Background: Social media and digital technologies have played essential roles in disseminating information and promoting vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a need to summarize the applications and analytical techniques of social media and digital technologies in monitoring vaccine attitudes and administering COVID-19 vaccines. Objective: We aimed to synthesize the global evidence on the applications of social media and digital technologies in COVID-19 vaccination and to explore their avenues to promote COVID-19 vaccination. Methods: We searched 6 databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, EBSCO, and IEEE Xplore) for English-language articles from December 2019 to August 2022. The search terms covered keywords relating to social media, digital technology, and COVID-19 vaccines. Articles were included if they provided original descriptions of applications of social media or digital health technologies/solutions in COVID-19 vaccination. Conference abstracts, editorials, letters, commentaries, correspondence articles, study protocols, and reviews were excluded. A modified version of the Appraisal Tool for Cross-Sectional Studies (AXIS tool) was used to evaluate the quality of social media–related studies. The review was undertaken with the guidance of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews. Results: A total of 178 articles were included in our review, including 114 social media articles and 64 digital technology articles. Social media has been applied for sentiment/emotion analysis, topic analysis, behavioral analysis, dissemination and engagement analysis, and information quality analysis around COVID-19 vaccination. Of these, sentiment analysis and topic analysis were the most common, with social media data being primarily analyzed by lexicon-based and machine learning techniques. The accuracy and reliability of information on social media can seriously affect public attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines, and misinformation often leads to vaccine hesitancy. Digital technologies have been applied to determine the COVID-19 vaccination strategy, predict the vaccination process, optimize vaccine distribution and delivery, provide safe and transparent vaccination certificates, and perform postvaccination surveillance. The applied digital technologies included algorithms, blockchain, mobile health, the Internet of Things, and other technologies, although with some barriers to their popularization. Conclusions: The applications of social media and digital technologies in addressing COVID-19 vaccination–related issues represent an irreversible trend. Attention should be paid to the ethical issues and health inequities arising from the digital divide while applying and promoting these technologies.

Background: Following the COVID-19 pandemic, global interest in influenza vaccines and pneumonia vaccines has increased significantly. We aimed to examine public interest in and actual market circulation of influenza and pneumonia vaccines before and after the initial outbreak of COVID-19 and estimate the coverage and determinants of influenza and pneumonia vaccination uptake following the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We obtained search volume data for vaccines using the Baidu search index and collected the numbers of vaccines issued from the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control. We also conducted a cross-sectional survey among 3346 adult residents to evaluate the coverage and determinants of influenza and pneumonia vaccination uptake in the Yangtze River delta, China, from 29 January to 4 February 2021. Results: Public searches and the number of vaccines issued for the influenza vaccines and pneumonia vaccines obviously increased after the initial outbreak of COVID-19. In the total sample, 12.5% were vaccinated against influenza, and 21.5% had at least one family member vaccinated against pneumonia. A minority of participants perceived that they were highly or very highly susceptible to influenza (15.9%) and COVID-19 (6.7%). A range of socio-economic factors and perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 were associated with influenza and pneumonia vaccination uptake. Conclusions: Public interest in and issued volumes of influenza and pneumonia vaccines increased nationally following the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceptions of high susceptibility to COVID-19 were associated with the uptake of the influenza and pneumonia vaccines. Targeted interventions were needed to improve vaccination coverage.

Background: Public acceptance of and confidence in vaccines are key for pandemic exit strategies. This study assessed global spatiotemporal trends in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance expressed in Twitter and explored its determinants across countries. Methods: We accessed over seven million human-generated tweets regarding COVID-19 vaccination in 90 languages from 135 countries between November 2020 and March 2022 using a social listening platform, Meltwater®. We annotated 8,125 tweets manually and subsequently fine-tuned the XLM-RoBERTa multilingual deep learning model to annotate all tweets collected. Based on the annotated results of deep learning models, we assessed spatial and temporal trends in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and confidence. Using univariate and multilevel regression analyses across countries, we evaluated the association between COVID-19 vaccine acceptance expressed on Twitter® and: (1) country characteristics regarding governance, pandemic preparedness, trust, culture, social development, and population demographics; (2) COVID-19 vaccine coverage; and (3) Google® search trends on vaccine adverse events. Findings: Tweets from Southeast Asian, Eastern Mediterranean, and Western Pacific regions demonstrated higher COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and expressed more confidence in vaccine effectiveness and safety than tweets from the Americas, European, and African regions. Spatial variations in vaccine acceptance were associated with country-level governance, pandemic preparedness, public trust, a culture of uncertainty avoidance, social development, and demographic determinants. Countries with higher vaccine acceptance expressed through Twitter® had higher COVID-19 vaccine coverage rates. There was a declining trend in COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and confidence among Twitter® users as global interest in vaccine adverse events spread, and Google search trends on vaccine adverse events were linked to COVID-19 vaccine acceptance expressed on Twitter® in many countries. Interpretation: Social media listening represents a promising surveillance approach for monitoring vaccine acceptance and its determinants, that has been validated against vaccine coverage data. It can supplement existing public health surveillance approaches in addressing global health issues. Funding Information: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71874034), the Soft Science Research Project of Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan (22692107600), and AIR@InnoHK administered by Innovation and Technology Commission. Declaration of Interests: The Vaccine Confidence Project, which HJL leads, receives collaborative grants with Astra Zeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, J&J, and Merck in addition to public sector grants. In the past 24 months, AdF has worked on Vaccine Confidence Project grants funded by MSD and consulted Pfizer on programs relating to strengthening childhood immunization programs. SHV has been funded by Sinovac for field effectiveness studies of the CoronaVac inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in the Dominican Republic. None of those research grants is related to this paper. Ethics Approval Statement: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the School of Public Health, Fudan University (IRB#2022-01-0938).