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

Yeon-Jun Choi; Julak Lee; Seung Yeop Paek

doi:10.3390/ijerph19169914

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

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 11;19(16):9914. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19169914.

Authors

Yeon-Jun Choi¹, Julak Lee², Seung Yeop Paek³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Aviation Security Protection, Kwangju Women's University, Gwangju 62396, Korea.
² Department of Industrial Security, Chung-Ang University, 84 Heukseok-ro, Dongjak-gu, Seoul 06911, Korea.
³ Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, East Bay, SF-428, Hayward, CA 94542, USA.

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; South Korea; awareness; big data analysis; sentiment; vaccination.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19 Vaccines
COVID-19* / epidemiology
COVID-19* / prevention & control
Data Science
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Humans
Republic of Korea
Social Media*
Vaccination
Vaccines*

Substances

COVID-19 Vaccines
Vaccines

Grants and funding

Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology (KIAT) grant funded by the Korea Government (MOTIE) (P0008703, The Competency Development Program for Industry Specialist).