Sentiment analysis and topic modeling for COVID-19 vaccine discussions

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been ongoing for almost two years and has had an unprecedented impact on the daily lives of people around the world. More recently, the emergence of the Delta variant of COVID-19 has once again put the world at risk. Fortunately, many countries and companies have developed vaccines for the coronavirus. As of 23 August 2021, more than 20 vaccines have been approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), bringing light to people besieged by the pandemic. The global rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine has sparked much discussion on social media platforms, such as the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine. However, there has not been much systematic analysis of public opinion on the COVID-19 vaccine. In this study, we conduct an in-depth analysis of the discussions related to the COVID-19 vaccine on Twitter. We analyze the hot topics discussed by people and the corresponding emotional polarity from the perspective of countries and vaccine brands. The results show that most people trust the effectiveness of vaccines and are willing to get vaccinated. In contrast, negative tweets tended to be associated with news reports of post-vaccination deaths, vaccine shortages, and post-injection side effects. Overall, this study uses popular Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies to mine people’s opinions on the COVID-19 vaccine on social media and objectively analyze and visualize them. Our findings can improve the readability of the confusing information on social media platforms and provide effective data support for the government and policy makers.