%, -0.05%; P=0.04) and satellites and foreign news agencies (B=-1.50; 95% CI, -2.64%, -0.36%; P=0.01) was negative. While, the ICA-COVID-19-PHM was not significant (P>0.05) for other sources, such as groups of friends and neighbors, newspapers and magazines, radio and television, and news websites.

The management of news sources in epidemics is important because they have associations with adherence to preventive health measures. Policymakers should consider the distribution of vaccine news sources on the ICA-COVID-19-PHM.