TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gable, Jessica S M
AU  - Sauvayre, Romy
AU  - Chauvière, Cédric
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/11/23
TI  - Fight Against the Mandatory COVID-19 Immunity Passport on Twitter: Natural Language Processing Study
JO  - J Med Internet Res
SP  - e49435
VL  - 25
KW  - mandatory vaccination
KW  - public policy
KW  - public health measures
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - vaccine
KW  - social media analysis
KW  - Twitter
KW  - natural language processing
KW  - deep learning
KW  - social media
KW  - public health
KW  - vaccination
KW  - immunity
KW  - social distancing
KW  - neural network
KW  - effectiveness
AB  - Background: To contain and curb the spread of COVID-19, the governments of countries around the world have used different strategies (lockdown, mandatory vaccination, immunity passports, voluntary social distancing, etc). Objective: This study aims to examine the reactions produced by the public announcement of a binding political decision presented by the president of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, on July 12, 2021, which imposed vaccination on caregivers and an immunity passport on all French people to access restaurants, cinemas, bars, and so forth. Methods: To measure these announcement reactions, 901,908 unique tweets posted on Twitter (Twitter Inc) between July 12 and August 11, 2021, were extracted. A neural network was constructed to examine the arguments of the tweets and to identify the types of arguments used by Twitter users. Results: This study shows that in the debate about mandatory vaccination and immunity passports, mostly “con” arguments (399,803/847,725, 47%; χ26=952.8; P<.001) and “scientific” arguments (317,156/803,583, 39%; χ26=5006.8; P<.001) were used. Conclusions: This study shows that during July and August 2021, social events permeating the public sphere and discussions about mandatory vaccination and immunity passports collided on Twitter. Moreover, a political decision based on scientific arguments led citizens to challenge it using pseudoscientific arguments contesting the effectiveness of vaccination and the validity of these political decisions. 
SN  - 1438-8871
UR  - https://www.jmir.org/2023/1/e49435
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/49435
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37850906
DO  - 10.2196/49435
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/49435
ER  -