Analysis and Classification of Vaccine Dialogue in the Coronavirus Era

As the coronavirus tears through our global community, the world pins its hopes on the expedient availability of a safe and effective vaccine. In the U.S, however, mere mention of vaccines galvanizes a community that remains steadfastly opposed to them. This paper analyzes the vaccine dialogue on Twitter in the coronavirus era, using the data collected a week after President Trump's announcement of Operation Warp Speed. These tweets are explored in three ways. Informal opinion mining reveals both concerns and support; the anti-vaxx community is vociferous in opposing the vaccine, spreading misinformation, spinning conspiracies and whipping hysteria. Significant hesitation about the safety of the Covid-19 vaccine is also expressed in particular because of its rapid deployment. The pro-vaxx community counters this opposition by pointing to prior successes of immunizations as well as by mocking the anti-vaxx attitudes. A comparison of the social features of the anti-vaxx and pro-vaxx tweets suggests that the anti-vaxx community has gained steam on social media platforms and is better connected than the pro-vaxx community, which may lead to a penetration of discordant information through the online world. Identifying and labeling tweets that sow discordant information is one way to prevent their spread, which is facilitated by our classification framework that can distinguish between the anti-vaxx and pro-vaxx tweets with an accuracy of over 80%. Taken together, our results suggest that unless a concerted effort is made to dispel these myths and misgivings, the fringe anti-vaxx minority is likely to become an outspoken majority by dragging many skeptics into their fold, and hence, hinder herd immunity.