JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2021 Aug 4. doi: 10.2196/31409. Online ahead of print.
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: This study aimed to investigate Korean citizens’ perceptions of vaccines by examining their views on COVID-19 vaccines, 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’ perception 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.
PMID:34348890 | DOI:10.2196/31409
