Abstract
BackgroundAlthough COVID-19 vaccines have recently become available, efforts in global mass vaccination can be hampered by the widespread issue of vaccine hesitancy.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to use social media data to capture close-to-real-time public perspectives and sentiments regarding COVID-19 vaccines, with the intention to understand the key issues that have captured public attention, as well as the barriers and facilitators to successful COVID-19 vaccination.MethodsTwitter was searched for tweets related to “COVID-19” and “vaccine” over an 11-week period after November 18, 2020, following a press release regarding the first effective vaccine. An unsupervised machine learning approach (ie, structural topic modeling) was used to identify topics from tweets, with each topic further grouped into themes using manually conducted thematic analysis as well as guided by the theoretical framework of the COM-B (capability, opportunity, and motivation components of behavior) model. Sentiment analysis of the tweets was also performed using the rule-based machine learning model VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner).ResultsTweets related to COVID-19 vaccines were posted by individuals around the world (N=672,133). Six overarching themes were identified: (1) emotional reactions related to COVID-19 vaccines (19.3%), (2) public concerns related to COVID-19 vaccines (19.6%), (3) discussions about news items related to COVID-19 vaccines (13.3%), (4) public health communications about COVID-19 vaccines (10.3%), (5) discussions about approaches to COVID-19 vaccination drives (17.1%), and (6) discussions about the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines (20.3%). Tweets with negative sentiments largely fell within the themes of emotional reactions and public concerns related to COVID-19 vaccines. Tweets related to facilitators of vaccination showed temporal variations over time, while tweets related to barriers remained largely constant throughout the study period.ConclusionsThe findings from this study may facilitate the formulation of comprehensive strategies to improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake; they highlight the key processes that require attention in the planning of COVID-19 vaccination and provide feedback on evolving barriers and facilitators in ongoing vaccination drives to allow for further policy tweaks. The findings also illustrate three key roles of social media in COVID-19 vaccination, as follows: surveillance and monitoring, a communication platform, and evaluation of government responses.
Highlights
COVID-19 first presented as an atypical pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019
Six main themes could be identified from the tweets: (1) emotional reactions related to COVID-19 vaccines, (2) public concerns related to COVID-19 vaccines, (3) discussions about news related to COVID-19 vaccines, (4) public health communications about COVID-19 vaccines, (5) discussions about the approach to COVID-19 vaccination drives, and (6) discussions about the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines
Tweets that focused on barriers remained largely constant throughout the study period, with those related to motivation being more prevalent than those related to capability or opportunity
Summary
COVID-19 first presented as an atypical pneumonia of unknown cause in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019. Within a short time frame, the virus spread to multiple countries despite international efforts to contain it, resulting in significant death, psychological impact, and economic disruption around the world [1]. This led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020 [2], and a global pandemic on March 11, 2020 [3]. It is well known that vaccination drives are often hampered by the issue of “vaccine hesitancy,” whereby a large majority of population may have conflicting motivation or opposition to receive vaccines [7,8,9,10]. The findings illustrate three key roles of social media in COVID-19 vaccination, as follows: surveillance and monitoring, a communication platform, and evaluation of government responses
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