Partisan and Geographic Variation in Emotional Responses to COVID-19 Vaccination on Social Media

How did collective emotional expressions on social media vary across US counties in response to the first COVID-19 vaccine administration?In this cross-sectional study of over 18 million geotagged social media posts from 3065 counties, joy and anger expressions increased, while fear decreased after the first vaccine dose on December 14, 2020. Democratic-leaning counties and those with higher COVID-19 death tolls showed larger increases in joy.These findings suggest real-time social media monitoring can reveal heterogeneous emotional responses to public health milestones, informing targeted communication strategies.

Corresponding Author: Kokil Jaidka, PhD, Department of Communications and New Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Blk AS6, #03-41, 11 Computing Dr, Singapore 117416 (jaidka@nus.edu.sg).

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