Characterizing Responses to COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion on TikTok.

Purpose: The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) sponsored a TikTok contest to improve vaccination rates among young people. This analysis sought to advance understanding of COVID-19 vaccine perceptions among ADPH contestants and TikTok commenters.

Approach: This exploratory content analysis characterized sentiment and imagery in the TikTok videos and comments. Videos were coded by two reviewers and engagement metrics were collected for each video.

Setting: Publicly available TikTok videos entered into ADPH's contest with the hashtags #getvaccinatedAL and #ADPH between July 16 - August 6, 2021.

Participants: ADPH contestants (n = 44) and TikTok comments (n = 502).

Method: A content analysis was conducted; videos were coded by two reviewers and engagement metrics was collected for each video (e.g., reason for vaccination, content, type of vaccination received). Video comments were analyzed using VADER, a lexicon and rule-based sentiment analysis tool).

Results: Of 44 videos tagged with #getvaccinatedAL and #ADPH, 37 were related to the contest. Of the 37 videos, most cited family/friends and civic duty as their reason to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Videos were shared an average of 9 times and viewed 977 times. 70% of videos had comments, ranging from 0-61 (mean 44). Words used most in positively coded comments included, "beautiful," "smiling face emoji with 3 hearts," "masks," and "good.;" whereas words used most in negatively coded comments included "baby," "me," "chips," and "cold."

Conclusion: Understanding COVID-19 vaccine sentiment expressed on social media platforms like TikTok can be a powerful tool and resource for public health messaging.