Exploring the influence of social media postings on the uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine among Namibians

Abstract

The coronavirus (covid-19) mysterious pneumonia started happening in late 2019. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus a global pandemic on,11 March 2020 (Cucinotta,D., & Vanelli,M, 2020).The disease has caused a significant burden on mortality (Nuzhath, T., et al, 2020). Countries began to deploy covid-19 vaccines, as it is the most effective global preventive strategy to end the pandemic, Namibia is no exception. The vaccine raised serious questions about mortality on social media. Social media in this digital era plays a crucial role as a news source. The influence of social media postings on the uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine is identified as negative, misleading, and constantly spreading misinformation therefore, this results in vaccine hesitancy and resistance among people (Puri et al.). This present study attempts to determine the percentage of people that decided on whether to get vaccinated or not based on social media postings about the vaccine. It also attempts to determine the percentage of males and females that got influenced by the social media postings on the uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine. The researcher employed a quantitative research approach to determine the actual reality regarding the above questions being researched. In a quantitative survey, the researcher made use short answer responses, dichotomous questions, multiple choice answers, paragraphs, and pie charts. This study found that vaccine hesitancy is high due to negative social media postings. Specific future considerations, such as gatekeeping by social media developers should be done as well as criminalise the spread of false information or unqualified opinions to name a few were some of the recommendations made by the respondents .