COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance among Social Media Users: A Content Analysis, Multi-Continent Study

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy is defined as a delayed in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability of vaccination services. This multinational study examined user interaction with social media about COVID-19 vaccination. The study analyzed social media comments in 24 countries from five continents. In total, 5856 responses were analyzed; 83.5% of comments were from Facebook, while 16.5% were from Twitter. In Facebook, the overall vaccine acceptance was 40.3%; the lowest acceptance rates were evident in Jordan (8.5%), Oman (15.0%), Senegal (20.0%) and Morocco (20.7%) and the continental acceptance rate was the lowest in North America 22.6%. In Twitter, the overall acceptance rate was (41.5%); the lowest acceptance rate was found in Oman (14.3%), followed by USA (20.5%), and UK (23.3%) and the continental acceptance rate was the lowest in North America (20.5%), and Europe (29.7%). The differences in vaccine acceptance across countries and continents in Facebook and Twitter were statistically significant. Regarding the tone of the comments, in Facebook, countries that had the highest number of serious tone comments were Sweden (90.9%), United States (61.3%), and Thailand (58.8%). At continent level, serious comments were the highest in Asia (58.4%), followed by Africa (46.2%) and South America (46.2%). In twitter, the highest serious tone was reported in Egypt (72.2%) while at continental level, the highest proportion of serious comments was observed in Asia (59.7%), followed by Europe (46.5%). The differences in tone across countries and continents in Facebook and Twitter and were statistically significant. There was a significant association between the tone and the position of comments. We concluded that the overall vaccine acceptance in social media is relatively low and varied across the studied countries and continents consequently, more in-depth studies are required to address causes of such VH and combat infodemics.

Monkeypox Vaccine Acceptance among Ghanaians: A Call for Action

“…In the general population, the prevalence of vaccine acceptance was 43.0% (95% CI: 35.0–50.0%), among healthcare professionals it was 63.0% (95% CI: 42.0–70.0%), and among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTI) people, it was 84.0% (95% CI: 83.0–86.0%) [ 34 ]. In fact, people’s perceptions regarding vaccination acceptance may be influenced by a variety of local, racial, religious, cultural, and other factors, as well as false information, as was evidently seen during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 14 , 15 ].…”

“…However, like with coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in order to achieve adequate vaccination coverage, people’s vaccine hesitancy (VH) to accept the vaccine is an important factor that vaccination programs should address. Fear of vaccine adverse effects, concerns regarding vaccine safety, efficacy, and effectiveness, lack of information, short duration of clinical trials, and social trust were the primary factors identified as influencing population attitudes regarding vaccination [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”

Exploring enablers and barriers toward COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among Arabs: A qualitative study

“…VH was described by the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on immunization (SAGE) as the delay in acceptance or rejection of vaccines even though the availability of vaccines is maintained [ 8 ]. The decision to get vaccinated is impacted by various factors such as risk perceptions, general attitudes toward vaccination, social and cultural barriers, complacency, convenience, and confidence or trust in the healthcare system [ 8 , 9 ]. A primary challenge faced by governments during the current COVID-19 pandemic is to address and develop the trust of populations to reach the maximum number of vaccinations and subsequent herd immunity [ 10 ].…”

Measuring COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: Consistency of Social Media with Surveys

“…Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, great efforts have been devoted to studying the potential of social media in understanding the public's hesitancy in the fast developed vaccines [10,39,2,36], based on the pre-pandemic success in studying public opinions [34,23,27,30]. For instance, Cascini et al [10] reviewed the literature during the COVID-19 pandemic about how diffused information on social media impacts vaccination attitudes.…”

“…The second category leverages tools such as stance detection to infer various features of online activities from social media data of various formats including hashtags, hyperlinks and textual posts. For instance, Shaaban et al [36] studied vaccine acceptance with positions and tones of comments on various social media platforms. Lyu et al [25] inferred user demographics as well as vaccine attitudes through a text-based machine learning approach, and analysed vaccine acceptance among people with different demographic characteristics.…”