By Denham Jones, Amanda Persten, and Zhuoxuan Liang
An analysis of the dataset for COVID-19 Vaccines and Vaccination status yielded three distinct categories of thematic posts: official statements, testimonies, and posts or mentions with anti-vax opinions or perspectives. Each of these themes had varying amounts of mention volume, with official statement mentions totaling 11,700,060 total mentions, testimonies totaling 1,802,482 total mentions, and anti-vax mentions totaling 6,547,369 total mentions.
Further examination of the three identified themes showed that the largest difference beyond the total mention volume for each theme was the sentiment breakdown by percentages and distribution. The infographic reveals that the theme of official statements had the most stable sentiment distribution, with the spikes within the dataset occurring largely with neutral sentiment. Mentions falling under the testimony theme were less stable, having spikes within the dataset for both neutral and negative sentiment at various points. Anti-vax mentions were the most volatile in terms of sentiment distribution, with at large variance in positive and negative sentiment, as well as a steady pattern of fluctuation in identified sentiment across the timeframe of the dataset.
