Public Awareness and Sentiment toward COVID-19 Vaccination in South Korea: Findings from Big Data Analytics

Despite a worldwide campaign to promote vaccination, South Korea is facing difficulties in increasing its vaccination rate due to negative perceptions of the vaccines and vaccination policies. This study investigated South Koreans’ awareness of and sentiments toward vaccination. Particularly, this s...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2022-08, Vol.19 (16), p.9914
Main Authors: Choi, Yeon-Jun, Lee, Julak, Paek, Seung Yeop
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Big Data
Conspiracy
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 vaccines
Data analysis
Herd immunity
Pandemics
Population
Public awareness
Social distancing
Social networks
Social research
Trust
Vaccines
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Despite a worldwide campaign to promote vaccination, South Korea is facing difficulties in increasing its vaccination rate due to negative perceptions of the vaccines and vaccination policies. This study investigated South Koreans’ awareness of and sentiments toward vaccination. Particularly, this study explored how public opinions have developed over time, and compared them to those of other nations. We used Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, and AstraZeneca as keywords on Naver, Daum, Google, and Twitter to collect data on public awareness and sentiments toward the vaccines and the government’s vaccination policies. The results showed that South Koreans’ sentiments on vaccination changed from neutral to negative to positive over the past two years. In particular, public sentiments turned positive due to South Koreans’ hopeful expectations and a high vaccination rate. Overall, the attitudes and sentiments toward vaccination in South Korea were similar to those of other nations. The conspiracy theories surrounding the vaccines had a significant effect on the negative opinions in other nations, but had little impact on South Korea.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph19169914