COVID-19 vaccine perceptions: An observational study on Reddit

Abstract

Objectives: As COVID-19 vaccinations accelerate in many countries, narratives skeptical of vaccination have also spread through social media. Open online forums like Reddit provide an opportunity to quantitatively examine COVID-19 vaccine perceptions over time. We examine COVID-19 misinformation on Reddit following vaccine scientific announcements. Methods: We collected all posts on Reddit from January 1 2020 - December 14 2020 (n=266,840) that contained both COVID-19 and vaccine-related keywords. We used topic modeling to understand changes in word prevalence within topics after the release of vaccine trial data. Social network analysis was also conducted to determine the relationship between Reddit communities (subreddits) that shared COVID-19 vaccine posts, and the movement of posts between subreddits. Results: There was an association between a Pfizer press release reporting 90% efficacy and increased discussion on vaccine misinformation. We observed an association between Johnson and Johnson temporarily halting its vaccine trials and reduced misinformation. We found that information skeptical of vaccination was first posted in a subreddit (r/Coronavirus) which favored accurate information and then reposted in subreddits associated with antivaccine beliefs and conspiracy theories (e.g. conspiracy, LockdownSkepticism). Conclusions: Our findings can inform the development of interventions where individuals determine the accuracy of vaccine information, and communications campaigns to improve COVID-19 vaccine perceptions. Such efforts can increase individual- and population-level awareness of accurate and scientifically sound information regarding vaccines and thereby improve attitudes about vaccines. Further research is needed to understand how social media can contribute to COVID-19 vaccination services.

Analysis of Public Sentiment regarding COVID-19 Vaccines on the Social Media Platform Reddit

“…Social network comments have become a source of data for the analysis of public sentiment, with regard to the Reddit and Twitter platforms several authors have recorded the comments of these platforms either to analyse sentiment or to assess the effectiveness of the vaccine [8] [9] [10] [11], or for the hesitancy and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine [1] [12] [13] [14] [15]. However, the comments are often not cleaned up for direct use by the machine learning model, as they are comments written by people and not journals, formal articles, and that each plate.…”

Comparing COVID-19 vaccine passports attitudes across countries by analysing Reddit comments

“…On Twitter, he investigated the social mood and emotion surrounding vaccine tourism and tried to categorise them into eight main emotions: joy, disgust, fear, wrath, anticipation, grief, trust and surprise. Following vaccine scientific disclosures, Kumar et al [ 9 ] examined COVID-19 disinformation on Reddit using topic modelling to understand changes in word prevalence within topics and social network analysis to determine the relationship between Reddit communities (subreddits). Wu et al [ 10 ] used LDA and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis to define the relevant conversation about COVID-19 vaccines and combine quantitative and qualitative comparisons to develop insights.…”