Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy, Confidence, and Public Engagement: A Global Social Listening Study

Abstract

Background Monitoring public confidence and hesitancy is crucial for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Social media listening (infoveillance) can not only monitor public attitudes on COVID-19 vaccines but also assess the dissemination of and public engagement with these opinions. Objective This study aims to assess global hesitancy, confidence, and public engagement toward COVID-19 vaccination. Methods We collected posts mentioning the COVID-19 vaccine between June and July 2020 on Twitter from New York (United States), London (United Kingdom), Mumbai (India), and Sao Paulo (Brazil), and Sina Weibo posts from Beijing (China). In total, we manually coded 12,886 posts from the five global metropolises with high COVID-19 burdens, and after assessment, 7032 posts were included in the analysis. We manually double-coded these posts using a coding framework developed according to the World Health Organization’s Confidence, Complacency, and Convenience model of vaccine hesitancy, and conducted engagement analysis to investigate public communication about COVID-19 vaccines on social media. Results Among social media users, 36.4% (571/1568) in New York, 51.3% (738/1440) in London, 67.3% (144/214) in Sao Paulo, 69.8% (726/1040) in Mumbai, and 76.8% (2128/2770) in Beijing indicated that they intended to accept a COVID-19 vaccination. With a high perceived risk of getting COVID-19, more tweeters in New York and London expressed a lack of confidence in vaccine safety, distrust in governments and experts, and widespread misinformation or rumors. Tweeters from Mumbai, Sao Paulo, and Beijing worried more about vaccine production and supply, whereas tweeters from New York and London had more concerns about vaccine distribution and inequity. Negative tweets expressing lack of vaccine confidence and misinformation or rumors had more followers and attracted more public engagement online. Conclusions COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is prevalent worldwide, and negative tweets attract higher engagement on social media. It is urgent to develop an effective vaccine campaign that boosts public confidence and addresses hesitancy for COVID-19 vaccine rollouts.

The Impact of Social Media on the Acceptance of the COVID-19 Vaccine: A Cross-Sectional Study from Saudi Arabia

“…The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in over 100 million cases and more than 2 million deaths globally as of January 2021, and vaccination is likely to be vital in having pandemic prevention and management. Generally, the study of vaccinations illustrates the long 5,6,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Several vaccines are available, including the AstraZeneca (Oxford), Sinopharm, Sinovac, Pfizer (BioNTech), and Moderna vaccines. 6 Social media has become a stage for public opinion, perception, and attitudinal opinion on different events or policies relating to public health concerning COVID-19 due to the pandemic.…”

“…However, the remarkable speed of developing several COVID-19 vaccines (AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Pfizer, and Moderna vaccines) and their immediate authorization for emergency use in less than one year is a great achievement for the scientific community. 5,6 Despite the overall favorable safety and effectiveness profiles of vaccines, the processes which have facilitated the rapid development have been a public concern with potential adverse impacts on vaccination acceptance that have led to the vaccine hesitancy. 7 Although vaccine hesitation has a long history, it is reasonable to claim that today the Internet provides misinformation.…”

The Impact of Social Media Exposure and Interpersonal Discussion on Intention of COVID-19 Vaccination among Nurses

“…The similar mediation patterns observed for the two intention outcomes suggest that social media exposure and interpersonal discussion may consistently exert their effects on nurses’ intention of free and self-paid vaccination through perceived effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. After all, the existing level of vaccine hesitancy within social networks and the nature of relevant social media content can vary across countries and regions [ 58 , 61 ]. It is hence warranted to examine the effect and mechanism of social media exposure and interpersonal discussion among other nursing populations.…”

Attitudes and Intentions toward COVID-19 Vaccination among Spanish Adults: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

“…Among the different reasons referred to by the population in not accepting the vaccine, the main concerns include a fear of long-lasting health problems or side effects [38,[47][48][49][50], antivaccine beliefs [38,47,[51][52][53] and the need for more information [38,53], among others [38,47,49,54,55]. Among these reasons, a lack of vaccine safety was noted to be the main reason to refuse the vaccine [38,41,47,[56][57][58], which could be due to the population's lack of trust in the speed at which the vaccines were developed [59,60], as well as contradictory information given by politicians over time [42]. As stated by more than 90% of the sample in the current study (item 15), this matter highlights the need for healthcare professionals to organize informative briefings about the vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 to highlight that the vaccine is not only effective but also safe.…”