Can Post-vaccination Sentiment Affect the Acceptance of Booster Jab?

Abstract

In this paper, Twitter posts discussing the COVID-19 vaccine booster shot from nine African countries were classified according to sentiments to understand the effect of citizens’ sentiments towards accepting the booster shot. The number of booster shot-related tweets significantly positively correlated with the increase in booster shots across different countries (Corr = 0.410, P = 0.028). Similarly, the increase in the number of positive tweets discussing booster shots significantly positively correlated with the increase in positive tweet intensities (Corr = 0.992, P < 0.001). The increase in intensities of positive tweets also positively correlated with an increase in likes and re-tweets (Corr = 0.560, P < 0.001). Topics were identified from the tweets using the LDA model, including – booster safety, booster efficacy, booster type, booster uptake, and vaccine uptake. The 77% of tweets discussing these topics are mostly from South Africa, Nigeria (19%), and Namibia (3%). Our result showed that there is an average 45.5% chance of tweets discussing these topics carrying positive sentiments. The outcome suggests that users’ expressions on social media regarding booster shots could likely affect the acceptance of booster shots either positively or negatively. This research should be relevant to health policy-makers in gathering insight from social media data for the management and planning of vaccination programs during a disease outbreak.