Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy

Public discussion on vaccination in Russia is vigorous and controversial, especially in the case of COVID-19. In conditions of extensively spreading myths, false information and rhetoric contradicting argumentation of scientific community social media became a place where opinions on vaccination col...

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Main Authors: Konstantin Platonov, Kirill Svetlov, Viktoriia Saifulina
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: FRUCT 2022-11-01
Series:Proceedings of the XXth Conference of Open Innovations Association FRUCT
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.fruct.org/publications/volume-32/fruct32/files/Pla.pdf
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author Konstantin Platonov
Kirill Svetlov
Viktoriia Saifulina
author_facet Konstantin Platonov
Kirill Svetlov
Viktoriia Saifulina
author_sort Konstantin Platonov
collection DOAJ
description Public discussion on vaccination in Russia is vigorous and controversial, especially in the case of COVID-19. In conditions of extensively spreading myths, false information and rhetoric contradicting argumentation of scientific community social media became a place where opinions on vaccination collide. Participatory culture of commenting still remains to be a peculiar form of public health activism accessible to almost everyone. In this study, the data retrieved from the most popular Russian social networking platform Vkontakte was used. The raw dataset included 467888 news posts (published during 2021) from salient online communities and 538202 comments. Topic mining and modeling methods including PLSA and LDA were used to classify vaccination-related news posts in 6 groups, which differed in terms of language style, main focuses and discussed issues. The most engaging topic was ""Vaccination on the ground mainly because in contained an abundance of obtrusive issues. It was shown that the degree of user engagement did not significantly depend on salience of topic. In sum, it was revealed that 6.2% of comments was against vaccination, while, one and a half times less, 4.3% was in favor. Positive comments outweighed the negative ones only for topic Russian vaccines in Russia and the World.
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spelling doaj.art-2d7fbc2a0141430c91697c5f6e98d0632022-12-22T03:44:42ZengFRUCTProceedings of the XXth Conference of Open Innovations Association FRUCT2305-72542343-07372022-11-0132121422010.23919/FRUCT56874.2022.9953888Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and ControversyKonstantin Platonov0Kirill Svetlov1Viktoriia Saifulina2Higher school of Economics, RussiaPeter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University, RussiaSaint Petersburg State University, RussiaPublic discussion on vaccination in Russia is vigorous and controversial, especially in the case of COVID-19. In conditions of extensively spreading myths, false information and rhetoric contradicting argumentation of scientific community social media became a place where opinions on vaccination collide. Participatory culture of commenting still remains to be a peculiar form of public health activism accessible to almost everyone. In this study, the data retrieved from the most popular Russian social networking platform Vkontakte was used. The raw dataset included 467888 news posts (published during 2021) from salient online communities and 538202 comments. Topic mining and modeling methods including PLSA and LDA were used to classify vaccination-related news posts in 6 groups, which differed in terms of language style, main focuses and discussed issues. The most engaging topic was ""Vaccination on the ground mainly because in contained an abundance of obtrusive issues. It was shown that the degree of user engagement did not significantly depend on salience of topic. In sum, it was revealed that 6.2% of comments was against vaccination, while, one and a half times less, 4.3% was in favor. Positive comments outweighed the negative ones only for topic Russian vaccines in Russia and the World.https://www.fruct.org/publications/volume-32/fruct32/files/Pla.pdfsocial mediavaccinationcovid-19
spellingShingle Konstantin Platonov
Kirill Svetlov
Viktoriia Saifulina
Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy
Proceedings of the XXth Conference of Open Innovations Association FRUCT
social media
vaccination
covid-19
title Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy
title_full Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy
title_fullStr Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy
title_full_unstemmed Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy
title_short Discourse on Vaccination on Russian Social Media: Topics and Controversy
title_sort discourse on vaccination on russian social media topics and controversy
topic social media
vaccination
covid-19
url https://www.fruct.org/publications/volume-32/fruct32/files/Pla.pdf
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