Vaccine Acceptance Tracker
What Can We Learn From 12 Months of UK Data on Vaccine Perceptions?
Amy Wright
Amy draws on extensive experience of designing and implementing media insight services to create strong, strategic, long-term client partnerships. She specialises in delivering bespoke digital research programmes to provide consultancy-level insights that make a real difference to global clients in not-for-profit and diversity & inclusion spaces.
CONTEXT
Marble Global’s Vaccine Acceptance Tracker launched last week, and we’ve been providing organisations involved in the vaccine rollout with daily data and insights reflecting public acceptance of, or hesitancy towards, the COVID-19 vaccine in the UK. This service is great for staying up to date with the latest on perceptions on vaccines in the UK, but what can we learn from the historical data going back to January 2020?
INSIGHT
Firstly, on average, tweets indicating acceptance of vaccines have a three times higher reach than tweets indicating hesitancy towards vaccines in the UK. Notwithstanding this, there have been regular points during 2020 where the net daily acceptance score has been negative, and the 30 days net acceptance score was negative for a prolonged period in September/October 2020.
INSIGHT
The primary driver behind the prolonged negative 30-day net acceptance score in autumn 2020 was the discussion of issues with several of the vaccines under trial at the time, including a pause in the Oxford vaccine trial due to a potential adverse reaction, and a concern around the high speed at which vaccine development was progressing.
Much of this communication came from the mainstream media, with some using language that could have negatively impacted people's perceptions of vaccines. The Economist, with 25.3 million followers, published multiple tweets about 'safety concerns' with the 'fast-tracked' Russian vaccine. The Telegraph, with 3 million published a tweet which claimed to share views from "leading scientists" that "rushing" the development of a coronavirus vaccine to bring it to the public before the end of this year is "unrealistic, unsafe, and even 'crazy'." Most of the responses to the Telegraph's tweet agreed with the sentiment: "No shit!! Us sane people have been saying this for months and are conspiracy theorists as a result."
Educating the public (and the media) on the normality of 'pauses' in trials of vaccines may have helped prevent trust and acceptance being dented by the news related to the Oxford vaccine trial pause. In response to a dramatic tweet from a Sky news reporter, one person called out CNN's tweet on the same topic as a good example of how such news can be reported responsibly.
Provocative posts & headlines from mainstream media could reinforce hesitancy
INSIGHT
Safety was the key concern in tweets expressing hesitancy
We used a model developed specifically to afford us a lens on the vaccine hesitancy data, called SANTEE, to classify tweets from those expressing hesitance towards COVID-18 vaccines into one of six topic areas; Safety, Agency, Need, Trust, Ethics and Efficacy. The aim was to gain greater insights into what people's key areas of concern were, and how these changed over time.
Looking at the full data set from the last year, tweets expressing hesitancy were most concerned with the Safety of vaccines (51% of tweet reach). Those expressing lack of Trust in individuals, organisations and governments involved in vaccine production, planning and distribution accounted for 20% of hesitant tweet reach, and 16% were concerned with vaccine Efficacy. The least discussed topic of concern was Ethics.
Concerns around safety changed throughout the year, but hinged on fears that vaccines were 'rushed' (15% of Safety related tweets) or 'experimental' (12%) with a lack of understanding of long term safety (4%). More recently, there were significant concerns expressed in the UK about changes to the vaccine dosing regime, including a tweet from the Doctor's Association UK expressing 'real and grave conncerns' which received the highest engagement for posts about safety concerns across the 12 months. Concerns around dosing regimes accounted for 6% of Safety related tweets in the month since 26th December 2020. Clear and consistant communication around the safety and the efficacy of delaying second doses is important to maintain positive net acceptance.
INSIGHT
Concerns about 'freedom' of choice are a growing trend in discussion
While Safety and Efficacy concerns have driven the biggest spikes in reach for vaccine hesitant tweets over the last year, a key trend to watch is the increase in reach of tweets expressing concerns about lack of Agency (the freedom to choose to have (or refuse) a vaccine) since November 2020. There was limited discussion around this topic until winter 2020, when it become apparent that there would be a viable vaccine.
One of the most prominent protagonists around the issue of Agency in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, attracting the highest reach and engagement since November, was Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) with 1.1 million followers on Twitter. He tweeted in opposition of 'authoritarian' and 'Commie' suggestions that there might be some restictions on the freedoms of those who refused the vaccines (for example, in this tweet criticising Piers Morgan). He also retweeted another prominent critic, Heritage Party leader and London Assembly member David Kurten (@davidkurten, 60K followers). Both are evident of a section those futher to the right wing of politics in society whose tweets indicate opposition to any loss of agency in both taking a vaccine and in the future ability to work and travel vaccine free. This is a trend to continue monitoring over time, particularly as we see further debate around the concept of vaccine passports to travel and the possibility of some jobs or businesses requiring employees to be vaccinated.
We will continue to dig into this data set and explore the developing trends on our blog over the coming months.