Abstract

In this study, we aimed to understand the public opinion on COVID-19 vaccine. To achieve the goal, we analyzed COVID-19 vaccine-related Twitter posts. 45,413 tweets posted from March 16, 2020 to March 15, 2021 including COVID-19 vaccine names as keywords were collected. The 12 vaccine names used for data collection included ‘Pfizer’, ‘AstraZeneca’, ‘Modena’, ‘Jansen’, ‘NovaVax’, ‘Sinopharm’, ‘SinoVac’, ‘Sputnik V’, ‘Bharat’, ‘KhanSino’, ‘Chumakov’, and ‘VECTOR’ in the order of the number of collected posts. The collected posts were analyzed manually and automatedly through keyword analysis, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling to understand the opinions for the investigated vaccines. According to the results, there were generally more negative posts about vaccines than positive posts. Anxiety about the aftereffects of vaccination and distrust in the efficacy of vaccines were identified as major negative factors for vaccines. On the contrary, the anticipation for the suppression of the spread of coronavirus following vaccination was identified as a positive social factor for vaccines. Different from previous studies that investigated opinions about COVID-19 vaccines through mass media data such as news articles, this study explores opinions of social media users using keyword analysis, sentiment analysis, and topic modeling. In addition, the results of this study can be used by governmental institutions for making policies to promote vaccination reflecting the social atmosphere.