SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCE AND THE ANTI-VACCINATION ATTITUDE OF THE PUBLIC MARKET VENDORS: A CORRELATIONAL STUDY

Social media has become a popular source of information, such as health information about COVID-19 and vaccines. As a result, social media affects an individual's intention to vaccinate (Argyris, 2021). In addition, according to Amy Boulanger (2017), the apprehensive vaccine group emerged on social media spreading anti-vaccination messages to the public.

This quantitative-correlational study aimed to determine the degree of influence of social media on the public market vendors' anti-vaccination attitude and their relationship to their extent of anti-vaccination attitude. As part of the inclusion criteria, there were forty (40) respondents taken for the study. Data were gathered through the use of Pearson product-moment correlation (Pearson r) was used to analyze the relationship between the social media's influence to respondents' anti-vaccination attitude and the extent of their attitude not to subject themselves to vaccination.

Findings revealed that there is a "high" degree of influence of social media on the respondents' anti-vaccination attitude, with an overall mean of 3.73, which is verbally described as "high". There is also a "high" extent of anti-vaccination attitude of the public market vendors with an overall mean of 3.90, which is verbally described as "high". Lastly, there is a moderate positive correlation between the level of influence of social media on the anti-vaccination attitude of the respondents and their extent of anti-vaccination attitude.