Psychological reactance to vaccine mandates on Twitter: a study of sentiments in the United States

This study examines the relationship between vaccine mandates and public sentiment toward vaccines and health officials on Twitter. I analyzed 6.6 million vaccine-related tweets from July 2021 to February 2022 in the United States. Leveraging a large language model, BERT, I identified tweets discussing vaccine mandates even when lacking explicit keywords. Compared to non-mandate tweets, those mentioning mandates exhibit greater negativity, anger, and freedom-related language. Furthermore, increased state-level discussion of mandates correlates with rising levels of negativity and anger toward both vaccines and public health officials. Finally, greater disparity in vaccination progress across counties within a state is associated with increased anger in tweets directed toward both.