Novax or Novak? Estimating Social Media Stance towards Celebrity Vaccine Hesitancy (Student Abstract)

Madhav Hota, Adel Khorramrouz, Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh

Abstract: On 15 January 2022, noted tennis player Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia due to his unvaccinated status for the COVID-19 vaccine. This paper presents a stance classifier and evaluates public reaction to this episode and the impact of this behavior on social media discourse on YouTube. We observed a significant spike of individuals who supported and opposed his behavior at the time of the episode. Supporters outnumbered those who opposed this behavior by over 4x. Our study reports a disturbing trend that following every major Djokovic win, even now, vaccine skeptics often conflate his tennis success as a fitting reply to vaccine mandates.