April 7-9, 2022 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Abstract: Why Do People Oppose COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates? A Computational Discourse Analysis Study
Background: The conversation about COVID-19 vaccine mandates is becoming increasingly polarized. As president Biden announced the action plan for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, discourses opposing the vaccine mandate are trending on social media. Vaccination is one of the most critical steps in the long-term control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, it is important to understand who and why oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Through a computational discourse analysis of 80,112 tweets that oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates, this study aims to answer two questions: What are the major reasons people oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates (RQ1)? How do anti-vaccine mandate tweets diffuse on Twitter (RQ2)? Method: We collected tweets through Twitter’s streaming API. We set the time frame as 01/01/2021 to 10/31/2021 and set the search keywords as “#IwillnotComply, #NoMandatoryVaccination, #NoVaccinePassportsAnywhere, #NoVaccinePassports, #mybodymychoice, #IDonotComply, #NoVaccineMandates.” In total, 80,112 tweets from 30,979 users were collected. We conducted a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) modeling to cluster the major topics of the discourses about COVID-19 vaccines. Result: 1. Major Themes of Discourses Opposing COVID-19 vaccine Mandate. Discourses opposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates showed the peak in September 2021, when President Biden announced an action plan on vaccination mandate for employees working for large private employers. Four major themes underlying discourses that oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates were generated with LDA modeling. (1) Tweets in Topic 1 concern violations of freedom and liberty (e.g., “Vaccine passports for domestic use are one of the most illiberal, unethical and authoritarian ideas”). (2) Tweets in Topic 2 concern that COVID-19 vaccine mandates will increase discriminations (e.g., “Vaccine Passports are discriminatory, divisive, unnecessary”). (3) Topic 3 doubts about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines (e.g., “I’m not anti-vaccine, I’m anti a rushed vaccine with no short- and long-term effects”). (4) Tweets in Topic 4 believe in conspiracy theories (e.g., “If everyone stopped using smart phones the whole Vaccine Passport thing would be derailed. A digital prison is being constructed around us with smart phones”). 2. Diffusions of Anti-Vaccine Mandate Tweets. The diffusion of anti-vaccine mandate tweets follows a long-tail distribution. The number of retweet ranges from 0 to 6735 (M = 16.14, SD =121.32, Sum = 1292,739), with 60.3% of the tweets (n = 48312) receiving no retweet, and 5% of the tweets (n = 4005) receiving 90% of the total retweets. The viral tweets tend to come from sources with higher number of followers (b = 0.01, p <.001) and messages with emotional-laden words related to fear (b = 1.72, p <.001), anger (b = 1.23, p <.05), and trust (b = 1.61, p<.001). Conclusion: People who oppose COVID-19 vaccine mandates were driven by the concerns that the mandate will violate freedom and liberty, increase discrimination, concerns about vaccine safety, and beliefs in conspiracy theories. The distribution of anti-vaccine mandate tweets follows a long-tail distribution, with most of the tweets receiving no retweets and 5% receiving most of the retweets.