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Slavin SD, Berman AN, Beam AL, Navar AM, Mittleman MA. Statin Twitter: Human and Automated Bot Contributions, 2010 to 2022. J Am Heart Assoc 2024; 13:e032678. [PMID: 38533942 PMCID: PMC11179764 DOI: 10.1161/jaha.123.032678] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2023] [Accepted: 12/06/2023] [Indexed: 03/28/2024]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Many individuals eligible for statin therapy decline treatment, often due to fear of adverse effects. Misinformation about statins is common and drives statin reluctance, but its prevalence on social media platforms, such as Twitter (now X) remains unclear. Social media bots are known to proliferate medical misinformation, but their involvement in statin-related discourse is unknown. This study examined temporal trends in volume, author type (bot or human), and sentiment of statin-related Twitter posts (tweets). METHODS AND RESULTS We analyzed original tweets with statin-related terms from 2010 to 2022 using a machine learning-derived classifier to determine the author's bot probability, natural language processing to assign each tweet a negative or positive sentiment, and manual qualitative analysis to identify statin skepticism in a random sample of all tweets and in highly influential tweets. We identified 1 155 735 original statin-related tweets. Bots produced 333 689 (28.9%), humans produced 699 876 (60.6%), and intermediate probability accounts produced 104 966 (9.1%). Over time, the proportion of bot tweets decreased from 47.8% to 11.3%, and human tweets increased from 43.6% to 79.8%. The proportion of negative-sentiment tweets increased from 27.8% to 43.4% for bots and 30.9% to 38.4% for humans. Manually coded statin skepticism increased from 8.0% to 19.0% for bots and from 26.0% to 40.0% for humans. CONCLUSIONS Over the past decade, humans have overtaken bots as generators of statin-related content on Twitter. Negative sentiment and statin skepticism have increased across all user types. Twitter may be an important forum to combat statin-related misinformation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samuel D. Slavin
- Brigham and Women’s HospitalBostonMAUSA
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthBostonMAUSA
| | | | | | | | - Murray A. Mittleman
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthBostonMAUSA
- Beth Israel Deaconess Medical CenterBostonMAUSA
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2
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Lossio-Ventura JA, Weger R, Lee AY, Guinee EP, Chung J, Atlas L, Linos E, Pereira F. A Comparison of ChatGPT and Fine-Tuned Open Pre-Trained Transformers (OPT) Against Widely Used Sentiment Analysis Tools: Sentiment Analysis of COVID-19 Survey Data. JMIR Ment Health 2024; 11:e50150. [PMID: 38271138 PMCID: PMC10813836 DOI: 10.2196/50150] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/21/2023] [Revised: 11/16/2023] [Accepted: 11/17/2023] [Indexed: 01/27/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Health care providers and health-related researchers face significant challenges when applying sentiment analysis tools to health-related free-text survey data. Most state-of-the-art applications were developed in domains such as social media, and their performance in the health care context remains relatively unknown. Moreover, existing studies indicate that these tools often lack accuracy and produce inconsistent results. OBJECTIVE This study aims to address the lack of comparative analysis on sentiment analysis tools applied to health-related free-text survey data in the context of COVID-19. The objective was to automatically predict sentence sentiment for 2 independent COVID-19 survey data sets from the National Institutes of Health and Stanford University. METHODS Gold standard labels were created for a subset of each data set using a panel of human raters. We compared 8 state-of-the-art sentiment analysis tools on both data sets to evaluate variability and disagreement across tools. In addition, few-shot learning was explored by fine-tuning Open Pre-Trained Transformers (OPT; a large language model [LLM] with publicly available weights) using a small annotated subset and zero-shot learning using ChatGPT (an LLM without available weights). RESULTS The comparison of sentiment analysis tools revealed high variability and disagreement across the evaluated tools when applied to health-related survey data. OPT and ChatGPT demonstrated superior performance, outperforming all other sentiment analysis tools. Moreover, ChatGPT outperformed OPT, exhibited higher accuracy by 6% and higher F-measure by 4% to 7%. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates the effectiveness of LLMs, particularly the few-shot learning and zero-shot learning approaches, in the sentiment analysis of health-related survey data. These results have implications for saving human labor and improving efficiency in sentiment analysis tasks, contributing to advancements in the field of automated sentiment analysis.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Rachel Weger
- School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
| | - Angela Y Lee
- Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
| | - Emily P Guinee
- National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States
| | - Joyce Chung
- National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States
| | - Lauren Atlas
- National Center For Complementary and Alternative Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States
| | - Eleni Linos
- School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States
| | - Francisco Pereira
- National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States
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Canaparo M, Ronchieri E, Scarso L. A natural language processing approach for analyzing COVID-19 vaccination response in multi-language and geo-localized tweets. HEALTHCARE ANALYTICS (NEW YORK, N.Y.) 2023; 3:100172. [PMID: 37064254 PMCID: PMC10088351 DOI: 10.1016/j.health.2023.100172] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/25/2023] [Revised: 03/27/2023] [Accepted: 04/05/2023] [Indexed: 04/18/2023]
Abstract
Social media platforms, such as Twitter, have been paramount in the COVID-19 context due to their ability to collect public concerns about the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, which has been underway to end the COVID-19 pandemic. This worldwide campaign has heavily relied on the actual willingness of individuals to get vaccinated independently of the language they speak or the country they reside. This study analyzes Twitter posts about Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca/Vaxzevria, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines by considering the most spoken western languages. Tweets were sampled between April 15 and September 15, 2022, after the injections of at least three doses, collecting 9,513,063 posts that contained vaccine-related keywords. To determine the success of vaccination, temporal and sentiment analysis have been conducted, reporting opinion changes over time and their corresponding events whenever possible concerning each vaccine. Furthermore, we have extracted the main topics over languages providing potential bias due to the language-specific dictionary, such as Moderna in Spanish, and grouped them per country. Once performed the pre-processed procedure we worked with 8,343,490 tweets. Our findings show that Pfizer has been the most debated vaccine worldwide, and the main concerns have been the side effects on pregnant women and children and heart diseases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marco Canaparo
- INFN-CNAF, Viale Berti Pichat 6/2, Bologna, 40126, Italy
| | - Elisabetta Ronchieri
- INFN-CNAF, Viale Berti Pichat 6/2, Bologna, 40126, Italy
- Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Bologna, Via Belle Arti 41, Bologna, Italy
| | - Leonardo Scarso
- Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Via Pelagio Palagi 9, Bologna, Italy
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Zaidi Z, Ye M, Samon F, Jama A, Gopalakrishnan B, Gu C, Karunasekera S, Evans J, Kashima Y. Topics in Antivax and Provax Discourse: Yearlong Synoptic Study of COVID-19 Vaccine Tweets. J Med Internet Res 2023; 25:e45069. [PMID: 37552535 PMCID: PMC10411425 DOI: 10.2196/45069] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2022] [Revised: 05/14/2023] [Accepted: 06/06/2023] [Indexed: 08/09/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Developing an understanding of the public discourse on COVID-19 vaccination on social media is important not only for addressing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic but also for future pathogen outbreaks. There are various research efforts in this domain, although, a need still exists for a comprehensive topic-wise analysis of tweets in favor of and against COVID-19 vaccines. OBJECTIVE This study characterizes the discussion points in favor of and against COVID-19 vaccines posted on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic. The aim of this study was primarily to contrast the views expressed by both camps, their respective activity patterns, and their correlation with vaccine-related events. A further aim was to gauge the genuineness of the concerns expressed in antivax tweets. METHODS We examined a Twitter data set containing 75 million English tweets discussing the COVID-19 vaccination from March 2020 to March 2021. We trained a stance detection algorithm using natural language processing techniques to classify tweets as antivax or provax and examined the main topics of discourse using topic modeling techniques. RESULTS Provax tweets (37 million) far outnumbered antivax tweets (10 million) and focused mostly on vaccine development, whereas antivax tweets covered a wide range of topics, including opposition to vaccine mandate and concerns about safety. Although some antivax tweets included genuine concerns, there was a large amount of falsehood. Both stances discussed many of the same topics from opposite viewpoints. Memes and jokes were among the most retweeted messages. Most tweets from both stances (9,007,481/10,566,679, 85.24% antivax and 24,463,708/37,044,507, 66.03% provax tweets) came from dual-stance users who posted both provax and antivax tweets during the observation period. CONCLUSIONS This study is a comprehensive account of COVID-19 vaccine discourse in the English language on Twitter from March 2020 to March 2021. The broad range of discussion points covered almost the entire conversation, and their temporal dynamics revealed a significant correlation with COVID-19 vaccine-related events. We did not find any evidence of polarization and prevalence of antivax discourse over Twitter. However, targeted countering of falsehoods is important because only a small fraction of antivax discourse touched on a genuine issue. Future research should examine the role of memes and humor in driving web-based social media activity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zainab Zaidi
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Mengbin Ye
- Centre for Optimisation and Decision Science, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
| | - Fergus Samon
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Abdisalan Jama
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Binduja Gopalakrishnan
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Chenhao Gu
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Shanika Karunasekera
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Jamie Evans
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
| | - Yoshihisa Kashima
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
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Kwon S, Park A. Examining thematic and emotional differences across Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube: The case of COVID-19 vaccine side effects. COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR 2023; 144:107734. [PMID: 36942128 PMCID: PMC10016349 DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2023.107734] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/03/2022] [Revised: 01/31/2023] [Accepted: 03/11/2023] [Indexed: 03/17/2023]
Abstract
Social media discourse has become a key data source for understanding the public's perception of, and sentiments during a public health crisis. However, given the different niches which platforms occupy in terms of information exchange, reliance on a single platform would provide an incomplete picture of public opinions. Based on the schema theory, this study suggests a 'social media platform schema' to indicate users' different expectations based on previous usages of platform and argues that a platform's distinct characteristics foster distinct platform schema and, in turn, distinct nature of information. We analyzed COVID-19 vaccine side effect-related discussions from Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube, each of which represents a different type of the platform, and found thematic and emotional differences across platforms. Thematic analysis using k-means clustering algorithm identified seven clusters in each platform. To computationally group and contrast thematic clusters across platforms, we employed modularity analysis using the Louvain algorithm to determine a semantic network structure based on themes. We also observed differences in emotional contexts across platforms. Theoretical and public health implications are then discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Soyeon Kwon
- Department of Management Information System, College of Business, Dongguk University, 30, Pildong-ro 1gil, Jung-gu, Seoul, 04620, Republic of Korea
| | - Albert Park
- Department of Software and Information Systems, College of Computing and Informatics, UNC Charlotte, Woodward 310H, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC, 28223, USA
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Dupuy-Zini A, Audeh B, Gérardin C, Duclos C, Gagneux-Brunon A, Bousquet C. Users' Reactions to Announced Vaccines Against COVID-19 Before Marketing in France: Analysis of Twitter Posts. J Med Internet Res 2023; 25:e37237. [PMID: 36596215 PMCID: PMC10132828 DOI: 10.2196/37237] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/11/2022] [Revised: 07/17/2022] [Accepted: 08/09/2022] [Indexed: 01/04/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Within a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic had spread to many countries and had been a real challenge for health systems all around the world. This unprecedented crisis has led to a surge of online discussions about potential cures for the disease. Among them, vaccines have been at the heart of the debates and have faced lack of confidence before marketing in France. OBJECTIVE This study aims to identify and investigate the opinions of French Twitter users on the announced vaccines against COVID-19 through sentiment analysis. METHODS This study was conducted in 2 phases. First, we filtered a collection of tweets related to COVID-19 available on Twitter from February 2020 to August 2020 with a set of keywords associated with vaccine mistrust using word embeddings. Second, we performed sentiment analysis using deep learning to identify the characteristics of vaccine mistrust. The model was trained on a hand-labeled subset of 4548 tweets. RESULTS A set of 69 relevant keywords were identified as the semantic concept of the word "vaccin" (vaccine in French) and focused mainly on conspiracies, pharmaceutical companies, and alternative treatments. Those keywords enabled us to extract nearly 350,000 tweets in French. The sentiment analysis model achieved 0.75 accuracy. The model then predicted 16% of positive tweets, 41% of negative tweets, and 43% of neutral tweets. This allowed us to explore the semantic concepts of positive and negative tweets and to plot the trends of each sentiment. The main negative rhetoric identified from users' tweets was that vaccines are perceived as having a political purpose and that COVID-19 is a commercial argument for the pharmaceutical companies. CONCLUSIONS Twitter might be a useful tool to investigate the arguments for vaccine mistrust because it unveils political criticism contrasting with the usual concerns on adverse drug reactions. As the opposition rhetoric is more consistent and more widely spread than the positive rhetoric, we believe that this research provides effective tools to help health authorities better characterize the risk of vaccine mistrust.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexandre Dupuy-Zini
- Laboratoire d'Informatique Médicale et d'Ingénierie des connaissances en e-Santé, LIMICS, Sorbonne Université, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM, Paris, France
| | - Bissan Audeh
- Laboratoire d'Informatique Médicale et d'Ingénierie des connaissances en e-Santé, LIMICS, Sorbonne Université, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM, Paris, France
| | - Christel Gérardin
- Institut Pierre Louis d'Epidémiologie et de Santé Publique, Département de médecine interne, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
| | - Catherine Duclos
- Laboratoire d'Informatique Médicale et d'Ingénierie des connaissances en e-Santé, LIMICS, Sorbonne Université, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM, Paris, France
| | - Amandine Gagneux-Brunon
- Groupe sur l'Immunité des Muqueuses et Agents Pathogènes, Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie, University of Lyon, Saint Etienne, France
- Vaccinologie, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Saint-Etienne, Saint Etienne, France
| | - Cedric Bousquet
- Laboratoire d'Informatique Médicale et d'Ingénierie des connaissances en e-Santé, LIMICS, Sorbonne Université, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM, Paris, France
- Service de santé publique et information médicale, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Saint Etienne, Saint Etienne, France
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Mavragani A, Suh YK. A Comprehensive Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine Discourse by Vaccine Brand on Twitter in Korea: Topic and Sentiment Analysis. J Med Internet Res 2023; 25:e42623. [PMID: 36603153 PMCID: PMC9891356 DOI: 10.2196/42623] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/12/2022] [Revised: 10/28/2022] [Accepted: 01/05/2023] [Indexed: 01/07/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The unprecedented speed of COVID-19 vaccine development and approval has raised public concern about its safety. However, studies on public discourses and opinions on social media focusing on adverse events (AEs) related to COVID-19 vaccine are rare. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to analyze Korean tweets about COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Novavax) after the vaccine rollout, explore the topics and sentiments of tweets regarding COVID-19 vaccines, and examine their changes over time. We also analyzed topics and sentiments focused on AEs related to vaccination using only tweets with terms about AEs. METHODS We devised a sophisticated methodology consisting of 5 steps: keyword search on Twitter, data collection, data preprocessing, data analysis, and result visualization. We used the Twitter Representational State Transfer application programming interface for data collection. A total of 1,659,158 tweets were collected from February 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022. Finally, 165,984 data points were analyzed after excluding retweets, news, official announcements, advertisements, duplicates, and tweets with <2 words. We applied a variety of preprocessing techniques that are suitable for the Korean language. We ran a suite of analyses using various Python packages, such as latent Dirichlet allocation, hierarchical latent Dirichlet allocation, and sentiment analysis. RESULTS The topics related to COVID-19 vaccines have a very large spectrum, including vaccine-related AEs, emotional reactions to vaccination, vaccine development and supply, and government vaccination policies. Among them, the top major topic was AEs related to COVID-19 vaccination. The AEs ranged from the adverse reactions listed in the safety profile (eg, myalgia, fever, fatigue, injection site pain, myocarditis or pericarditis, and thrombosis) to unlisted reactions (eg, irregular menstruation, changes in appetite and sleep, leukemia, and deaths). Our results showed a notable difference in the topics for each vaccine brand. The topics pertaining to the Pfizer vaccine mainly mentioned AEs. Negative public opinion has prevailed since the early stages of vaccination. In the sentiment analysis based on vaccine brand, the topics related to the Pfizer vaccine expressed the strongest negative sentiment. CONCLUSIONS Considering the discrepancy between academic evidence and public opinions related to COVID-19 vaccination, the government should provide accurate information and education. Furthermore, our study suggests the need for management to correct the misinformation related to vaccine-related AEs, especially those affecting negative sentiments. This study provides valuable insights into the public discourses and opinions regarding COVID-19 vaccination.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Young-Kyoon Suh
- School of Computer Science and Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea.,Department of Data Convergence Computing, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Republic of Korea
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Abiola O, Abayomi-Alli A, Tale OA, Misra S, Abayomi-Alli O. Sentiment analysis of COVID-19 tweets from selected hashtags in Nigeria using VADER and Text Blob analyser. JOURNAL OF ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 2023; 10:5. [PMCID: PMC9841936 DOI: 10.1186/s43067-023-00070-9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/22/2022] [Accepted: 01/03/2023] [Indexed: 06/28/2023]
Abstract
Abstract
Background
Information is essential for growth; without it, little can be accomplished. Data gathering has seen significant changes throughout the previous few centuries because of the certain transitory medium. The look and style of information transference are affected by the employment of new and emerging technologies, some of which are efficient, others are reliable, and many more are quick and effective, but a few were disappointing for various reasons.
Aims
This study aims at using TextBlob and VADER analyser with historical tweets, to analyse emotional responses to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). It shows us how much of a sociological, environmental, and economic impact it has in Nigeria, among other things. This study would be a tremendous step forward for students, researchers, and scholars who want to advance in fields like data science, machine learning, and deep learning.
Methodology
The hashtag ‘COVID-19' was used to collect 1,048,575 tweets from Twitter. The tweets were pre-processed with a Twitter tokenizer, while TextBlob and Valence Aware Dictionary for Sentiment Reasoning (VADER) were used for text mining and sentiment analysis, respectively. Topic modelling was done with Latent Dirichlet Allocation and visualized with Multidimensional scaling.
Results
The result of the VADER sentiment returned 39.8%, 31.3%, and 28.9%, positive, neutral, and negative sentiment, respectively, while the result of the TextBlob sentiment returned 46.0%, 36.7%, and 17.3%, neutral, positive, and negative sentiment, respectively.
Conclusion
With all of this, information from social media may be used to help organizations, governments, and nations around the world make smart and effective decisions about how to restrict and limit the negative effects of COVID-19. Also, know the opinion and challenges of people, then deal with the problem of misinformation. It is concluded that with popular belief a significant number of the populace regards COVID-19 as a virus that has come to stay, some believe it will eventually be conquered.
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Danek S, Büttner M, Krois J, Schwendicke F. How Do Users Respond to Mass Vaccination Centers? A Cross-Sectional Study Using Natural Language Processing on Online Reviews to Explore User Experience and Satisfaction with COVID-19 Vaccination Centers. Vaccines (Basel) 2023; 11:vaccines11010144. [PMID: 36679989 PMCID: PMC9861127 DOI: 10.3390/vaccines11010144] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2022] [Revised: 12/21/2022] [Accepted: 12/23/2022] [Indexed: 01/11/2023] Open
Abstract
To reach large groups of vaccine recipients, several high-income countries introduced mass vaccination centers for COVID-19. Understanding user experiences of these novel structures can help optimize their design and increase patient satisfaction and vaccine uptake. This study drew on user online reviews of vaccination centers to assess user experience and identify its key determinants over time, by sentiment, and by interaction. Machine learning methods were used to analyze Google reviews of six COVID-19 mass vaccination centers in Berlin from December 2020 to December 2021. 3647 user online reviews were included in the analysis. Of these, 89% (3261/3647) were positive according to user rating (four to five of five stars). A total of 85% (2740/3647) of all reviews contained text. Topic modeling of the reviews containing text identified five optimally latent topics, and keyword extraction identified 47 salient keywords. The most important themes were organization, friendliness/responsiveness, and patient flow/wait time. Key interactions for users of vaccination centers included waiting, scheduling, transit, and the vaccination itself. Keywords connected to scheduling and efficiency, such as "appointment" and "wait", were most prominent in negative reviews. Over time, the average rating score decreased from 4.7 to 4.1, and waiting and duration became more salient keywords. Overall, mass vaccination centers appear to be positively perceived, yet users became more critical over the one-year period of the pandemic vaccination campaign observed. The study shows that online reviews can provide real-time insights into newly set-up infrastructures, and policymakers should consider their use to monitor the population's response over time.
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Liu Y, Shi J, Zhao C, Zhang C. Generalizing factors of COVID-19 vaccine attitudes in different regions: A summary generation and topic modeling approach. Digit Health 2023; 9:20552076231188852. [PMID: 37485330 PMCID: PMC10359653 DOI: 10.1177/20552076231188852] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2023] [Accepted: 06/26/2023] [Indexed: 07/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Objective The goal of this study is to use summary generation and topic modeling to identify factors contributing to vaccine attitudes for three different vaccine brands, with the aim of generalizing these factors across different regions. Methods A total of 5562 tweets about three vaccine brands (Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer) were collected from 14 December 2020 to 30 December 2021. BERTopic clustering is used to group the tweets into topics, and then contrastive learning (CL) is adopted to generate summaries of each topic. The main content of each topic is generalized into three factors that contribute to vaccine attitudes: vaccine-related factors, health system-related factors, and individual social attributes. Results BERTopic clustering outperforms Latent Dirichlet Allocation clustering in our analysis. It can also be found that using CL for summary generation helped to better model the topics, particularly at the center-point of the clustering. Our model identifies three main factors contributing to vaccine attitudes that are consistent across different regions. Conclusions Our study demonstrates the effectiveness of deep learning methods for identifying factors contributing to vaccine attitudes in different regions. By determining these factors, policymakers and medical institutions can develop more effective strategies for addressing concerns related to the vaccination process.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yang Liu
- School of Information Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Jiale Shi
- School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Chenxu Zhao
- School of Computer Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
| | - Chengzhi Zhang
- Department of Information Management, Nanjing University of Science & Technology, Nanjing, China
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Stracqualursi L, Agati P. Covid-19 vaccines in Italian public opinion: Identifying key issues using Twitter and Natural Language Processing. PLoS One 2022; 17:e0277394. [PMID: 36395254 PMCID: PMC9671418 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0277394] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2022] [Accepted: 10/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed society and people's lives. The vaccination campaign started December 27th 2020 in Italy, together with most countries in the European Union. Social media platforms can offer relevant information about how citizens have experienced and perceived the availability of vaccines and the start of the vaccination campaign. This study aims to use machine learning methods to extract sentiments and topics relating to COVID-19 vaccination from Twitter. Between February and May 2021, we collected over 71,000 tweets containing vaccines-related keywords from Italian Twitter users. To get the dominant sentiment throughout the Italian population, spatial and temporal sentiment analysis was performed using VADER, highlighting sentiment fluctuations strongly influenced by news of vaccines' side effects. Additionally, we investigated the opinions of Italians with respect to different vaccine brands. As a result, 'Oxford-AstraZeneca' vaccine was the least appreciated among people. The application of the Dynamic Latent Dirichlet Allocation (DLDA) model revealed three fundamental topics, which remained stable over time: vaccination plan info, usefulness of vaccinating and concerns about vaccines (risks, side effects and safety). To the best of our current knowledge, this one the first study on Twitter to identify opinions about COVID-19 vaccination in Italy and their progression over the first months of the vaccination campaign. Our results can help policymakers and research communities track public attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines and help them make decisions to promote the vaccination campaign.
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Affiliation(s)
- Luisa Stracqualursi
- Department of Statistics, University of Bologna, Bologna, BO, Italy
- * E-mail:
| | - Patrizia Agati
- Department of Statistics, University of Bologna, Bologna, BO, Italy
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Ogunleye OO, Godman B, Fadare JO, Mudenda S, Adeoti AO, Yinka-Ogunleye AF, Ogundele SO, Oyawole MR, Schönfeldt M, Rashed WM, Galal AM, Masuka N, Zaranyika T, Kalungia AC, Malande OO, Kibuule D, Massele A, Chikowe I, Khuluza F, Taruvinga T, Alfadl A, Malik E, Oluka M, Opanga S, Ankrah DNA, Sefah IA, Afriyie D, Tagoe ET, Amu AA, Msibi MP, Etando A, Alabi ME, Okwen P, Niba LL, Mwita JC, Rwegerera GM, Kgatlwane J, Jairoun AA, Ejekam C, Mavenyengwa RT, Murimi-Worstell I, Campbell SM, Meyer JC. Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic across Africa: Current Status of Vaccinations and Implications for the Future. Vaccines (Basel) 2022; 10:vaccines10091553. [PMID: 36146631 PMCID: PMC9504201 DOI: 10.3390/vaccines10091553] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 12.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/14/2022] [Revised: 09/06/2022] [Accepted: 09/10/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
The introduction of effective vaccines in December 2020 marked a significant step forward in the global response to COVID-19. Given concerns with access, acceptability, and hesitancy across Africa, there is a need to describe the current status of vaccine uptake in the continent. An exploratory study was undertaken to investigate these aspects, current challenges, and lessons learnt across Africa to provide future direction. Senior personnel across 14 African countries completed a self-administered questionnaire, with a descriptive analysis of the data. Vaccine roll-out commenced in March 2021 in most countries. COVID-19 vaccination coverage varied from low in Cameroon and Tanzania and up to 39.85% full coverage in Botswana at the end of 2021; that is, all doses advocated by initial protocols versus the total population, with rates increasing to 58.4% in Botswana by the end of June 2022. The greatest increase in people being fully vaccinated was observed in Uganda (20.4% increase), Botswana (18.5% increase), and Zambia (17.9% increase). Most vaccines were obtained through WHO-COVAX agreements. Initially, vaccination was prioritised for healthcare workers (HCWs), the elderly, adults with co-morbidities, and other at-risk groups, with countries now commencing vaccination among children and administering booster doses. Challenges included irregular supply and considerable hesitancy arising from misinformation fuelled by social media activities. Overall, there was fair to reasonable access to vaccination across countries, enhanced by government initiatives. Vaccine hesitancy must be addressed with context-specific interventions, including proactive programmes among HCWs, medical journalists, and the public.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olayinka O. Ogunleye
- Department of Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology, Lagos State University College of Medicine, Lagos 100271, Nigeria
- Department of Medicine, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Lagos 100271, Nigeria
| | - Brian Godman
- Department of Pharmacoepidemiology, Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0RE, UK
- Centre of Medical and Bio-Allied Health Sciences Research, Ajman University, Ajman 346, United Arab Emirates
- Department of Public Health Pharmacy and Management, School of Pharmacy, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Pretoria 02084, South Africa
- Correspondence:
| | - Joseph O. Fadare
- Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti 362103, Nigeria
- Department of Medicine, Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado Ekiti 360211, Nigeria
| | - Steward Mudenda
- Department of Pharmacy, School of Health Sciences, University of Zambia, Lusaka P.O. Box 50110, Zambia
- Department of Disease Control, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Zambia, Lusaka P.O. Box 32379, Zambia
| | - Adekunle O. Adeoti
- Department of Medicine, Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado Ekiti 360211, Nigeria
| | | | - Sunday O. Ogundele
- Department of Pharmacology, Therapeutics and Toxicology, Lagos State University College of Medicine, Lagos 100271, Nigeria
- Department of Medicine, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Lagos 100271, Nigeria
| | - Modupe R. Oyawole
- Department of Pharmacy, Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Lagos 100271, Nigeria
| | - Marione Schönfeldt
- Child, Youth and School Health Directorate, National Department of Health, Pretoria 0083, South Africa
| | - Wafaa M. Rashed
- Children’s Cancer Hospital, Egypt-57357 (CCHE-57357), Cairo 11441, Egypt
| | - Ahmad M. Galal
- Biomedical Research Department, Armed Forces College of Medicine, Cairo 11774, Egypt
| | - Nyasha Masuka
- CIMAS, Cimas House, Borrowdale Office Park, Borrowdale Road, Harare P.O. Box 1243, Zimbabwe
| | - Trust Zaranyika
- Department of Medicine, University of Zimbabwe College of Health Sciences, Harare P.O. Box MP167, Zimbabwe
| | - Aubrey C. Kalungia
- Department of Pharmacy, School of Health Sciences, University of Zambia, Lusaka P.O. Box 50110, Zambia
| | - Oliver O. Malande
- Department of Public Health Pharmacy and Management, School of Pharmacy, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Pretoria 02084, South Africa
- Department of Child Health and Paediatrics, Egerton University, Nakuru P.O.Box 536, Kenya
- East Africa Centre for Vaccines and Immunization (ECAVI), Namela House, Naguru, Kampala P.O. Box 3040, Uganda
| | - Dan Kibuule
- Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Busitema University, Mbale P.O. Box 236, Uganda
| | - Amos Massele
- Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Hurbert Kairuki Memorial University, 70 Chwaku Road Mikocheni, Dar Es Salaam P.O. Box 65300, Tanzania
| | - Ibrahim Chikowe
- Pharmacy Department, Formerly College of Medicine, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHeS), Blantyre P.O. Box 278, Malawi
| | - Felix Khuluza
- Pharmacy Department, Formerly College of Medicine, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences (KUHeS), Blantyre P.O. Box 278, Malawi
| | - Tinotenda Taruvinga
- Department of Global Health and Development (GHD), London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), London WC1E 7TH, UK
| | - Abubakr Alfadl
- National Medicines and Poisons Board, Federal Ministry of Health, Khartoum P.O. Box 303, Sudan
- Department of Pharmacy Practice, Unaizah College of Pharmacy, Qassim University, Unaizah 51911, Saudi Arabia
| | - Elfatih Malik
- Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum, Khartoum 11111, Sudan
| | - Margaret Oluka
- Department of Pharmacology & Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmacy, University of Nairobi, Nairobi P.O. Box 19676-00202, Kenya
| | - Sylvia Opanga
- Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacy Practice, School of Pharmacy, University of Nairobi, Nairobi P.O. Box 19676-00202, Kenya
| | - Daniel N. A. Ankrah
- Department of Pharmacy, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra P.O. Box 77, Ghana
| | - Israel A. Sefah
- Pharmacy Practice Department, School of Pharmacy, University of Health and Allied Sciences, Hohoe PMB 31, Ghana
| | - Daniel Afriyie
- Pharmacy Department, Ghana Police Hospital, Accra P.O. Box CT104, Ghana
| | - Eunice T. Tagoe
- Department of Management Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0QU, UK
| | - Adefolarin A. Amu
- Pharmacy Department, Eswatini Medical Christian University, P.O. Box A624, Swazi Plaza, Mbabane H100, Eswatini
| | - Mlungisi P. Msibi
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Eswatini Medical Christian University, Swazi Plaza P.O. Box A624, Mbabane H100, Eswatini
| | - Ayukafangha Etando
- Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, Eswatini Medical Christian University, Swazi Plaza P.O. Box A624, Mbabane H100, Eswatini
| | - Mobolaji E. Alabi
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, University of Kwazulu-natal (UKZN), Durban 4001, South Africa
| | - Patrick Okwen
- Effective Basic Services (eBASE) Africa, Ndamukong Street, Bamenda 5175, Cameroon
- Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Adelaide University, Adelaide 5005, Australia
| | - Loveline Lum Niba
- Effective Basic Services (eBASE) Africa, Ndamukong Street, Bamenda 5175, Cameroon
- Department of Public Health, University of Bamenda, Bambili P.O. Box 39, Cameroon
| | - Julius C. Mwita
- Department of Internal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Botswana, Gaborone P.O. Box 70480, Botswana
| | - Godfrey M. Rwegerera
- Department of Medicine, Sir Ketumile Masire Teaching Hospital, Gaborone P.O. Box 70480, Botswana
| | - Joyce Kgatlwane
- Department of Pharmacy, University of Botswana, Gaborone P.O. Box 70480, Botswana
| | - Ammar A. Jairoun
- Health and Safety Department, Dubai Municipality, Dubai P.O. Box 67, United Arab Emirates
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia
| | - Chioma Ejekam
- Department of Community Health, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, Lagos PMB 21266, Nigeria
| | - Rooyen T. Mavenyengwa
- Medical Microbiology Unit, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Zimbabwe, Harare P.O. Box MP167, Zimbabwe
| | - Irene Murimi-Worstell
- School of Pharmacy, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Stephen M. Campbell
- Department of Public Health Pharmacy and Management, School of Pharmacy, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Pretoria 02084, South Africa
- Centre for Epidemiology and Public Health, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
- NIHR Greater Manchester Patient Safety Translational Research Centre, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
| | - Johanna C. Meyer
- Department of Public Health Pharmacy and Management, School of Pharmacy, Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, Pretoria 02084, South Africa
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Mondal H, Parvanov ED, Singla RK, Rayan RA, Nawaz FA, Ritschl V, Eibensteiner F, Siva Sai C, Cenanovic M, Devkota HP, Hribersek M, De R, Klager E, Kletecka-Pulker M, Völkl-Kernstock S, Khalid GM, Lordan R, Găman MA, Shen B, Stamm T, Willschke H, Atanasov AG. Twitter-based crowdsourcing: What kind of measures can help to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster? Front Med (Lausanne) 2022; 9:961360. [PMID: 36186802 PMCID: PMC9523003 DOI: 10.3389/fmed.2022.961360] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/04/2022] [Accepted: 08/24/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Crowdsourcing is a low-cost, adaptable, and innovative method to collect ideas from numerous contributors with diverse backgrounds. Crowdsourcing from social media like Twitter can be used for generating ideas in a noticeably brief time based on contributions from globally distributed users. The world has been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic in the last several years. Measures to combat the pandemic continue to evolve worldwide, and ideas and opinions on optimal counteraction strategies are of high interest. Objective This study aimed to validate the use of Twitter as a crowdsourcing platform in order to gain an understanding of public opinion on what measures can help to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted during the period from December 22, 2021, to February 4, 2022. Tweets were posted by accounts operated by the authors, asking “How to faster end the COVID-19 pandemic?” and encouraging the viewers to comment on measures that they perceive would be effective to achieve this goal. The ideas from the users' comments were collected and categorized into two major themes – personal and institutional measures. In the final stage of the campaign, a Twitter poll was conducted to get additional comments and to estimate which of the two groups of measures were perceived to be important amongst Twitter users. Results The crowdsourcing campaign generated seventeen suggested measures categorized into two major themes (personal and institutional) that received a total of 1,727 endorsements (supporting comments, retweets, and likes). The poll received a total of 325 votes with 58% of votes underscoring the importance of both personal and institutional measures, 20% favoring personal measures, 11% favoring institutional measures, and 11% of the votes given just out of curiosity to see the vote results. Conclusions Twitter was utilized successfully for crowdsourcing ideas on strategies how to end the COVID-19 pandemic faster. The results indicate that the Twitter community highly values the significance of both personal responsibility and institutional measures to counteract the pandemic. This study validates the use of Twitter as a primary tool that could be used for crowdsourcing ideas with healthcare significance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Himel Mondal
- Saheed Laxman Nayak Medical College and Hospital, Koraput, Odisha, India
| | - Emil D. Parvanov
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Department of Translational Stem Cell Biology, Research Institute of the Medical University of Varna, Varna, Bulgaria
| | - Rajeev K. Singla
- Institutes for Systems Genetics, Frontiers Science Center for Disease-Related Molecular Network, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
- School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, India
- Rajeev K. Singla ;
| | - Rehab A. Rayan
- Department of Epidemiology, High Institute of Public Health, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt
| | - Faisal A. Nawaz
- College of Medicine, Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
| | - Valentin Ritschl
- Section for Outcomes Research, Center for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Arthritis and Rehabilitation, Vienna, Austria
| | - Fabian Eibensteiner
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology and Gastroenterology, Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Comprehensive Center for Pediatrics, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Chandragiri Siva Sai
- Amity Institute of Pharmacy, Amity University, Lucknow Campus, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
| | | | - Hari Prasad Devkota
- Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
- Headquarters for Admissions and Education, Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan
| | - Mojca Hribersek
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Ronita De
- ICMR-National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
| | - Elisabeth Klager
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Maria Kletecka-Pulker
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Institute for Ethics and Law in Medicine, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Sabine Völkl-Kernstock
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Garba M. Khalid
- Pharmaceutical Engineering Group, School of Pharmacy, Queen's University, Belfast, United Kingdom
| | - Ronan Lordan
- Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Mihnea-Alexandru Găman
- Faculty of Medicine, “Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Romania
- Department of Hematology, Center of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation, Fundeni Clinical Institute, Bucharest, Romania
| | - Bairong Shen
- Institutes for Systems Genetics, Frontiers Science Center for Disease-Related Molecular Network, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
| | - Tanja Stamm
- Section for Outcomes Research, Center for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Arthritis and Rehabilitation, Vienna, Austria
| | - Harald Willschke
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Department of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Medicine, Medical University Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Atanas G. Atanasov
- Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
- Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Jastrzẹbiec, Poland
- *Correspondence: Atanas G. Atanasov
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Ljajić A, Prodanović N, Medvecki D, Bašaragin B, Mitrović J. Uncovering the Reasons behind COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Serbia: Sentiment-Based Topic Modeling (Preprint). J Med Internet Res 2022; 24:e42261. [DOI: 10.2196/42261] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2022] [Revised: 09/29/2022] [Accepted: 09/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
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Wawrzuta D, Klejdysz J, Jaworski M, Gotlib J, Panczyk M. Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccination on Social Media: A Cross-Platform Analysis. Vaccines (Basel) 2022; 10:vaccines10081190. [PMID: 35893839 PMCID: PMC9332808 DOI: 10.3390/vaccines10081190] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2022] [Revised: 07/21/2022] [Accepted: 07/25/2022] [Indexed: 02/01/2023] Open
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media content analysis allowed for tracking attitudes toward newly introduced vaccines. However, current evidence is limited to single social media platforms. Our objective was to compare arguments used by anti-vaxxers in the context of COVID-19 vaccines across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. We obtained the data set of 53,671 comments regarding COVID-19 vaccination published between August 2021 and February 2022. After that, we established categories of anti-vaccine content, manually classified comments, and compared the frequency of occurrence of the categories between social media platforms. We found that anti-vaxxers on social media use 14 categories of arguments against COVID-19 vaccines. The frequency of these categories varies across different social media platforms. The anti-vaxxers' activity on Facebook and Twitter is similar, focusing mainly on distrust of government and allegations regarding vaccination safety and effectiveness. Anti-vaxxers on TikTok mainly focus on personal freedom, while Instagram users encouraging vaccination often face criticism suggesting that vaccination is a private matter that should not be shared. Due to the differences in vaccine sentiment among users of different social media platforms, future research and educational campaigns should consider these distinctions, focusing more on the platforms popular among adolescents (i.e., Instagram and TikTok).
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Affiliation(s)
- Dominik Wawrzuta
- Department of Education and Research in Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Żwirki i Wigury 81, 02-091 Warsaw, Poland; (M.J.); (J.G.); (M.P.)
- Correspondence:
| | - Justyna Klejdysz
- Department of Economics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich, Germany;
- ifo Institute, Poschinger Straße 5, 81679 Munich, Germany
| | - Mariusz Jaworski
- Department of Education and Research in Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Żwirki i Wigury 81, 02-091 Warsaw, Poland; (M.J.); (J.G.); (M.P.)
| | - Joanna Gotlib
- Department of Education and Research in Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Żwirki i Wigury 81, 02-091 Warsaw, Poland; (M.J.); (J.G.); (M.P.)
| | - Mariusz Panczyk
- Department of Education and Research in Health Sciences, Medical University of Warsaw, Żwirki i Wigury 81, 02-091 Warsaw, Poland; (M.J.); (J.G.); (M.P.)
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Argyris YA, Zhang N, Bashyal B, Tan PN. Using Deep Learning to Identify Linguistic Features that Facilitate or Inhibit the Propagation of Anti- and Pro-Vaccine Content on Social Media. 2022 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL HEALTH (IEEE ICDH 2022) : PROCEEDINGS : HYBRID CONFERENCE, BARCELONA, SPAIN, 11-15 JULY 2022. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DIGITAL HEALTH (2022 : BARCELONA, SPAIN; ONLINE) 2022; 2022:107-116. [PMID: 37975063 PMCID: PMC10652839 DOI: 10.1109/icdh55609.2022.00025] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2023]
Abstract
Anti-vaccine content is rapidly propagated via social media, fostering vaccine hesitancy, while pro-vaccine content has not replicated the opponent's successes. Despite this disparity in the dissemination of anti- and pro-vaccine posts, linguistic features that facilitate or inhibit the propagation of vaccine-related content remain less known. Moreover, most prior machine-learning algorithms classified social-media posts into binary categories (e.g., misinformation or not) and have rarely tackled a higher-order classification task based on divergent perspectives about vaccines (e.g., anti-vaccine, pro-vaccine, and neutral). Our objectives are (1) to identify sets of linguistic features that facilitate and inhibit the propagation of vaccine-related content and (2) to compare whether anti-vaccine, provaccine, and neutral tweets contain either set more frequently than the others. To achieve these goals, we collected a large set of social media posts (over 120 million tweets) between Nov. 15 and Dec. 15, 2021, coinciding with the Omicron variant surge. A two-stage framework was developed using a fine-tuned BERT classifier, demonstrating over 99 and 80 percent accuracy for binary and ternary classification. Finally, the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count text analysis tool was used to count linguistic features in each classified tweet. Our regression results show that anti-vaccine tweets are propagated (i.e., retweeted), while pro-vaccine tweets garner passive endorsements (i.e., favorited). Our results also yielded the two sets of linguistic features as facilitators and inhibitors of the propagation of vaccine-related tweets. Finally, our regression results show that anti-vaccine tweets tend to use the facilitators, while pro-vaccine counterparts employ the inhibitors. These findings and algorithms from this study will aid public health officials' efforts to counteract vaccine misinformation, thereby facilitating the delivery of preventive measures during pandemics and epidemics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Young Anna Argyris
- Dept of Media and Information, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
| | - Nan Zhang
- Dept of Advertising and Public Relations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
| | - Bidhan Bashyal
- Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
| | - Pang-Ning Tan
- Dept of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
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Niu Q, Liu J, Kato M, Nagai-Tanima M, Aoyama T. The Effect of Fear of Infection and Sufficient Vaccine Reservation Information on Rapid COVID-19 Vaccination in Japan: Evidence From a Retrospective Twitter Analysis. J Med Internet Res 2022; 24:e37466. [PMID: 35649182 PMCID: PMC9186499 DOI: 10.2196/37466] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2022] [Revised: 05/09/2022] [Accepted: 05/30/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The global public health and socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been substantial, rendering herd immunity by COVID-19 vaccination an important factor for protecting people and retrieving the economy. Among all the countries, Japan became one of the countries with the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in several months, although vaccine confidence in Japan is the lowest worldwide. OBJECTIVE We attempted to find the reasons for rapid COVID-19 vaccination in Japan given its lowest vaccine confidence levels worldwide, through Twitter analysis. METHODS We downloaded COVID-19-related Japanese tweets from a large-scale public COVID-19 Twitter chatter data set within the timeline of February 1 and September 30, 2021. The daily number of vaccination cases was collected from the official website of the Prime Minister's Office of Japan. After preprocessing, we applied unigram and bigram token analysis and then calculated the cross-correlation and Pearson correlation coefficient (r) between the term frequency and daily vaccination cases. We then identified vaccine sentiments and emotions of tweets and used the topic modeling to look deeper into the dominant emotions. RESULTS We selected 190,697 vaccine-related tweets after filtering. Through n-gram token analysis, we discovered the top unigrams and bigrams over the whole period. In all the combinations of the top 6 unigrams, tweets with both keywords "reserve" and "venue" showed the largest correlation with daily vaccination cases (r=0.912; P<.001). On sentiment analysis, negative sentiment overwhelmed positive sentiment, and fear was the dominant emotion across the period. For the latent Dirichlet allocation model on tweets with fear emotion, the two topics were identified as "infect" and "vaccine confidence." The expectation of the number of tweets generated from topic "infect" was larger than that generated from topic "vaccine confidence." CONCLUSIONS Our work indicates that awareness of the danger of COVID-19 might increase the willingness to get vaccinated. With a sufficient vaccine supply, effective delivery of vaccine reservation information may be an important factor for people to get vaccinated. We did not find evidence for increased vaccine confidence in Japan during the period of our study. We recommend policy makers to share accurate and prompt information about the infectious diseases and vaccination and to make efforts on smoother delivery of vaccine reservation information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qian Niu
- Department of Human Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Junyu Liu
- Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Masaya Kato
- Department of Human Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Momoko Nagai-Tanima
- Department of Human Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
| | - Tomoki Aoyama
- Department of Human Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
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Cascini F, Pantovic A, Al-Ajlouni YA, Failla G, Puleo V, Melnyk A, Lontano A, Ricciardi W. Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature. EClinicalMedicine 2022; 48:101454. [PMID: 35611343 PMCID: PMC9120591 DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101454] [Citation(s) in RCA: 90] [Impact Index Per Article: 45.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2022] [Revised: 04/24/2022] [Accepted: 04/27/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Vaccine hesitancy continues to limit global efforts in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. Emerging research demonstrates the role of social media in disseminating information and potentially influencing people's attitudes towards public health campaigns. This systematic review sought to synthesize the current evidence regarding the potential role of social media in shaping COVID-19 vaccination attitudes, and to explore its potential for shaping public health interventions to address the issue of vaccine hesitancy. METHODS We performed a systematic review of the studies published from inception to 13 of March2022 by searching PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, PsychNET, Scopus, CINAHL, and MEDLINE. Studies that reported outcomes related to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine (attitudes, opinion, etc.) gathered from the social media platforms, and those analyzing the relationship between social media use and COVID-19 hesitancy/acceptance were included. Studies that reported no outcome of interest or analyzed data from sources other than social media (websites, newspapers, etc.) will be excluded. The Newcastle Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to assess the quality of all cross-sectional studies included in this review. This study is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42021283219). FINDINGS Of the 2539 records identified, a total of 156 articles fully met the inclusion criteria. Overall, the quality of the cross-sectional studies was moderate - 2 studies received 10 stars, 5 studies received 9 stars, 9 studies were evaluated with 8, 12 studies with 7,16 studies with 6, 11 studies with 5, and 6 studies with 4 stars. The included studies were categorized into four categories. Cross-sectional studies reporting the association between reliance on social media and vaccine intentions mainly observed a negative relationship. Studies that performed thematic analyses of extracted social media data, mainly observed a domination of vaccine hesitant topics. Studies that explored the degree of polarization of specific social media contents related to COVID-19 vaccines observed a similar degree of content for both positive and negative tone posted on different social media platforms. Finally, studies that explored the fluctuations of vaccination attitudes/opinions gathered from social media identified specific events as significant cofactors that affect and shape vaccination intentions of individuals. INTERPRETATION This thorough examination of the various roles social media can play in disseminating information to the public, as well as how individuals behave on social media in the context of public health events, articulates the potential of social media as a platform of public health intervention to address vaccine hesitancy. FUNDING None.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fidelia Cascini
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Section of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome 00168, Italy
- Corresponding author.
| | - Ana Pantovic
- Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
| | | | - Giovanna Failla
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Section of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome 00168, Italy
| | - Valeria Puleo
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Section of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome 00168, Italy
| | - Andriy Melnyk
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Section of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome 00168, Italy
| | - Alberto Lontano
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Section of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome 00168, Italy
| | - Walter Ricciardi
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Section of Hygiene and Public Health, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go Francesco Vito 1, Rome 00168, Italy
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Tokiya M, Hara M, Matsumoto A, Ashenagar MS, Nakano T, Hirota Y. Association of Vaccine Confidence and Hesitancy in Three Phases of COVID-19 Vaccine Approval and Introduction in Japan. Vaccines (Basel) 2022; 10:vaccines10030423. [PMID: 35335055 PMCID: PMC8954745 DOI: 10.3390/vaccines10030423] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2022] [Revised: 03/08/2022] [Accepted: 03/09/2022] [Indexed: 02/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Understanding vaccine hesitancy, considering the target region and phase, is an urgent issue to quell the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This study aimed to monitor COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the Japanese population during the three phases of vaccine approval and introduction, and evaluate the association of vaccine hesitancy with vaccine confidence and literacy. We conducted web-based cross-sectional surveys during the three phases of COVID-19 vaccine introduction: January 2021, before approval; June, start of vaccination of the elderly; and September, when about 70% of the target population was vaccinated with at least one dose. There were 7210 participants, aged 20−80 years. We evaluated the association of vaccine hesitancy with vaccine confidence and literacy in the three phases using multivariate logistic regression analysis. The proportion of hesitancy in January, June, and September was 17.5%, 65.3%, and 19.4%, respectively. In any phase, lower vaccine confidence and literacy showed a higher adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of vaccine hesitancy in most items (AOR > 1, p < 0.001). Vaccine hesitancy in June had a different trend in perception of COVID-19 compared to that in the January and September surveys. The findings suggested that hesitancy increases transiently during vaccination introduction phases, and changes as the vaccination program progressed or waves of epidemic. Careful risk communication to increase vaccine confidence and literacy is essential to reduce vaccine hesitancy, especially in the introduction phase.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mikiko Tokiya
- Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, 5-1-1 Nabeshima, Saga 849-8501, Japan; (A.M.); (M.S.A.)
- Correspondence: ; Tel.: +81-952-34-2289
| | - Megumi Hara
- Department of Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, 5-1-1 Nabeshima, Saga 849-8501, Japan;
| | - Akiko Matsumoto
- Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, 5-1-1 Nabeshima, Saga 849-8501, Japan; (A.M.); (M.S.A.)
| | - Mohammad Said Ashenagar
- Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Saga University, 5-1-1 Nabeshima, Saga 849-8501, Japan; (A.M.); (M.S.A.)
| | - Takashi Nakano
- Department of Pediatrics, Kawasaki Medical School, 577 Matsushima, Kurashiki 701-0192, Japan;
| | - Yoshio Hirota
- Clinical Epidemiology Research Center, Medical Co. LTA (SOUSEIKAI), Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 813-0017, Japan;
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