Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Jun 22, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Jun 21, 2021 - Jun 30, 2021
Date Accepted: Aug 4, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Aug 12, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
COVID-19 Vaccine Perception in South Korea: A Web-Crawling Approach
ABSTRACT
Background:
The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization emphasized vaccination against the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) because physical distancing proved inadequate to mitigate death, illness, and massive economic loss.
Objective:
The purpose of this study was to investigate Korean citizens’ perceptions of vaccines by examining their views on COVID-19, their positive and negative perceptions of each vaccine, and ways to enhance policies to increase vaccine acceptance.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study analyzed posts on NAVER and Instagram to examine Korean citizens’ acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines. The keywords searched were “vaccine,” “AstraZeneca,” and “Pfizer.” In total 8,100 posts in NAVER and 5,291 posts in Instagram were sampled through web crawling. Morphology analysis was performed, overlapping or meaningless words were removed, sentiment analysis was implemented, and three public health professionals reviewed the results.
Results:
The findings revealed a negative perception of COVID-19 vaccines; of the words crawled, the proportion of negative words for AstraZeneca was 71.0% and for Pfizer was 56.3%. Moreover, 70.5% considered Pfizer safe, while 30.4% thought AstraZeneca safe. Among words crawled with “vaccine,” “good” ranked first, with a frequency of 312 (13.4%). Meanwhile, “side effect” ranked highest, with a frequency of 163 (18.4%) for “AstraZeneca,” but 0.6%. for “Pfizer.” With “vaccine,” positive words were more frequently used, whereas with “AstraZeneca” and “Pfizer” negative words were prevalent.
Conclusions:
There is a negative perception of AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines in Korea, with one in four people refusing vaccination. To address this, accurate information needs to be shared about vaccines including AstraZeneca, and the experiences of those vaccinated. Furthermore, government communication about risk management is required to increase the AstraZeneca vaccination rate for herd immunity before the vaccine expires.
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Copyright
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