JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Background:

The roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations has brought vaccine hesitancy to the forefront of managing this pandemic. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is fundamentally different from other vaccinations due to new technologies being used, rapid development and widespread global distribution. Attitudes on vaccines are largely driven by online information, particularly social media. The first step towards influencing attitudes about immunization is understanding current patterns of communication that characterize the immunization debate on social media platforms.

Objective:

Objective:

To evaluate societal attitudes, communication trends and barriers to COVID-19 vaccine uptake through social media content analysis to inform communication strategies promoting vaccine acceptance.

Methods:

Methods:

Social network analysis (SNA) and machine learning were used to characterize COVID-19 vaccine content on Twitter globally. Tweets published in English and French were collected through the Twitter application programing interface between November 19-26, 2020. SNA was used to identify social media clusters expressing mistrustful opinions on COVID-19 vaccination. Based on the SNA results, a machine learning approach to natural language processing using a sentence-level algorithm transfer function to detect semantic textual similarity was performed to identify main themes of vaccine hesitancy.

Results:

Results:

The tweets (n=636,516) identified that the main themes driving the vaccine hesitant conversation were concerns of safety, efficacy, freedom and a mistrust in institutions (either government or multinational corporations). A main theme included safety and efficacy of messenger RNA technology and side effects. The conversation around efficacy was that vaccines were unlikely to completely rid the population of COVID-19, Polymerase Chain Reaction testing is flawed and there is no indication of long term T-cell immunity for COVID-19. One-third of the conversations on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy networks expressed concerns for freedom or mistrust of institutions (either government or multinational corporations) and a quarter expressed criticism towards the government’s handling of the pandemic.

Conclusions:

Conclusion: Social media content analysis combined with social network analysis provides insights into themes of the vaccination conversation on Twitter. Themes of safety, efficacy and trust in institutions will need to be considered as targeted outreach programs and intervention strategies are deployed on Twitter to improve uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations.