A review on perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine passports: A problem solver or a problem maker?

Abstract

The study aims to understand the approaches of Twitter users toward vaccination passports, explain the reasons for these approaches, and reveal the relationship between these approaches and sustainability. More than 104 thousand tweets and retweets from 56 different hashtags were obtained with the NVivo 12 program to achieve these goals. The analysis of these data was carried out with the inductive analysis method. According to the research results, there are three basic views on compulsory vaccination passports. These; Those who fully support vaccination passports, reject vaccination passports altogether, and reject mandatory passports. Those who fully support their vaccination passports; demonstrate this approach with the positive effect of vaccines on human health, the desire to return to social life, and the desire to revive the economy. Those who reject vaccination passports entirely and those who refuse to make these passports compulsory exhibit these approaches because of their vaccine hesitation, concerns about equality and discrimination, concerns about freedom, and the belief that new world order has been created. One of the actual results of the research is related to sustainability. According to this result, while those who support vaccination passports focus on economic and social sustainability, those who accept the social sustainability dimension associate the reason why these practices are compulsory with economic sustainability. According to them, governments, authorities and large commercial enterprises place profitability above public health.