Exploring Public Discussions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccinations on Microblogs in China: Findings from Machine Learning Algorithms

Dang, Qiong; Li, Shixian

doi:10.3390/ijerph192013476

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Compared to primary health care centers, they preferred to be vaccinated in big and municipal hospitals (Leng et al, 2021). The fear feelings may be a result of the events stated above, findings from current study was consistent with another study that assessed emotions using a corpus acquired from a Chinese social media platform Weibo (Dang & Li, 2022). It explained that fear emotion may occur as a result of adverse effects and probable punishment by communities and units if people refuse to be vaccinated.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Sentiments and Emotions for Vaccination in 2021: An International Comparison Study

Liu

2022

Preprint

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Comprehending how individuals feel when they discuss the vaccine is important for the immunization campaign and outbreak management during a health emergency. Online conversations provide useful information for assessing sentimental and emotional reactions to the evolutions of the pandemic and immunization program. In this study, we employ a corpus of around 58 million English tweets from users in 17 countries that discuss vaccine-related topics in the year 2021. We apply Soft Dynamic Time Warping algorithm and Time Lag Cross-Correlation approach and find that the evolutions of sentiments closely mirror the pandemic statistics. We also examine five topics connected to vaccination and discover that trust is the most predominate feeling, followed by fear, anger, and joy. Some countries reported higher emotional scores on a theme than others (people in Cuba and the United States exhibit higher levels of trust, Pakistanis, and Indians express higher levels of joy, Australians and Chinese express higher levels of fear, and Japanese and British people express higher levels of anger). This study report offers a viewpoint on the public's response to the epidemic and vaccination and aids policy-makers with preventive strategies for a future crisis.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Sentiments and Emotions for Vaccination in 2021: An International Comparison Study

Liu

2022

Preprint

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“…The fear of severe complications related to the vaccine booster [ 50 ] appears to override the judgement for the need of the additional booster, in particular for the at-risk population. It is acknowledged that vaccine-related serious side-effects are real, although the frequency of occurrence is low; nevertheless, this can induce a disproportionate degree of wariness about the booster vaccine, fuelled further by the dialogue on social media [ 51 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Hesitancy in Malaysia: A Web-Based Cross-Sectional Study

et al. 2023

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Vaccination is a key public health strategy that is known to be effective in mitigating the risk of infection and severe disease. However, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage (<50%) of Malaysians who have received a booster for the COVID-19 vaccine has remained stagnant over a year. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of and the factors associated with hesitancy toward the second dose of booster for the COVID-19 vaccine. A web-based cross-sectional study was conducted from August to November 2022. The Oxford Vaccine Hesitancy Scale was used to assess the hesitancy toward the second dose of booster for the COVID-19 vaccine. Simple and multiple factors logistic regressions were used to determine the predictors of hesitancy. A p-value less than 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Data from 798 respondents were included in the analysis. The prevalence of hesitancy toward the second booster of the COVID-19 vaccine was 26.7%. The predictors of second-booster hesitancy were older age (AOR = 1.040, 95 CI = 1.022, 1.058), having received the third dose (first booster) because of instruction by the government (AOR = 2.125, 95% CI = 1.380, 3.274), concern about serious long term side effects of the vaccine (AOR = 4.010, 95% CI = 2.218, 7.250), and opinions of close friends and immediate family members that the booster is harmful (AOR = 2.201, 95% CI = 1.280, 3.785). Conversely, factors that appear to reduce vaccine booster hesitancy were acceptance of the third dose due to the high number of cases and the increasing rate of infection (AOR = 0.548, 95% CI = 0.317, 0.947), the belief that the vaccine will decrease the risk of getting the infection (AOR = 0.491, 95% CI = 0.277, 0.870), and opinions of close friends and immediate family members that the booster is helpful (AOR = 0.479, 95% CI = 0.273, 0.840). In conclusion, more than one-fifth of Malaysians were hesitant to take the second booster of the COVID-19 vaccine. This suggests that appropriate steps that increase vaccine acceptance, taking into consideration the findings of the present study, are needed to address this issue and to foster more positive attitudes toward vaccination. The survey was available in three main languages but limited to people with internet access; hence, it would likely be biased toward younger adults and social media users and exclude those with limited or no internet access, in particular older people. Therefore, the results are not representative of the Malaysian population at large and caution should be exercised when interpreting the findings.

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“…Although a large number of posts were therefore excluded, our findings are more reflective of the general public's real perception of COVID-19 vaccination than if all posts had been retained. Finally, gender differences have rarely been mentioned in staged theme analyses of COVID-19 vaccine, especially in China [77,78]. We performed an in-depth analysis of the differences in attitude toward COVID-19 vaccination between men and women.…”

Section: Comparison With Prior Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Public Attitudes and Opinions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccination During the Vaccine Campaign in China: Year-Long Infodemiology Study of Weibo Posts

Hong¹,

Xie²,

An³

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Background Monitoring people’s perspectives on the COVID-19 vaccine is crucial for understanding public vaccination hesitancy and developing effective, targeted vaccine promotion strategies. Although this is widely recognized, studies on the evolution of public opinion over the course of an actual vaccination campaign are rare. Objective We aimed to track the evolution of public opinion and sentiment toward COVID-19 vaccines in online discussions over an entire vaccination campaign. Moreover, we aimed to reveal the pattern of gender differences in attitudes and perceptions toward vaccination. Methods We collected COVID-19 vaccine–related posts by the general public that appeared on Sina Weibo from January 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021; this period covered the entire vaccination process in China. We identified popular discussion topics using latent Dirichlet allocation. We further examined changes in public sentiment and topics during the 3 stages of the vaccination timeline. Gender differences in perceptions toward vaccination were also investigated. Results Of 495,229 crawled posts, 96,145 original posts from individual accounts were included. Most posts presented positive sentiments (positive: 65,981/96,145, 68.63%; negative: 23,184/96,145, 24.11%; neutral: 6980/96,145, 7.26%). The average sentiment scores were 0.75 (SD 0.35) for men and 0.67 (SD 0.37) for women. The overall trends in sentiment scores showed a mixed response to the number of new cases and significant events related to vaccine development and important holidays. The sentiment scores showed a weak correlation with new case numbers (R=0.296; P=.03). Significant sentiment score differences were observed between men and women (P<.001). Common and distinguishing characteristics were found among frequently discussed topics during the different stages, with significant differences in topic distribution between men and women (January 1, 2021, to March 31, 2021: χ23=3030.9; April 1, 2021, to September 30, 2021: χ24=8893.8; October 1, 2021, to December 31, 2021: χ25=3019.5; P<.001). Women were more concerned with side effects and vaccine effectiveness. In contrast, men reported broader concerns around the global pandemic, the progress of vaccine development, and economics affected by the pandemic. Conclusions Understanding public concerns regarding vaccination is essential for reaching vaccine-induced herd immunity. This study tracked the year-long evolution of attitudes and opinions on COVID-19 vaccines according to the different stages of vaccination in China. These findings provide timely information that will enable the government to understand the reasons for low vaccine uptake and promote COVID-19 vaccination nationwide.

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Exploring Public Discussions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccinations on Microblogs in China: Findings from Machine Learning Algorithms

Cited by 3 publications

References 44 publications

Sentiments and Emotions for Vaccination in 2021: An International Comparison Study

Sentiments and Emotions for Vaccination in 2021: An International Comparison Study

COVID-19 Vaccine Booster Hesitancy in Malaysia: A Web-Based Cross-Sectional Study

Evolution of Public Attitudes and Opinions Regarding COVID-19 Vaccination During the Vaccine Campaign in China: Year-Long Infodemiology Study of Weibo Posts

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