COVID-19 Vaccine Discourse on Twitter: A Content Analysis of Persuasion Techniques, Sentiment and Mis/Disinformation

Scannell, Denise; Desens, Linda; Guadagno, Marie; Tra, Yolande; Acker, Emily; Sheridan, Kate; Rosner, Margo; Mathieu, Jennifer; Fulk, Mike

doi:10.1080/10810730.2021.1955050

Cited by 88 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…One of the issues our study faced was the duplication of content due to bot activity on the topic of vaccines. Other research has documented bot activity on COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccine misinformation as well [ 65 , 68 , 69 ]. The main issue this may cause in our analysis is that bot activity may overinflate the importance of certain topics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topics and Sentiments of Public Concerns Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines: Social Media Trend Analysis

Monselise¹,

Chang²,

Ferreira³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

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Background As a number of vaccines for COVID-19 are given emergency use authorization by local health agencies and are being administered in multiple countries, it is crucial to gain public trust in these vaccines to ensure herd immunity through vaccination. One way to gauge public sentiment regarding vaccines for the goal of increasing vaccination rates is by analyzing social media such as Twitter. Objective The goal of this research was to understand public sentiment toward COVID-19 vaccines by analyzing discussions about the vaccines on social media for a period of 60 days when the vaccines were started in the United States. Using the combination of topic detection and sentiment analysis, we identified different types of concerns regarding vaccines that were expressed by different groups of the public on social media. Methods To better understand public sentiment, we collected tweets for exactly 60 days starting from December 16, 2020 that contained hashtags or keywords related to COVID-19 vaccines. We detected and analyzed different topics of discussion of these tweets as well as their emotional content. Vaccine topics were identified by nonnegative matrix factorization, and emotional content was identified using the Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner sentiment analysis library as well as by using sentence bidirectional encoder representations from transformer embeddings and comparing the embedding to different emotions using cosine similarity. Results After removing all duplicates and retweets, 7,948,886 tweets were collected during the 60-day time period. Topic modeling resulted in 50 topics; of those, we selected 12 topics with the highest volume of tweets for analysis. Administration and access to vaccines were some of the major concerns of the public. Additionally, we classified the tweets in each topic into 1 of the 5 emotions and found fear to be the leading emotion in the tweets, followed by joy. Conclusions This research focused not only on negative emotions that may have led to vaccine hesitancy but also on positive emotions toward the vaccine. By identifying both positive and negative emotions, we were able to identify the public's response to the vaccines overall and to news events related to the vaccines. These results are useful for developing plans for disseminating authoritative health information and for better communication to build understanding and trust.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topics and Sentiments of Public Concerns Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines: Social Media Trend Analysis

Monselise¹,

Chang²,

Ferreira³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

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“…approved by the World Health Organization and national health agencies (e.g., Food and Drug Administration in the United States) are now in the mass production stage with the goal of administering the largest vaccination campaign in human history. However, vaccine hesitancy continues to cast doubts and keeping herd immunity as a moving target [4] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Immunity debt or vaccination crisis? A multi-method evidence on vaccine acceptance and media framing for emerging COVID-19 variants

Yousaf

Raza

Mahmood

et al. 2022

Vaccine

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Renewed COVID-19 outbreaks, stemming from the highly infectious Delta and Omicron variants, prompted rising fears of a ‘pandemic among the unvaccinated’. To address this prevalent vaccination crisis, media framing communication strategies can amplify the scientific evidence on COVID-19 vaccines to reach diverse geographic and socio-economic communities. The critical role of media framing strategies to engage and encourage large populations regarding vaccine acceptance has been rarely studied, despite growing evidence on vaccine hesitancy. The present study used a multi-method approach (i.e., content analysis and quasi-experiments) that unpacked the framing practices employed by the mainstream press media in Pakistan. The findings of the content analysis revealed that the media extensively used uncertainty, conflict, consequences, and action rather than new evidence and reassurance frames in its COVID-19 related campaigns. In a series of quasi-experiments involving 720 participants, we manipulated these six frames of COVID-19 related news coverage (i.e., uncertainty, conflict, consequences, action, new evidence, and reassurance) to investigate the underlying mechanism that influences vaccine acceptance. The findings established that the message-consistent effects of media frames manifesting fear (e.g., consequence and uncertainty) and action cues made receivers more supportive of vaccination. The present study findings theoretically address the calls for a more inclusive “community-health reporting model”, besides offering new evidence on the media framing strategies to deliver more targeted, meaningful, and effective campaigns to raise public acceptance for COVID-19 vaccines.

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“…While fear appeals are effective, they can also promote misinformation and disinformation (inaccurate or deliberately misleading information). Analyses of anti-vaccination messages in Twitter posts for instance showed similar strategies used to discourage Covid-19 vaccine uptake ( Scannell et al, 2021 ). Misinformation, disinformation and conspiratorial thinking have been a problem throughout (and of course, not limited to) the coronavirus pandemic, to the point of being declared an “infodemic” by the WHO in February 2020.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anxiety and covid-19 compliance behaviors in the UK: The moderating role of conspiratorial thinking

Copping

2022

Personality and Individual Differences

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COVID-19 Vaccine Discourse on Twitter: A Content Analysis of Persuasion Techniques, Sentiment and Mis/Disinformation

Cited by 88 publications

References 37 publications

Topics and Sentiments of Public Concerns Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines: Social Media Trend Analysis

Topics and Sentiments of Public Concerns Regarding COVID-19 Vaccines: Social Media Trend Analysis

Immunity debt or vaccination crisis? A multi-method evidence on vaccine acceptance and media framing for emerging COVID-19 variants

Anxiety and covid-19 compliance behaviors in the UK: The moderating role of conspiratorial thinking

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