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

Yeon-Jun Choi, Julak Lee () and Seung Yeop Paek
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Yeon-Jun Choi: Department of Aviation Security Protection, Kwangju Women’s University, Gwangju 62396, Korea
Julak Lee: Department of Industrial Security, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul 06911, Korea
Seung Yeop Paek: Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, East Bay, SF-428, Hayward, CA 94542, USA

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-14

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: COVID-19; vaccination; awareness; sentiment; big data analysis; South Korea (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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