Investigating the attitude and perspectives of Indian citizens toward COVID-19 vaccines: A text analytics study

Abstract

Background and aimsThe COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc and an unprecedented global health crisis worldwide. In order to minimize the COVID-19 severity, the government of India started its mass vaccination program on January 16, 2021. This study attempts to investigate the attitude, viewpoints, and concerns for different types of COVID-19 vaccines voiced in social media by Indian citizens using text analytics. MethodsThe study applied sentiment and emotion analysis methods on social media posts to uncover the attitude and perspectives of Indian citizens toward COVID-19 vaccines, namely “Covishield” and “Covaxin”. Furthermore, topic modeling was performed to gain insights about issues and concerns associated with different COVID-19 vaccines. ResultsSentiment analysis findings report that the majority of posts related to COVID-19 vaccines posted in social media by Indian citizens were in a neutral tone followed by a positive tone. In addition, findings of emotion analysis highlight that ‘Surprise’ was the noticeable emotion toward “Covaxin”, while ‘Sad’ and ‘Fear’ emotions were related to “Covishield”. Further, topic modeling results show that ‘vaccine effect’, ‘vaccine efficacy’, and ‘government's vaccine action plan’ are the key topics of concern toward both COVID-19 vaccines. ConclusionsThe study recommends that Indian government organizations should identify the citizen's concerns voiced in social media for different types of COVID-19 vaccines and develop a proactive action plan to expedite the vaccination drive. Subsequently, it would help them to improve future vaccination drives.