As the world moves towards large-scale vaccination to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, a study by Nuzhath et al (2020) revealed certain negative themes circulating on various social media platforms (i.e. Twitter) regarding vaccines.

“Results: 1306 out of 4868 tweets were categorized as negative, and the emerging themes: misinformation (32.47%), vaccine safety and effectiveness (21.13%), conspiracy theories (17.99%), and mistrust of scientists and governments (12.86%), lack of intent to get a COVID-19 vaccine (10.64%), freedom of choice (3.60%), and religious beliefs (1.30%). Negative tweets predominantly consisted of misleading statements such as immunization against coronavirus is unnecessary as the survival rate is high, and concerns about the side effects of a potential vaccine being developed at an unprecedented speed.”

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