Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature

Baines et al., 202154Baines A Ittefaq M Abwao M. #Scamdemic, #Plandemic, or #Scaredemic: what parler social media platform tells us about COVID-19 vaccine.No location restrictionsNovember 2020 - January 2021Public postsParler(1)Reasons to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine (40%) - justifications with hesitancy statistics, no scientific reasons; (2)side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine (28%) - possible adverse reactions such as getting Bell's Palsy or even dying; (3)Population control through the COVID-19 vaccine (23%) - Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci using microchips; (4) Children getting vaccinated without parental consent (5%), (5) comparison of other health issues with COVID-19 (2%) - with other pandemics such as H1N1 and EbolaBaj-Rogowska 2021169Mapping of the Covid-19 vaccine uptake determinants from mining Twitter data.Poland1st to 30th May 2021Public posts in Polish languageTwitterCovid-19 vaccine acceptance depends mostly on the characteristics of new vaccines (i.e. their safety, side effects, effectiveness, etc.), and the national vaccination strategy (i.e. immunization schedules, quantities of vaccination points and their localization, etc.), which should focus on increasing citizens’ awareness, among various other factors.Bi et al., 202163Bi D. Kong J. Zhang X. Yang J. Analysis on health information acquisition of social network users by opinion mining: case analysis based on the discussion on COVID-19 vaccinations.ChinaDecember 2020 to April 2021Public postsDouban platformTopics around the negative attitude had the highest number of opinions, with a total of six kinds - the idea that the vaccine is “not yet mature and will have many side effects,” “the validity period of only six months is too short,” “clinical trials are only going into phase three,” “other vaccines are being used, or I have a fear of any vaccine,” “the current method for controlling the situation in China is safer, so I think it is unnecessary to be vaccinated,” and “I have relevant medical history, and it is not convenient for me to be injected with vaccines.” The main attitudes of this positive view are “The vaccine has no side effects or the side effects are small,” “the country currently implements free vaccination,” “the sample size of injections is already large,” “the vaccine is an inactivated vaccine and thus very safe,” and “everyone meets the requirements. People with conditions should be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.”Bonnevie et al., 202043Bonnevie E. Gallegos-Jeffrey A. Goldbarg J. Byrd B. Smyser J. Quantifying the rise of vaccine opposition on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic.USAComparison of data obtained from the four months prior to the COVID-19 increase in the USA (15 October 2019–14 February 2020) to the subsequent four months (15 February 2020–14 June 2020)Public postsTwitter(1)Negative health impacts of vaccination (SIDS, autism, etc.); (2)Pharma industry: overall, or a specific pharmaceutical company; (3)Policies & Politics: related to state or national vaccine requirements such as ColoradoSB163; (4) Vaccine Ingredients: within vaccines, such as toxins, mercury, or lead; (5)Federal Health Authorities: such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration; (6)Research & Clinical Trials: related to vaccines, such as studies showing negative health outcomes; (7)Religion: in reference to vaccination or vaccine exemptions; (8)Vaccine Safety: Concerns or questions around the safety of vaccines; (9)Disease Prevalence: predominantly around vaccine-caused diseases; for example, vaccine-derived poliovirus; (10)School: School grades or levels, homeschooling or vaccine requirements; (11) Family: The impacts of vaccination on family members. There was a decrease in opposition conversation from 1st to the 2nd time point in themes 1–3, 7–11, and an increase in 4–6Boucher et al., 202144Boucher J.C. Cornelson K. Benham J.L. et al.Analyzing social media to explore the attitudes and behaviors following the announcement of successful COVID-19 vaccine trials: infodemiology study.NRNovember 2020, after the announcement of initial COVID-19 vaccine trialsPublic posts (English and French)TwitterVaccine hesitancy topics: safety, efficacy, and freedom, and mistrust in institutions, safety and efficacy of mRNA technology and side effects. Nearly one-third (45,628/146,191, 31.2%) of the conversations on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy clusters expressed concerns for freedom or mistrust of institutions (either the government or multinational corporations) and nearly a quarter (34,756/146,191, 23.8%) expressed criticism toward the government's handling of the pandemic.Criss et al., 202158Criss S Nguyen TT Norton S et al.Advocacy, hesitancy, and equity: exploring u.s. race-related discussions of the COVID-19 vaccine on twitter.NRFrom October 2020 to January 2021Public postsTwitterThe tweets revealed vaccine support through vaccine affirmation, advocacy through reproach, a need for a vaccine, COVID-19 and racism, vaccine development and efficacy, racist vaccine humor, and news updates. Vaccine opposition was demonstrated through direct opposition, vaccine hesitancy, and adverse reactions. Conspiracy and misinformation included scientific misinformation, political misinformation, beliefs about immunity and protective behaviors, and race extermination conspiracy. Equity and access focused on overcoming history of medical racism, pointing out health disparities, and facilitators to vaccine access. Representation touted pride in development and role models, and politics discussed the role of politics in vaccines and international politics.Engel-Rebitzer et al., 202228Engel-Rebitzer E. Stokes D.C. Meisel Z.F. Purtle J. Doyle R. Buttenheim A.M. Partisan differences in legislators' discussion of vaccination on twitter during the COVID-19 era: natural language processing analysis.USABetween February 01, 2020, and December 11, 202014,519 tweets generated by 1463 state legislators and 521 federal legislatorsTwitterThe topics with the highest percent topic representation were (1) Operation Warp Speed success; (2) vaccine effectiveness; (3) COVID-19 vaccine updates; (4) COVID-19 relief package content; and (5) non-pharmaceutical interventions as a bridge to vaccines.Ginossar et al., 2022166Ginossar T. Cruickshank I.J. Zheleva E. Sulskis J. Berger-Wolf T. Cross-platform spread: vaccine-related content, sources, and conspiracy theories in YouTube videos shared in early Twitter COVID-19 conversations.NRBetween 1 February and 23 June 2020930,539 unique tweets in English that discussed vaccinations posted out of which links to 2097 unique YouTube videos that were tweeted were identified and analyzedYouTube videos posted on TwitterFollowing the World Health Organization's declaration of the COVID-19 outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern, anti-vaccination frames rapidly transitioned from claiming that vaccines cause autism to pandemic conspiracy theories, often featuring Bill Gates. Content analysis of the 20 most tweeted videos revealed that the majority (n 15) opposed vaccination and included conspiracy theories. Their spread on Twitter was consistent with spamming and coordinated efforts. These findings show the role of cross-platform sharing of YouTube videos over Twitter as a strategy to propagate primarily anti-vaccination messages.Griffith et al., 2021170Griffith J. Marani H. Monkman H. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Canada: content analysis of Tweets using the theoretical domains framework.CanadaDecember 2020Public postsTwitterVaccine hesitancy themes: concerns over safety, suspicion about political or economic forces driving the COVID-19 pandemic or vaccine development, a lack of knowledge about the vaccine, anti-vaccine or confusing messages from authority figures, and a lack of legal liability from vaccine companies. This study also examined mistrust toward the medical industry not due to hesitancy, but due to the legacy of communities marginalized by health care institutions.Guntuku et al., 2021171Guntuku S.C. Buttenheim A.M. Sherman G. Merchant R.M. Twitter discourse reveals geographical and temporal variation in concerns about COVID-19 vaccines in the United States.USABetween December 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021Public postsTwitterUrban suburbs posted about equitable distribution in communities, college towns talked about in-clinic vaccinations near universities, evangelical hubs posted about operation warp speed and thanking God, exurbs posted about the 2020 election, Hispanic centers posted about concerns around food and water, and counties in the ACP African American South posted about issues of trust, hesitancy, and history. The graying America ACP community posted about the federal government's failures; rural middle American counties posted about news press conferences. Topics related to allergic and adverse reactions, misinformation around Bill Gates and China, and issues of trust among Black Americans in the healthcare system were more prevalent in December, topics related to questions about mask wearing, reaching herd immunity and natural infection, and concerns about nursing home residents and workers increased in January, and themes around access to black communities, waiting for appointments, keeping family safe by vaccinating and fighting online misinformation campaigns were more prevalent in February.Herrera-Peco et al., 202156Herrera-Peco I Jiménez-Gómez B Romero Magdalena CS et al.Antivaccine movement and COVID-19 negationism: a content analysis of Spanish-written messages on twitter.NADecember 2020Public posts written in Spanish language, under the hashtag #yonomevacunoTwitterVaccine hesitancy topics: 1) vaccines are not safe (63.36% of tweets), 2) the vaccine effectiveness is questionable (8.9%), and 3) vaccines are business (8.7%), as well as 4) tweets which divulged unverified information framed as beliefs about the effect and even the production and transport of the vaccines (18.83%).Hou et al., 202157Assessing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, confidence, and public engagement: a global social listening study.New York (United States), London (United Kingdom), Mumbai (India), and Sao Paulo (Brazil), and Beijing (China)June/July 2020Posts from Twitter from New York (United States), London (United Kingdom), Mumbai (India), and Sao Paulo (Brazil), and Sina Weibo posts from Beijing (China)Twitter and Sina Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter)Hesitancy topics: New York - a lack of confidence in vaccine safety, distrust in governments and experts, and widespread misinformation or rumors; Mumbai, São Paulo, and Beijing - vaccine production and supply; New York and London - vaccine distribution and inequity. Negative tweets expressing lack of vaccine confidence and misinformation or rumors had more followers and attracted more public engagement online.Hughes et al., 2021172Hughes B Miller-Idriss C Piltch-Loeb R Goldberg B White K Criezis M Savoia E. Development of a codebook of online anti-vaccination rhetoric to manage COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.NRNRPublic posts and videosYouTube, Twitter, Facebook and InstagramThis study identified twenty-two narrative tropes coded, out of which, four key common narrative tropes were: (1) “Vaccine Injury'' - these injuries were often vaguely described and only infrequently accompanied by claims to an actual diagnosis of malady. (2) “Corrupt Elite” - this offered a standard populist appeal in which an innocent put disempowered “silent majority” suffer under the tyranny of a powerful and corrupt minority) (3) “Heroes and Freedom Fighters” - presenting anti-vaccine or COVID-denialist medical doctors (as well as chiropractors and naturopaths) as brave whistleblowers, risking their reputations and careers by speaking truth to power) and (4) “Sinister Motives.” Of the sixteen rhetorical strategies coded, four key, common rhetorical strategies were: (1) the “Brave Truth Teller,” (2) “Do Your Own Research (DYOR)” - DYOR works by trying to empower the audience to develop their own bodies of evidence and methods of reasoning in order to reach a preordained conclusion; (3) “Mountains and Molehills” - in this rhetorical strategy, vaccines’ risks and benefits are presented without a proper sense of proportion) and (4) “A Global Movement/Sleeping Giants” - honest, everyday citizens who are on the cusp of rising up against an oppressive “global elite”—was a common rhetorical strategy that cut across narratives targeting all categories of antagonists.Jacobs et al., 202148Jacobs K.D. Zori G. Collins S.L. Wood E. Exploration of the COVID-19 content within a vaccine choice social media platform: a case study.NRBetween January 1, 2020 and May 1, 2020Public postsFacebookPersonal freedom was the most prevalent theme, followed by vaccine safety and private/government involvement.Jiang et al., 2021173Jiang L.C. Chu T.H. Sun M. Characterization of vaccine tweets during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in the united states: topic modeling analysis.USAFebruary 21 to March 20, 2020Public postsTwitterSeven major topics - 26.3% (26,234/100,209) of the tweets as News Related to Coronavirus and Vaccine Development, 25.4% (25,425/100,209) as General Discussion and Seeking of Information on Coronavirus, 12.9% (12,882/100,209) as Financial Concerns, 12.7% (12,696/100,209) as Venting Negative Emotions, 9.9% (9908/100,209) as Prayers and Calls for Positivity, 8.1% (8155/100,209) as Efficacy of Vaccine and Treatment, and 4.9% (4909/100,209) as Conspiracies about Coronavirus and Its Vaccines. Different themes demonstrated some changes over time, mostly in close association with news or events related to vaccine developments. Twitter users who discussed conspiracy theories, the efficacy of vaccines and treatments, and financial concerns had more followers than those focused on other vaccine themes.Klimiuk et al., 202147Klimiuk K. Czoska A. Biernacka K. Balwicki Ł. Vaccine misinformation on social media–topic-based content and sentiment analysis of Polish vaccine-deniers’ comments on Facebook.PolandMay/July 2019Public comments posted to a leading Polish vaccination opponents’ Facebook pageFacebookOut of 18,685 comments analyzed, 4042 contained the following themes: conspiracy theories (28.2%), misinformation and unreliable premises (19.9%), content related to the safety and effectiveness of vaccinations (14.0%), noncompliance with civil rights (13.2%), own experience (10.9%), morality, religion, and belief (8.5%), and alternative medicine (5.4%). There were also 1223 pro-vaccine comments, of which 15.2% were offensive, mocking, or non-substantive.Küçükali et al., 202262Küçükali H Ataç Ö Palteki AS Tokaç AZ Hayran O. Vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination attitudes during the start of COVID-19 vaccination program: a content analysis on twitter data.TurkeyBetween 9 December 2020 and 8 January 2021Public postsTwitter90.5% of the tweets were about vaccines, 22.6% (n 213) of the tweets mentioned at least one COVID-19 vaccine by name, and the most frequently mentioned COVID-19 vaccine was CoronaVac (51.2%). 22.0% (n 207) of the tweets included at least one anti-vaccination theme. Poor scientific processes (21.7%), conspiracy theories (16.4%), and suspicions towards manufacturers (15.5%) were the most frequently mentioned themes. The most co-occurring themes were “poor scientific process” with “suspicion towards manufacturers” (n 9), and “suspicion towards health authorities” (n 5).Lee et al., 2021174Lee C.S. Goh D.H.L. Tan H.W. Zheng H. Theng Y.L. Understanding the temporal effects on tweetcussion of COVID-19 vaccine.NRNovember 1, 2020, to November 16, 2020Public postsTwitterNine topics were identified from the LDA topic modeling approach comprising T1: Administration of local vaccine program, T2: Complementary measures to vaccine, T3: Social aspects of vaccine, T4: Efficacy of vaccine, T5: Global distribution and access of vaccine, T6: Myths about vaccine, T7: Legal and economic aspect of vaccine, T8: Pace of vaccine development and T9: Political aspects of vaccine. There were temporal differences in the nine topics depending on the events.Liew and Lee, 202161Examining the utility of social media in COVID-19 vaccination: unsupervised learning of 672,133 twitter posts.NR11-week period after November 18, 2020, following a press release regarding the first effective vaccinePublic postsTwitterTweets 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.Liu and Liu 202153Leveraging transfer learning to analyze opinions, attitudes, and behavioral intentions toward covid-19 vaccines: social media content and temporal analysis.NRNovember 2020Public postsTwitterTheme regarding capability: lack of users’ knowledge about the COVID-19 vaccines and influence by misinformation (such as alteration of DNA by mRNA vaccines, causing sterility, containing microchips, etc.); concern about side effects/long term health implications. Physical opportunities category - lack of will to pay for the vaccine, refuse mandatory vaccination, concern over availability of information. Behavioral intentions category - consideration that the disease was not severe or life-threatening and the vaccine was not effective (because of low efficiency and mutation of the virus), consideration that the rushed vaccine to be more harmful than COVID-19.Monselise et al., 202160Monselise M Chang CH Ferreira G Yang R Yang CC. Topics and sentiments of public concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccines: social media trend analysis.NRExactly 60 days starting from December 16, 2020Public postsTwitter12 important topics were selected for analysis. The 3 most important topics with the highest topic ratio were “Vaccination of Frontline Workers,” “Access of Vaccines–Signing Up Online,” and “South African Variant.” The other topics were mostly related to the concerns about the vaccines as well as their supply and distribution. There were also topics related to the stimulus plan, profits of pharmaceutical companies, and conspiracy theories. Through the trend analysis, it was found that the peaks of the topics were impacted by the events reported in the news and spread through social media.Shim et al., 202150Shim J.G. Ryu K.H. Lee S.H. Cho E.A. Lee Y.J. Ahn J.H. Text mining approaches to analyze public sentiment changes regarding COVID-19 vaccines on social media in Korea.KoreaFebruary - March 2020Public postsTwitterIdentified topics: vaccine hesitancy” - the most frequent topic with a 14.2% relative weight; followed by “development of vaccine” (13.1%) and “quarantine prevention policy” (13.0%); “efficacy of vaccination” (12.6%), “priority vaccination of hospital workers” (12.0%), “media on COVID-19 vaccines” (11.9%), “medical association's response” (11.8%), and “adverse reactions” (11.4%)Tang et al., 202129Tang L. Douglas S. Laila A. Among sheeples and antivaxxers: social media responses to COVID-19 vaccine news posted by Canadian news organizations, and recommendations to counter vaccine hesitancy.CanadaBetween July and September 2020Public posts on the Twitter and Facebook accounts of six Canadian news organizationsTwitter and FacebookFour main themes were identified: 1) COVID-19 vaccine safety and efficacy concerns; 2) conspiracy theories stemming from mistrust in government and other organizations; 3) a COVID-19 vaccine is unnecessary because the virus is not dangerous; and 4) trust in COVID-19 vaccines as a safe solution. Theme 1 captured concerns about perceived factors that may influence the safety and efficacy of the vaccine including political pressures, development speed and testing, ingredients and potential immune-escaping variants. Theme 2 characterized the conspiracy theories, including microchips and changes to DNA, expressed on social media rooted in a general mistrust of government and organizations involved in COVID-19 vaccine development. Theme 3 captured the level of concern related to the perceived seriousness of becoming infected with COVID-19 expressed on social media. Commenters felt that severity was being over exaggerated and a healthy immune system was sufficient to overcome the virus. A minority of commenters expressed confidence in COVID-19 vaccines to prevent infection. Those with confidence in the vaccine conveyed trust in science and their healthcare professional, expressed concerns about potential long-term COVID-19 effects and felt that the vaccine was necessary to return to normal.Thelwall et al., 202146Thelwall M Kousha K Thelwall S. Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy on english-language twitter.Most of the tweets with a user declaring a location (80%) were from the USA, UK and Canada.March - December 2020Public (vaccine hesitant) postsTwitterThe three major vaccine hesitation topics on Twitter accounted for half (50.2%) of the 446 tweets manually categorised: conspiracies (23.5%), development speed (16.1%) and safety (10.5%). Conspiracies - microchips, population control; development speed - due to the fast pace of vaccine approval, users considered it unsafe. Category efficacy - users argued that it is pointless to receive the vaccine as they belong to a low risk category of COVID-19 symptoms, thus not considering the fact of transmission, other doubt in the efficacy due to the mutation of the virus. Surprisingly, a substantial minority of tweets were simple statements that the tweeter would not take a Covid-19 vaccine, without giving a reason. Of the 117 vaccine hesitant tweeters, most (67) mentioned the deep state concept in at least one of their tweets and a further 12 tweeted general right-wing politics. A few focused on (Christian) religion (3), frequently tweeted anti-vaxxer sentiments (6), anti-lockdown (3) or anti-abortion (1).Tsao et al., 2022167Tsao S.F. MacLean A. Chen H. Li L. Yang Y. Butt Z.A. Public attitudes during the second lockdown: sentiment and topic analyses using tweets from Ontario, Canada.CanadaFrom December 5, 2020, to March 6, 2021Public posts (569,467 from Toronto and 141,469 from Ottawa)Twitter6 topics emerged - opinions toward COVID-19 vaccine approval, access, availability, etc.; impacts of the COVID-19 on life; reviews, supports, and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses, markets, and economics; opinions toward the second lockdown; opinions toward wearing masks; things happened in Ontario. There were temporal variations in the sentiments of the topics, depending on some key events (such as Christmass, vaccine accessibility etc.).Wong et al., 202151Wong LP Lin Y Alias H Bakar SA Zhao Q Hu Z. COVID-19 Anti-vaccine sentiments: analyses of comments from social media.NR16 November 20203652 comments from the two BBC postings and 1728 comments from CNN were extracted from Instagram. A total of 4325 comments from a BBC posting on Facebook were extractedInstagram and Facebook - comments from CNN and BBC pagesThe analyses uncovered several major issues concerning COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The production of the COVID-19 vaccine at an unprecedented speed evoked the fear of skipping steps that would compromise vaccine safety. The unknown long-term effects and duration of protection erode confidence in taking the vaccines. There were also persistent concerns with regard to vaccine compositions that could be harmful or contain aborted foetal cells. The rate of COVID-19 death was viewed as low. Many interpreted the 95% effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine as insufficient. Preference for immunity gains from having an infection was viewed as more effective. Peer-reviewed publication-based data were favoured as a source of trust in vaccination decision-making.Yin et al., 202155Yin F Wu Z Xia X Ji M Wang Y Hu Z Unfolding the determinants of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance in China.ChinaJanuary to October 2020Weibo messagesWeibo (Chinese Twitter)Topics 1: price - Weibo users claimed that the vaccine was overpriced, making up 18.3% (n 899) of messages; 38.1% (n 81,909) of relevant topics on Weibo received likes. On the contrary, the number of messages that considered the vaccine to be reasonably priced was twice as high but received fewer likes, accounting for 25.0% (n 53,693). Topic 2: side effects - 441 (47.7%) positive and 295 (31.9%) negative Weibo messages about side effects. Interestingly, inactivated vaccines instigated more heated discussions than any other vaccine type.Zakharchenko et al., 2022168Zakharchenko O. Avramenko R. Zakharchenko A. et al.Multifaceted nature of social media content propagating COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: Ukrainian case.UkraineFrom September-November 2020Dataset gathered by the Center for the Content Analysis containing almost 64,000 posts from social media, namely, Facebook, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, YouTube, and TelegramFacebook, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Twitter, YouTube, and Telegram5 information campaigns: 1)Anti-vaccine narrative: the messages of this campaign apply specific frightening fake reasoning about 'world government's plans, dangerous manufacturing, and so on. 2)Official campaigns by WHO and by the Ministry of Heals - these messages formed anticipation of vaccines and covered not just efficiency issues but also economic and lifestyle implications of mass immunization. 3)President Zelenskiy - Ministry's support to the Ukrainian team of vaccine developers and the unicity of Ukrainian vaccines. Some esteemed doctors related skepticism to these statements and called them just an electoral instrument to help the president's party win these elections. 4) Sputnik V - this vaccine is considered a Russian geopolitical instrument in a hybrid war. The campaign aims to defy all western vaccines and stress the importance of Russia's contribution to COVID-19 overcoming. Specifically for Ukraine, they also defamed the hypothetical Ukrainian vaccine promised by Zelenskiy. 5)Ukrainian social media users campaign - this campaign was conducted by bloggers and journalists and made fun of the Russian vaccine and emphasized that it was not tested enough, so it is potentially dangerousZhang et al., 2021175Zhang J. Wang Y. Shi M. Wang X. Factors driving the popularity and virality of COVID-19 vaccine discourse on Twitter: text mining and data visualization study.USAJanuary 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021Public postsTwitterThe regression analyses showed that 8 topics positively predicted likes and 7 topics positively predicted retweets, among which the topic of vaccine development and people's views and that of vaccine efficacy and rollout had relatively larger effects. Network analysis and visualization revealed that the 2500 most liked and most retweeted retweets clustered around the topics of vaccine access, vaccine efficacy and rollout, vaccine development and people's views, and vaccination status. The overall valence of the tweets was positive.Anti-vaccine and Pro-vaccine viewsReferenceLocationStudy PeriodStudy ContentSocial Media UtilizedMain ResultsBlane et al., 202272Blane JT Bellutta D Carley KM. Social-Cyber maneuvers during the COVID-19 vaccine initial rollout: content analysis of tweets.NR1-week periods before, during, and 6 weeks after the initial Pfizer-BioNTech rollout (December 2020 to January 2021)Public postsTwitterBoth the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine communities used combinations of the 16 BEND maneuvers to persuade their target audiences of their particular stances. Our analysis showed how each side attempted to build its own community while simultaneously narrowing and neglecting the opposing community. Pro-vaccine users primarily used positive maneuvers such as excite and explain messages to encourage vaccination and backed leaders within their group. In contrast, anti-vaccine users relied on negative maneuvers to dismay and distort messages with narratives on side effects and death and attempted to neutralize the effectiveness of the leaders within the pro-vaccine community. Furthermore, nuking through platform policies showed to be effective in reducing the size of the anti-vaccine online community and the quantity of anti-vaccine messages.Durmaz and Hengirmen, 202279The dramatic increase in anti-vaccine discourses during the COVID-19 pandemic: a social network analysis of Twitter.TurkeyTwo datasets: June 1, 2019, and March 11, 2020, and March 11, 2020, and January 1, 2021Public posts gathered before COVID-19 and after the start of COVID-19.TwitterIn the pre-COVID-19 network, media figures and authors who had anti-vaccine views were the most influential users. In the post-COVID-19 network, the Turkish minister of health was the most influential figure. After COVID-19, there was a huge increase in these numbers. After COVID-19, anti-vaccine supporters were 22 times greater than pro-vaccine supporters. In addition, anti-vaccination supporters made up 26.51% of the networks in the post-COVID-19 network compared to 1.7% in the pre-COVID-19 network.Germani and Biller-Andorno, 202180Germani F. Biller-Andorno N. The anti-vaccination infodemic on social media: a behavioral analysis.NRNRControl, anti-Vaccine and pro-Vaccine groups contained 50 profiles for each group which were identified automatically through the use of hashtags.TwitterAnti-vaccination supporters are more engaged in discussions on Twitter and share their contents from a pull of strong influencers. The movement's success relies on a strong sense of community, based on the contents produced by a small fraction of profiles, with the community at large serving as a sounding board for anti-vaccination discourse to circulate online. The data demonstrate that Donald Trump, before his profile was suspended, was the main driver of vaccine misinformation on Twitter.Gokhale 2020180Monitoring the perception of Covid-19 vaccine using topic models.NAMay 20, 2020, a few days after President Trump announced the “Operation Warp Speed” initiativePublic postsTwitterAnti-vaccination tweets lead to four themes: 1) lack of safety especially due to rushed development, 2) conspiracy and conflict of interest, 3) ideology, globalism and new world order, and 4) loss of personal choice and freedom. Pro-vaccination tweets try to convince skeptics by touting prior success of immunizations and express concern at the rise of anti-vaxx movement on Facebook and Twitter. Furthermore, they accuse anti-vaxxers of spreading falsehoods and misinformation. In addition to these concerns, however, pro-vaxxers mock, ridicule and insult anti-vaxxers in unflattering, disrespectful and derogatory tones.Hernandez et al., 202178Hernandez R.G. Hagen L. Walker K. O'Leary H. Lengacher C The COVID-19 vaccine social media infodemic: healthcare providers’ missed dose in addressing misinformation and vaccine hesitancy.NAJuly 2020Public postsTwitterResults show highly polarized and active anti vaccine conversations that were primarily influenced by political and nonmedical Twitter users. Less than 10% of the tweets stemmed from the medical community, demonstrating a lack of active health care professional connectivity in addressing COVID-19 misinformation. The authors introduce the concept of Health Care Provider Social Media Hesitancy to refer to the public health threat of health care providers' nonaction in providing pro-vaccine and scientific information about the vaccine on social media.Herrera-Peco et al., 2021177Herrera-Añazco P. Uyen-Cateriano Á. Urrunaga-Pastor D. et al.Prevalence and factors associated with the intention to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in Peru.SpainBetween 14 December and 28 December 2020Tweets containing the hashtag #yomevacunoTwitterThe results show that healthcare professionals represent only 11.38% of users, being responsible for 6.35% of impressions generated by the network #yomevacuno. We can observe that traffic information generated by healthcare professionals is not significant in comparison with institutions (p 0.633), but it is compared to common users (p 0.0014).From original content generated by healthcare professionals, only 78.95% had a favorable storytelling on the vaccine, but without sharing information about vaccines or vaccination.Jamison et al., 202071Jamison A.M. Broniatowski D.A. Dredze M. Sangraula A. Smith M.C. Quinn S.C. Not just conspiracy theories: vaccine opponents and proponents add to the COVID-19 ‘infodemic'on Twitter.NAFebruary 2020Posts from 2000 most active Twitter accounts in the vaccine discourse from 2019, identifying both vaccine opponents and proponentsTwitter45% (n 905) of the accounts opposed vaccination, 24% (n 479) were in favor of vaccination, 15% (n 311) were no longer publicly available on Twitter, and 15% (n 305) did not indicate a clear position on vaccines. Only 17% of this sample appeared to be bots. Topics were categorized as: more reliable (public health updates & news), less reliable (discussion), and unreliable (misinformation). Misinformation included conspiracy theories, unverifiable rumors, and scams promoting untested prevention/cures. Vaccine opponents shared the greatest proportion (35.4%) of unreliable information topics including a mix of conspiracy theories, rumors, and scams. Vaccine proponents shared a much lower proportion of unreliable information topics (11.3%).Johnson et al., 202076Johnson N.F. Velasquez N. Restrepo N.J. et al.The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views.NANRPublic postsFacebook pagesAlthough smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral. The theoretical framework of this study reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade.Kwok et al., 202170Kwok SWH Vadde SK Wang G. Tweet topics and sentiments relating to COVID-19 vaccination among australian twitter users: machine learning analysis.AustraliaJanuary and October 2020Public postsTwitterNearly two-thirds of the sentiments of all tweets expressed a positive public opinion about the COVID-19 vaccine; around one-third were negative. Vaccine supporters - they considered that measures should be taken to cope with the rising number of infections, deaths, health care burden, and costs due to COVID-19. They scorned those who pretended to be experts or posted misinformation such as claiming that deaths from COVID-19 were attributable to other diseases. Vaccine hesitant - were skeptical about conspiracy theories such as the “mark of the beast” and microchips in vaccines. The sudden pause of vaccine trials also triggered worries among users about the safety of vaccination. Some Twitter users claimed that they would not get vaccinated because of previous experience with vaccination-related adverse effects. Other Twitter users disregarded COVID-19, expressing that COVID-19 had a much lower death rate than the flu, thus making it insignificant for vaccination, which they deemed would only benefit pharmaceutical firms or be politicized.Liu et al., 202152Understanding behavioral intentions toward COVID-19 vaccines: theory-based content analysis of tweets.NRNovember 1, 2020 to January 31, 2021Public postsTwitterTopics related to negative attitudes: safety issues of the COVID-19 vaccines, unknown side effects, rushing the development process. Some users even questioned the existence of COVID-19 or COVID-19 vaccines and indicated a lack of trust in the government or scientists. Some users feared that the virus mutation would render the vaccine ineffective and thus had negative attitudes toward vaccines. Topics related to positive attitudes: relevant key terms included “safe,” “stay,” “end,” pandemic,” “news,” “effective,” “trial,” “continue,” and “hope.” This indicates that some positive attitudes might be derived from news of effective trial results and some users hoped that COVID-19 vaccines could end the pandemic. Relevant terms for topic 4 were “hope,” “normal,” “life,” “return,” “start,” “new,” “world,” and “great.” Some users expressed positive attitudes toward vaccines because of the desire to return to a normal life.Lyu et al., 2022176Lyu H. Wang J. Wu W. et al.Social media study of public opinions on potential COVID-19 vaccines: informing dissent, disparities, and dissemination.USASeptember 28 to November 4, 2020Public postsTwitterOverall, 57.65% (6218 of 25,407) are pro-vaccine, 19.30% (2469 of 25,407) are vaccine-hesitant, and the rest are anti-vaccine. Socioeconomically disadvantaged groups were more likely to hold polarized opinions on COVID-19 vaccines, either pro-vaccine (p<0.001,OR1.49;95%CI1.26–1.75) or anti-vaccine (p<0.001,OR1.69;95%CI1.49–1.91). People who had the worst personal pandemic experience were more likely to hold the anti-vaccine opinion (p<0.001,OR0.84;95%CI0.77–0.90). The US public is most concerned about the safety, effectiveness, and political issues regarding vaccines for COVID-19, and improving personal pandemic experience increases the vaccine acceptance level.Muric et al., 202164Muric G. Wu Y. Ferrara E. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy on social media: building a public twitter data set of antivaccine content, vaccine misinformation, and conspiracies.NROctober 2020 and December 2020Data set of Twitter posts and Twitter accounts that publicly exhibit a strong anti vaccine stanceTwitterAnti Vaccine Narratives - 3 distinct communities identified; all of them contained anti vaccine keywords, but with different focuses on topics. The largest topic community focuses on debunked claims around the conspiracy narrative that the vaccine is a plot by rich people to reduce the world population. The second topic community mostly focuses on vaccine safety, as hashtags such as #doctorsspeakup, #vaccinesafety, and #vaccineinjury appear often. The smallest topic community contains a mixture of various hashtags that range from strongly antivaccine, such as #informedconsent, #learntherisk, and #vaxxed, to some neutral hashtags, such as #vaccine, to some provaccine hashtags, such as #vaccineswork.Paul and Gokhale 202074Analysis and classification of vaccine dialogue in the coronavirus era.NAMay 2020Public postsTwitterThe anti vaccination community is vociferous in opposing the vaccine, spreading misinformation, spinning conspiracies and whipping hysteria. Significant hesitation about the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine is also expressed in particular because of its rapid deployment. The pro-vaccination community counters this opposition by pointing to prior successes of immunizations as well as by mocking the anti-vaxx attitudes. A comparison of the social features of the anti-vaccination and pro-vaccination tweets suggests that the anti-vaxx community has gained steam on social media platforms and is better connected than the pro-vaccination community, which may lead to a penetration of discordant information through the online world.Scannell et al., 202166Scannell D. Desens L. Guadagno M. et al.COVID-19 vaccine discourse on twitter: a content analysis of persuasion techniques, sentiment and mis/disinformation.NRJuly 14–23, 2020Public postsTwitterResults found Anti-Vaccine messages predominantly used Anecdotal stories, Humor/Sarcasm, and Celebrity figures as persuasion techniques, while Pro-Vaccine messages primarily used Information, Celebrity figures, and Participation. Results also showed the Anti-Vaccine messages primarily focused on values related to the categories of Safety, Political/Conspiracy Theories, and Choice. Finally, results revealed Anti-Vaccine messages primarily used Perceived Severity and Perceived Susceptibility, which are fear appeal elements. The findings for messages by bots were comparable to the messages in the larger corpus of tweets.Sear et al., 202075Sear R.F. Velasquez N. Leahy R. et al.Quantifying COVID-19 content in the online health opinion war using machine learning.NAJanuary - February 2020Public postsFacebook pagesThe anti-vaccination community is developing a less focused debate around COVID-19 than its counterpart, the pro-vaccination community. However, the anti-vaccination community exhibits a broader range of “flavors” of COVID-19 topics, and hence can appeal to a broader cross-section of individuals seeking COVID-19 guidance online, e.g. individuals wary of a mandatory fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine or those seeking alternative remedies. Hence the anti-vaccination community looks better positioned to attract fresh support going forward than the pro-vaccination community.Wawrzuta et al., 2021178Wawrzuta D Jaworski M Gotlib J Panczyk M. What arguments against COVID-19 vaccines run on facebook in Poland: content analysis of comments.PolandFive events of the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines—announcements of the efficacy of the Pfizer-BioNTech (09.11.2020), Moderna (16.11.2020), and AstraZeneca (23.11.2020) vaccines, registration of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by the European Medicines Agency (21.12.2020), and the first vaccination in Poland (27.12.2020)Facebook commentsFacebookFive themes are new and specific to COVID-19 anti-vaccine sentiment. They argue that these vaccines have been developed too quickly without a proper test. They also suggest that vaccines do not exist despite the information from pharmaceutical companies and governments. Some users remind about the development of the swine flu vaccine. This vaccine was also developed quickly, but, over time, it caused more side effects than expected. On the other hand, conspiracy theories suggest that vaccines against COVID-19 existed before the official announcement, even before the pandemic. The last specific argument implies that people should avoid vaccination because no one takes responsibility for the potential side effects of the vaccine. Only 15% of the comments were positive, while 85% were negative. The most popular anti-vaccine arguments in our dataset are: the lack of trust in the government, the danger of vaccines, and the lack of faith in the existence of an effective vaccine. A share of pro-vaccine comments have increased from 7% to 22% during the event of first vaccination.Wawrzuta et al., 202165Wawrzuta D. Jaworski M. Gotlib J. Panczyk M. The Arguments of the COVID-19 vaccines opponents on facebook in poland: textual analysis study.PolandNRPosts published by the biggest Polish media, then they selected the highest commented events related to the registration and introduction of the COVID-19 vaccines and analyzed user comments related to those events.FacebookThe arguments of vaccine opponents about the COVID-19 vaccines can be divided into 12 categories. Seven of them also apply to other vaccines but five types are COVID-19′ specific. Two new arguments say that vaccines were not properly tested or do not exist. The third topic mentions the history of the swine flu vaccine and the following narcolepsy cases. The fourth category suggests that vaccines against COVID-19 existed before the pandemic. The last argument says that no one takes responsibility for the side effects of the vaccine. The frequency of arguments from a given category varies over time. We also noticed that, while the comments were mostly negative, the reactions were positive.Yan et al., 2021179Yan C Law M Nguyen S Cheung J Kong J. Comparing public sentiment toward COVID-19 vaccines across canadian cities: analysis of comments on reddit.CanadaBetween July 13, 2020, and June 14, 2021Comments on posts providing regular updates on COVID-19 statistics in the Vancouver (r/vancouver, n 49,291), Toronto (r/toronto, n 20,764), and Calgary (r/calgary, n 21,277) subredditsRedditFrom the comments, 13 topics were identified. Two were related to vaccines, 1 regarding vaccine uptake and the other about vaccine supply. The levels of discussion for both topics were linked to the total number of vaccines administered (Granger test for causality, P<0.001). Comments pertaining to either topic displayed higher scores for joy than for other topics (P<0.001). Calgary and Toronto also discussed vaccine uptake. Sentiment scores for this topic differed across the 3 cities (P<0.001).Miscellaneous topics identified from social media discussionsReferenceLocationStudy PeriodStudy ContentSocial Media UtilizedMain ResultsAmanatidis et al., 2021181Amanatidis D Mylona I Kamenidou I Mamalis S Stavrianea A. Mining textual and imagery instagram data during the COVID-19 pandemic.NAPost downloaded from December 2020 and onwards, as it is the month just before and during the first vaccinations took placePublic postsInstagram accounts of Pfizer (pfizerinc), AstraZeneca (Astrazeneca) and Johnson and Johnson (jnj)For December 2020, there were 646 public posts for #pfizer, 738 public posts for #astrazeneca, and 70 public posts for #jnj. Deploying a model on 675 English language posts, the study obtained a list of sentiment polarity scores (0 to 1, negative to positive). The overall score was 0.38 (0.45) (Pfizer 0.42 (0.46), Astrazeneca 0.34 (0.44), JnJ 0.39 (0.43)). Finally, polarity analysis on users’ posts, leveraging a convolutional neural network, reveals a rather neutral to negative sentiment, with highly polarized user posts’ distributions.Batra et al., 2021182Batra R Imran AS Kastrati Z Ghafoor A Daudpota SM Shaikh S. Evaluating polarity trend amidst the coronavirus crisis in peoples’ attitudes toward the vaccination drive.For reliable cross culture polarity measurement, six countries were selected from three continents; two from each that share similar cultures. The selected countries were India and Pakistan from Asia, Norway and Sweden from Europe, and Canada and the USA from North America.Second wave of the coronavirusPublic postsTwitterThe Pearson's correlation values indicate a high correlation in both positive and negative emotions of people from Pakistan and India (positive r 0.837, negative r 0.865), USA and Canada (positive r 0.623, negative r 0.624), Norway and Sweden (positive r 0.703, negative r 0.616). The examinations of Pearson's correlations for emotions (joy, surprise, anger, fear, sadness) between neighbouring countries showed a similar trend to sentiment polarity. The highest Pearson's correlation values across all the five emotions are shown for Pakistan and India, followed by the USA and Canada.Gawel et al., 202186Gaweł A Mańdziuk M Żmudziński M et al.Effects of Pope francis' religious authority and media coverage on Twitter user's attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination.NR6 January 2021–21 February 2021Data include 1803 tweets related to the phrase pope vaccineTwitterPope Francis’ voice on the COVID-19 vaccination has certainly been noticed and registered worldwide, but the effectiveness of his message and direct impact on Catholics’ decisions to accept or refuse the COVID-19 vaccination is quite questionable and would require further precise research. Comparing this to the regularities known from political marketing, one would think that the pope's statement would not convince the firm opponents of vaccination.Jemielniak and Krempovych, 2021183Jemielniak D. Krempovych Y. An analysis of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and fear mongering on Twitter.NRFrom 1 January 2021 to 22 March 2021221,922 tweets containing ‘#AstraZeneca’, 50,080 tweets in the English language were analyzedTwitterThe most retweeted (2656 retweets as of 26 March 2021) tweet overall from the first time period was one by Robert Kennedy Jr, a known anti-vaxxer advocate, whose account on Instagram was terminated in February 2020 because of COVID-19 disinformation. The tweet was discrediting AstraZeneca vaccine as ‘controversial’, ‘heavily invested in by Bill Gates’ and ‘being rejected over widespread concerns’. Tweet coordination analysis has revealed 10,728 instances in the coordination carried out by 1137 unique handles, of which 2278 instances and 616 unique handles are related to automatic bot accounts, according to the Botometer Complete Automation Probability score of ≥0.76.Lee et al., 202182Lee H, Noh EB, Park SJ, et al. COVID-19 Vaccine perception in South Korea: web crawling approach. JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2021 8;7(9):e31409. https://doi.org/10.2196/31409. PMID: 34348890; PMCID: PMC8428376KoreaDecember 2020 - February 2021In total 8100 posts in NAVER and 5291 posts in Instagram were sampled through web crawling.NAVER and InstagramThe findings revealed a negative perception of COVID-19 vaccines; of the words crawled, the proportion of negative words for AstraZeneca was 71.0% (476/670) and for Pfizer was 56.3% (498/885). Among words crawled with “vaccine,” “good” ranked first, with a frequency of 13.43% (312/2323). Meanwhile, “side effect” ranked highest, with a frequency of 29.2% (163/559) for “AstraZeneca,” but 0.6% (4/673) for “Pfizer.” With “vaccine,” positive words were more frequently used, whereas with “AstraZeneca” and “Pfizer” negative words were prevalent.Luo et al., 2021184Luo C. Chen A. Cui B. Liao W. Exploring public perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine online from a cultural perspective: semantic network analysis of two social media platforms in the United States and China.USA and ChinaDecember 1, 2020, to February 20, 2021Public postsTwitter and Sina WeiboBy implementing semantic network analysis, results demonstrate that the two countries' social media users overlapped in themes concerning domestic vaccination policies, priority groups, challenges from COVID-19 variants, and the global pandemic situation.Sattar and Arifuzzaman, 202183COVID-19 vaccination awareness and aftermath: public sentiment analysis on Twitter data and vaccinated population prediction in the USA.USAApril–May 2021Public postsTwitterFor all of the vaccines, positive sentiment is 20–25%, negative sentiment is around 10%, and the rest is neutral. Negative sentiments: For both the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, “Blood Clot”. Around 30% of positive sentiment for wearing a mask and the negative sentiment is half that of the positive one. Vaccinated people have become more open to travel and social gatherings, as reflected by around 5% difference between positive and negative sentiments. It is optimistic that negative sentiments do not override positive sentiments for any of the topics related to maintaining a healthy lifestyle after vaccination. The tweets also revealed that many people have fever and headache after taking the Moderna vaccine.Sharevski et al., 202285Sharevski F. Alsaadi R. Jachim P. Pieroni E. Misinformation warnings: twitter's soft moderation effects on COVID-19 vaccine belief echoes.USAThe online survey was conducted between January and February 2021This was a 319-participants study with both verified and misleading Tweets covered or tagged with the COVID-19 misinformation warnings to investigate how Twitter users perceive the accuracy of COVID-19 vaccine content on Twitter.TwitterThis study found that such “belief echoes” do exist among Twitter users in relation to the perceived safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine as well as the vaccination hesitancy for themselves and their children. These “belief echoes” manifested as skepticism of adequate COVID-19 immunization particularly among Republicans and Independents as well as female Twitter users. Surprisingly, we found that the belief echoes are strong enough to preclude adult Twitter users to receive the COVID-19 vaccine regardless of their education level.Thelwall 2021184Luo C. Chen A. Cui B. Liao W. Exploring public perceptions of the COVID-19 vaccine online from a cultural perspective: semantic network analysis of two social media platforms in the United States and China.8 countriesDecember 2020 - March 2021Public postsTwitterThere was no independent health expert in the USA tweet terms examined. The study identified the presence of non-scientific influencers from the business community in Ireland and South Africa which could be a potential cause for concern on this sensitive topic, although mainstream news sources may also be non-expert influential commentators. Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00184-5/fulltext The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

ExBulletin

Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature

Health

Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature

Related

Recent Posts

Add ExBulletin to your Home screen!