Emotions and Incivility in Vaccine Mandate Discourse: Natural Language Processing Insights

Abstract

The results suggest that our multidimensional approach to incivility is a promising alternative to understanding and intervening in the psychological processes underlying uncivil vaccine discourse. Understanding specific emotions that can increase or decrease incivility such as anxiety, anger, and sadness can enable researchers and public health professionals to develop effective interventions against uncivil vaccine discourse. Given the need for real-time monitoring and automated responses to the spread of health information and misinformation on the web, social media platforms can harness the Google Perspective API to offer users immediate, automated feedback when it detects that a comment is uncivil.