Analyzing public perception toward COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia

Abstract

The research is prompted by the dearth of studies addressing public perceptions of various COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia using extensive datasets spanning and a wide timeframe. This study examined public perception toward COVID-19 vaccines in Indonesia using a dataset of tweets. We further detect whether there are any changes in sentiment toward each type of vaccine. The five most commonly used vaccines in Indonesia (AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, Sinopharm, and Sinovac) were analyzed for sentiment using a lexicon-based method: Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner (VADER), with changes in sentiment detected using Pruned Exact Linear Time (PELT). The 280,826 tweets collected between 2021 and 2022, 39% were positive, 18% were negative, and 43% were neutral. While Indonesian citizens generally responded positively and neutrally to each vaccine, with Sinopharm and Pfizer receiving the highest sentiment scores and AstraZeneca receiving the lowest, some change points in sentiment were associated with real-world events. Jakarta had the highest number of tweets (22%), while Maluku had the highest sentiment score (0.498). A significant positive correlation was also found between the total number of tweets and two variables: new cases of COVID-19 (r=0.9, p=0.001) and total new deaths caused by COVID-19 (r=0.8, p=0.008). Overall, the discussion of COVID-19 vaccines is still ongoing, and Indonesian citizens tend to respond neutrally and positively regardless of location or time.