Previously submitted to: Journal of Medical Internet Research (no longer under consideration since Aug 31, 2021)
Date Submitted: Apr 12, 2021
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitation in Online Consumers: Social Media Textual Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to greatly impact the global community as we recently marked the one-year anniversary of the first cases of the disease. While many strides have been made in the medical community to produce several viable vaccines, much hesitancy exists within the public regarding the efficacy of the vaccines as well as their potential side effects.
Objective:
This study examines the public response to the COVID-19 vaccine by analyzing social media mentions of hesitancy.
Methods:
Brandwatch software was used to capture social mentions regarding vaccine hesitancy between September 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 before undergoing a text analytic process using SAS text-mining software. Eight unique topics were identified before being further analyzed for themes in positive and negative sentiment.
Results:
The data indicate that there is mistrust and hesitancy surrounding the vaccines; however, positive themes also emerged surrounding the sources of the information (health care professionals, doctors, and government organizations). Pfizer was found to elicit both positive and negative emotions regarding their involvement with vaccine production. Overall, the negative sentiment surrounding the vaccines tended to dominate the social media conversation.
Conclusions:
Through the use of credible communicators, COVID-19 vaccine hesitation may be mitigated. A combination of online and offline word-of-mouth strategies are suggested to reach relevant populations of interest. Topics of personal anecdotes of safety, effectiveness and recommendations among family are suggested as communication opportunities for frontline health care workers.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.