Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccination on Social Media: A Cross-Platform Analysis

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).

Automated summary

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media content analysis has been used to track attitudes towards vaccines. This study compares the arguments used by anti-vaxxers on different social media platforms. The findings show that anti-vaxxers use different categories of arguments across platforms, with Facebook and Twitter focusing on government distrust and vaccine safety and effectiveness, TikTok focusing on personal freedom, and Instagram facing criticism for advocating vaccination.