title: Communication about vaccinations in Italian websites: a quantitative analysis.
abstract: Babies' parents and people who look for information about vaccination often visit anti-vaccine movement's websites, blogs by naturopathic physicians or natural and alternative medicine practitioners. The aim of this work is to provide a quantitative analysis on the type of information available to Italian people regarding vaccination and a quality analysis of websites retrieved through our searches. A quality score was created to evaluate the technical level of websites. A research was performed through Yahoo, Google, and MSN using the keywords "vaccine" and "vaccination," with the function "OR" in order to identify the most frequently used websites. The 2 keywords were input in Italian, and the first 15 pages retrieved by each search engine were analyzed. 149 websites were selected through this methodology. Fifty-three per cent of the websites belonged to associations, groups, or scientific companies, 32.2% (n = 48) consisted of a personal blog and 14.8% (n = 22) belonged to some of the National Health System offices. Among all analyzed websites, 15.4% (n = 23) came from anti-vaccine movement groups. 37.6% reported webmaster name, 67.8% webmaster e-mail, 28.6% indicated the date of the last update and 46.6% the author's name. The quality score for government sites was higher on average than anti-vaccine websites; although, government sites don't use Web 2.0 functions, as the forums.: National Health System institutions who have to promote vaccination cannot avoid investing in web communication because it cannot be managed by private efforts but must be the result of Public Health, private and scientific association, and social movement synergy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Science and Human Oncology; Aldo Moro University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Silvio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tafuri
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Science and Human Oncology; Aldo Moro University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Gallone
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Science and Human Oncology; Aldo Moro University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Gallone
authors.affiliation: Education and Medical Science; Aldo Moro University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Zorico
authors.affiliation: Education and Medical Science; Aldo Moro University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Aiello
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Science and Human Oncology; Aldo Moro University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
authors.forename: Cinzia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Germinario
mesh_terms: D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000592:standards*; D007558:Italy / Q000453:epidemiology; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education*; D014611:Vaccination / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000592:standards*; D014612:Vaccines / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000627:therapeutic use*
chemical_list: D014612:Vaccines
keywords: antivaccinist; communication; internet; vaccination; web 2.0