BackgroundInternet sources are established gateways to information about vaccines. Social media platforms add to online health information repertoires beyond professionally curated websites. Online communities for parents are particularly relevant for the exchange about (childhood) vaccinations. They may serve as social support platforms, where parents provide informational, emotional, esteem and instrumental support to each other. Yet little is known about vaccine-related discussions on such

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... atforms.MethodsThe study is based on a large collection of vaccine-related discussions in the four most popular German online communities for parents from 2012 to 2019. The content was obtained with web scraping and prepared following standard procedures for quantitative text analysis. Structural topic models were used to identify aspects of the exchanges about vaccination in 98,505 discussion posts. Aspects were grouped to more general perspectives on vaccination by their co-occurrence. The qualitative interpretation of the topics was based on the most typical terms and posts.ResultsWe identified 27 aspects of the vaccination discussions, which could be sorted into four general perspectives. The general vaccination debate perspective (6 aspects, 24% of all content) covered aspects of the societal and public health debates between supporters and critics of vaccinations. The specific vaccinations perspective (8 aspects, 16%) included exchanges about vaccinations against specific diseases. The discussion of various vaccine-related practical issues was identified as another perspective (7 aspects, 20%). The relationship and communication perspective (6 aspects, 19%) collected ways to foster communicative relationships on the platforms.ConclusionVaccination was discussed from diverse perspectives in online communities for parents, ranging from general public health debates to specific and practical questions. The results indicated that the online exchanges fulfill a variety of social support functions. A structured overview of vaccine-related online discussions can inform public health communicators about parental needs, misinformation, concerns, and interests.