Does the COVID-19 Vaccine Still Work That “Most of the Confirmed Cases Had Been Vaccinated”? A Content Analysis of Vaccine Effectiveness Discussion on Sina Weibo during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing

Hao Gao, Qingting Zhao, Chuanlin Ning, Difan Guo, Jing Wu and Lina Li
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Hao Gao: School of Journalism and Communication, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China
Qingting Zhao: School of Journalism and Communication, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China
Chuanlin Ning: School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
Difan Guo: School of Journalism and Communication, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China
Jing Wu: Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Lina Li: Film-Television and Communication College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 19, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: In July 2021, breakthrough cases were reported in the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing, sparking concern and discussion about the vaccine’s effectiveness and becoming a trending topic on Sina Weibo. In order to explore public attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine and their emotional orientations, we collected 1542 posts under the trending topic through data mining. We set up four categories of attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines, and used a big data analysis tool to code and manually checked the coding results to complete the content analysis. The results showed that 45.14% of the Weibo posts ( n = 1542) supported the COVID-19 vaccine, 12.97% were neutral, and 7.26% were doubtful, which indicated that the public did not question the vaccine’s effectiveness due to the breakthrough cases in Nanjing. There were 66.47% posts that reflected significant negative emotions. Among these, 50.44% of posts with negative emotions were directed towards the media, 25.07% towards the posting users, and 11.51% towards the public, which indicated that the negative emotions were not directed towards the COVID-19 vaccine. External sources outside the vaccine might cause vaccine hesitancy. Public opinions expressed in online media reflect the public’s cognition and attitude towards vaccines and their core needs in terms of information. Therefore, online public opinion monitoring could be an essential way to understand the opinions and attitudes towards public health issues.

Keywords: breakthrough cases; COVID-19 vaccine; sentiment orientation; social media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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