Vaccine Hesitancy and Anti-Vaccination Attitudes during the Start of COVID-19 Vaccination Program: A Content Analysis on Twitter Data

Twitter is a useful source for detecting anti-vaccine content due to the increasing prevalence of these arguments on social media. We aimed to identify the prominent themes about vaccine hesitancy and refusal on social media posts in Turkish during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this qualitative study, we collected public tweets (n = 551,245) that contained a vaccine-related keyword and had been published between 9 December 2020 and 8 January 2021 through the Twitter API. A random sample of tweets (n = 1041) was selected and analyzed by four researchers with the content analysis method. We found that 90.5% of the tweets were about vaccines, 22.6% (n = 213) of the tweets mentioned at least one COVID-19 vaccine by name, and the most frequently mentioned COVID-19 vaccine was CoronaVac (51.2%). We found that 22.0% (n = 207) of the tweets included at least one anti-vaccination theme. Poor scientific processes (21.7%), conspiracy theories (16.4%), and suspicions towards manufacturers (15.5%) were the most frequently mentioned themes. The most co-occurring themes were poor scientific process with suspicion towards manufacturers (n = 9), and suspicion towards health authorities (n = 5). This study may be helpful for health managers, assisting them to identify the major concerns of the population and organize preventive measures through the significant role of social media in early spread of information about vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination attitudes.

Automated summary

The study analyzed Twitter posts in Turkish to identify themes related to vaccine hesitancy and refusal. It found that 22.0% of the tweets included at least one anti-vaccination theme, with poor scientific processes, conspiracy theories, and suspicions towards manufacturers being the most frequently mentioned themes. The study highlights the importance of social media in spreading information about vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaccination attitudes, and suggests that health managers can use this information to organize preventive measures.