To Quyen G, To Kien G, Huynh Van-Anh N, Nguyen Nhung Tq, Ngo Diep Tn, Alley Stephanie, Tran Anh Nq, Tran Anh Np, Pham Ngan Tt, Bui Thanh X, Vandelanotte Corneel
Appleton Institute, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, Australia.
Public Health Faculty, University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Digit Health. 2023 Feb 19;9:20552076231158033. doi: 10.1177/20552076231158033. eCollection 2023 Jan-Dec.
Vaccine hesitancy has been ranked by the World Health Organization among the top 10 threats to global health. With a surge in misinformation and conspiracy theories against vaccination observed during the COVID-19 pandemic, attitudes toward vaccination may be worsening. This study investigates trends in anti-vaccination attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic and within the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.
Vaccine-related English tweets published between 1 January 2020 and 27 June 2021 were used. A deep learning model using a dynamic word embedding method, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERTs), was developed to identify anti-vaccination tweets. The classifier achieved a micro F1 score of 0.92. Time series plots and country maps were used to examine vaccination attitudes globally and within countries.
Among 9,352,509 tweets, 232,975 (2.49%) were identified as anti-vaccination tweets. The overall number of vaccine-related tweets increased sharply after the implementation of the first vaccination round since November 2020 (daily average of 6967 before vs. 31,757 tweets after 9/11/2020). The number of anti-vaccination tweets increased after conspiracy theories spread on social media. Percentages of anti-vaccination tweets were 3.45%, 2.74%, 2.46%, and 1.86% for the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, respectively.
Strategies and information campaigns targeting vaccination misinformation may need to be specifically designed for regions with the highest anti-vaccination Twitter activity and when new vaccination campaigns are initiated.
疫苗犹豫已被世界卫生组织列为全球健康面临的十大威胁之一。在新冠疫情期间，针对疫苗接种的错误信息和阴谋论激增，人们对疫苗接种的态度可能正在恶化。本研究调查了新冠疫情期间以及美国、加拿大、英国和澳大利亚境内反疫苗接种态度的趋势。
使用2020年1月1日至2021年6月27日期间发布的与疫苗相关的英文推文。开发了一种使用动态词嵌入方法的深度学习模型，即来自变换器的双向编码器表示（BERT），以识别反疫苗接种推文。该分类器的微F1分数达到0.92。使用时间序列图和国家地图来检查全球和各国的疫苗接种态度。
在9352509条推文中，有232975条（2.49%）被确定为反疫苗接种推文。自2020年11月第一轮疫苗接种实施后，与疫苗相关的推文总数急剧增加（2020年9月11日之前每日平均6967条推文，之后为31757条推文）。在社交媒体上阴谋论传播后，反疫苗接种推文的数量增加。美国、英国、澳大利亚和加拿大的反疫苗接种推文百分比分别为3.45%、2.74%、2.46%和1.86%。
针对疫苗接种错误信息的策略和宣传活动可能需要针对反疫苗接种推特活动最活跃的地区以及新的疫苗接种活动启动时进行专门设计。
