Negative vaccine voices in Swedish social media
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13/0025/000567Keywords:
Vaccine hesitancy, Sentiment analysis, Swedish, Exploratory studyAbstract
Vaccinations are one of the most significant interventions in public health, but vaccine hesitancy raises concerns among portions of the population in many countries, including Sweden. Since discussions surrounding vaccine hesitancy frequently take place on social networking sites, data from Swedish social media were used to study and quantify sentiment among discussants on the vaccination-or-not topic during phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. Of all posts analysed, the majority displayed a stronger negative sentiment, prevailing throughout the examined period, with some spikes linked to vaccine-related events identifiable in the results. Sentiment analysis can therefore serve as a valuable tool for tracking public opinion regarding the use, efficacy, safety, and importance of vaccination.
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Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
