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It’s Your Turn, Are You Ready to Get Vaccinated? Towards an Exploration of Vaccine Hesitancy Using Sentiment Analysis of Instagram Posts

Author

Listed:
  • Mohammed Talha Alam

    (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi 110062, India
    Department of Machine Learning, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 54115, United Arab Emirates)

  • Shahab Saquib Sohail

    (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi 110062, India)

  • Syed Ubaid

    (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi 110062, India
    Department of Computer Science, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh 202001, India)

  • Shakil

    (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi 110062, India
    Faculty of Electronic and Information Technology, Warsaw University of Technology, Nowowiejska 15/19, 00-665 Warszawa, Poland)

  • Zafar Ali

    (School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China)

  • Mohammad Hijji

    (Faculty of Computers and Information Technology (FCIT), University of Tabuk, Tabuk 47711, Saudi Arabia)

  • Abdul Khader Jilani Saudagar

    (Information Systems Department, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMSIU), Riyadh 11432, Saudi Arabia)

  • Khan Muhammad

    (Visual Analytics for Knowledge Laboratory (VIS2KNOW Lab), Department of Applied Artificial Intelligence, School of Convergence, College of Computing and Informatics, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 03063, Korea)

Abstract

The deadly threat caused by the rapid spread of COVID-19 has been restricted by virtue of vaccines. However, there is misinformation regarding the certainty and positives outcome of getting vaccinated; hence, many people are reluctant to opt for it. Therefore, in this paper, we identified public sentiments and hesitancy toward the COVID-19 vaccines based on Instagram posts as part of intelligent surveillance. We first retrieved more than 10k publicly available comments and captions posted under different vaccine hashtags (namely, covaxin, covishield, and sputnik). Next, we translated the extracted comments into a common language (English), followed by the calculation of the polarity score of each comment, which helped identify the vaccine sentiments and opinions in the comments (positive, negative, and neutral) with an accuracy of more than 80%. Moreover, upon analysing the sentiments, we found that covaxin received 71.4% positive, 18.5% neutral, and 10.1% negative comments; covishield obtained 64.2% positive, 24.5% neutral, and 11.3% negative post; and sputnik received 55.8% positive, 15.5% neutral, and 28.7% negative sentiments. Understanding vaccination perceptions and views through Instagram comments, captions, and posts is helpful for public health officials seeking to enhance vaccine uptake by promoting positive marketing and reducing negative marketing. In addition to this, some interesting future directions are also suggested considering the investigated problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Mohammed Talha Alam & Shahab Saquib Sohail & Syed Ubaid & Shakil & Zafar Ali & Mohammad Hijji & Abdul Khader Jilani Saudagar & Khan Muhammad, 2022. "It’s Your Turn, Are You Ready to Get Vaccinated? Towards an Exploration of Vaccine Hesitancy Using Sentiment Analysis of Instagram Posts," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(22), pages 1-17, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jmathe:v:10:y:2022:i:22:p:4165-:d:966036
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Philip Ball, 2020. "Anti-vaccine movement could undermine efforts to end coronavirus pandemic, researchers warn," Nature, Nature, vol. 581(7808), pages 251-251, May.
    2. Petra Kralj Novak & Jasmina Smailović & Borut Sluban & Igor Mozetič, 2015. "Sentiment of Emojis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-22, December.
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