Content analysis and sentiment analysis of pro- and anti-vaccine conversations on YouTube in India: intentions and causes
Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication
ISSN: 2514-9342
Article publication date: 21 December 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Vaccine hesitancy is a long-standing issue among both the general population and health communicators. This study aims to ascertain the inclination and the reasons for vaccine hesitancy by conducting content analysis and sentiment analysis of the perspectives expressed in comments on videos related to vaccine hesitancy uploaded from India on YouTube.
Design/methodology/approach
The assessment of the sentiments of the vaccine-hesitant population is done using Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner sentiment analysis module implemented with Python’s NLTK library to automatically determine the sentiments of the comments. Manual content analysis was performed on 60.09% viewer comments randomly selected from the total comments in 238 videos on vaccine hesitancy originated from India and labelled each comment with labels “Anti”, “Pro”, “Confused”, “Not Applicable” and “Unrelated” labels.
Findings
The study found “Mistrust-Government policies”, “Fear-health related consequences”, “Mistrust-Scientific research”, “Vaccine effectiveness and efficacy” and “Misinformation/myths” as the top five determinants for vaccine hesitancy, whereas “Religious beliefs”, “Fear-Economic consequences”, “Side Effects- short-term” and “Fear-mode of administration” found to be the lesser cited reasons for vaccine hesitancy. However, the study also investigates changes in the inclination of Indian commenters towards vaccine hesitancy and revolving issues over time.
Social implications
Public health policymakers and health communicators may find the study useful in determining vaccine hesitancy factors in India.
Originality/value
The originality of this study lies in its approach. To date, no sentiment analysis has been conducted on the content released on YouTube by Indian content creators regarding pro- and anti-vaccination videos. This inquiry seeks to fill this research gap.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Ethics statement: Informed consent and ethical approval are not necessary for this study. No human participant was involved, and the data is collected from publicly accessible online video sharing platform available in the public domain. Identifiable information was removed, and only the text portion was used with proper anonymisation.
Funding information: No funds were received to conduct this study.
Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Contribution by authors: Vinit Kumar (VK) conceptualised the idea and design of the study and collected the data; Gopal Ji (GO)and Maya Deori (MD) classified and analysed the data, prepared tabulations and visualisations. Manoj Kumar Verma (MKV) and MD conducted the review and contributed to the introduction section. VK and GO wrote the results and discussion section and prepared the first draft. MKV and VK revised and edited the final version. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Citation
Kumar, V., Ji, G., Deori, M. and Verma, M.K. (2023), "Content analysis and sentiment analysis of pro- and anti-vaccine conversations on YouTube in India: intentions and causes", Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-07-2023-0244
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited