| Although news media have distributed a large amount of information on the HPV vaccine, few studies have been conducted to understand the specific types of messages that might affect the beliefs and attitudes about the HPV vaccination. In addition, little is known about messages on the HPV vaccine distributed on YouTube, a popular representative of new media. In order to conduct content analysis of the news videos on YouTube, this study employed Witte's Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), which claims that a balance of threat and efficacy messages plays a significant role in positively affecting health attitudes and behaviors. By using coding categories of messages based on EPPM, this study examined the extent to which news videos on YouTube included threat and efficacious messages about the HPV vaccine. In order to investigate specific message types to positively affect the perceptions of viewers, this study also analyzed the difference between the number of messages in two sample groups, videos that have negative comments on the HPV vaccine and videos that have positive comments on the HPV vaccine. Findings indicated that the news videos on YouTube tended to cover more efficacious messages than fear-inducing messages. On average, a news video had the fewest severity messages (M=1.01), followed by self-efficacy (M=2.21), susceptibility (M=3.63), and response efficacy messages ( M=5.6). In addition, self-efficacy messages (t=-2.228, p≤.05) accounted for a significant difference between videos with overall negative comments and those with overall positive comments. |
