Monitoring Discussion of Vaccine Adverse Events in the Media: Opportunities from the Vaccine Sentimeter

Guido Powell, Kate Zinszer, Jahnavi Dhananjay, Chi Bahk, Lawrence C. Madoff, John S. Brownstein, Sabine Bergler, David L. Buckeridge

Abstract: As doubts about vaccine safety threaten adequate coverage across the world, surveillance of online media, a widespread source of information about vaccines, can prove useful in many regards. The Vaccine Sentimeter, an extension of HealthMap, was established for the purpose of monitoring online vaccine discussion in news, blogs, and other websites. The development of the tool involved extensive manual annotation of media content, such as the sentiment or category of discussion in the report. Given its relevance to vaccine confidence and public health, the current paper describes in detail the annotated discussion of adverse event following immunization (AEFI). The goal of the current project is to automate the detection of AEFI reports in the media. Future steps in this automation process are proposed.