The COVID-19 Vaccine Discussion on Twitter: Arguments of Sceptics and Supporters

Book chapter, 2024

The chapter analyses the COVID-19 vaccine discussion on Twitter based on a collection of more than one million tweets collected between 1 January 2020 and 1 September 2021, with a focus on a Nordic sub-corpus of 3,401 tweets. Our research questions are: what were the main discussion topics and core arguments behind vaccine acceptance or scepticism? Also, how did opponents and advocates of vaccination treat each other - did they remain in the framework of social trust? Social or generalised trust is defined as society’s readiness for conflict-free and respectful communication based on the principles of solidarity, truthfulness, and spontaneous altruism. By combining structural topic modelling (STM) with thematic analysis, the chapter shows that while vaccine supporters spoke of solidarity, sceptics were concerned with free choice. The chapter provides an analysis of how these arguments were formulated when discussing such topics as herd immunity, mandatory vaccination, and the role of politicians in solving the COVID-19 crisis. Pointedly, the authors observed an acute lack of mutual respect and the ability to conduct a constructive dialogue between the two groups. For Nordic societies to maintain a basic level of trust, it is necessary to include various groups in decision-making and public deliberation processes based on respect.