Public Sentiment Towards the COVID-19 Vaccine Booster: Twitter Data Analysis

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 vaccines are one of the most effective ways to prevent COVID19 infection, and vaccine booster doses are crucial to increase immunity at a community level. However, public prejudice, as reflected on social media, may significantly impact the implementation of vaccination programs. This study aimed to investigate the sentiment of the COVID-19 vaccine booster using sentiment analysis. Subjects and Method: This observational study collected Indonesian tweets containing COVID-19 vaccine booster keywords. We retrieved 2,201 tweets, and performed sentiment analysis using the Naïve Bayes Classifier model and identified public-concerned topics related to each sentiment. Results: 22.67% of tweets were negative sentiments, 40.79% were neutral sentiments, and 36.52% were positive sentiments toward vaccine boosters. The neutral sentiment is mainly concerned with information and vaccination service sites. Positive sentiment focused on the effectiveness and implementation of health protocol even after booster vaccination. While negative sentiment mainly concerned booster vaccine unavailability and the side effects of vaccine booster Conclusion: Positive sentiment towards vaccine boosters is dominant compared to negative sentiment. Topic negative view indicated that government and policymakers should be concerned about booster vaccine availability.