Who’s a Vaccine Skeptic? Framing Vaccine Hesitancy in Post-Covid News Coverage

Abstract

U.S. print news coverage of Covid vaccine hesitancy represents a departure from previous depictions of vaccine skepticism as a problem of wrong belief. This article reports on a mixed methods study of 334 New York Times texts about Covid nonvaccination and vaccine hesitancy published between December 2020–December 2021. Texts were analyzed for common themes and compared with prior media depictions of vaccine skepticism. Findings show that texts published during phased Covid vaccine distribution framed nonvaccination as a response to structural inequities, while later texts returned to blaming individuals for their hesitancy. These findings attest to the durability of individualistic framings of health while also illustrating possibilities of alternative frames.

Keywords

rhetoric of health and medicine Covid vaccination vaccine hesitancy news media

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Agility. (2021). Top 10 U.S. newspapers by circulation. https://www.agilitypr.com/resources/top-media-outlets/top-10-daily-american-newspapers/

Breuch

L. K.

Bakke

Thomas-Pollei

Mackey

L. E.

Weinert

(2016). Toward audience involvement: Extending audiences of written physician notes in a hospital setting. Written Communication, 33(4), 418-451. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088316668517

Britt

(2018). Reimagining advocacy: Rhetorical education in the legal clinic. Penn State University Press.

Campeau

(2019). Vaccine barriers, vaccine refusals: Situated vaccine decision-making in the wake of the 2017 Minnesota measles outbreak. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2(2), 176-207. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2019.1007

Campeau

(2022). Vaccination double bind: A study of pregnancy and COVID-19 vaccine decision-making. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 52(5), 494-509.

Carrion

M. L.

(2018). “You need to do your research”: Vaccines, contestable science, and maternal epistemology. Public Understanding of Science, 27(3), 310-324.

CDC. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine equity for racial and ethnic minority groups. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/vaccine-equity.html

Charles

(2018). HPV vaccination and affective suspicions in Barbados. Feminist Formations, 30(1), 46-70. https://doi.org/10.1353/ff.2018.0003.

Charles

(2021). Suspicion: Vaccines, hesitancy, and the affective politics of protection in Barbados. Duke University Press.

10.

Charmaz

(2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. SAGE.

11.

Conis

(2014). Vaccine nation: America’s changing relationship with immunizations. The University of Chicago Press.

12.

Conis

Hoenicke

(2022). Measles, media and memory: Journalism’s role in framing collective memory of disease. Journal of Medical Humanities, 43(3), 405-420. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-021-09705-2

13.

Court

Carter

S. M.

Attwell

Leask

Wiley

(2021). Labels matter: Use and non-use of ‘anti-vax’ framing in Australian media discourse 2008–2018. Social Science & Medicine, 291, 114502.

14.

Downs

(2002). Representing gun owners: Frame identification as social responsibility in news media discourse. Written Communication, 19(1), 44-75. https://doi.org/10.1177/074108830201900103

15.

Gallagher

Lawrence

H. Y.

(2020). Rhetorical appeals and tactics in New York Times comments about vaccines: Qualitative analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(12), e19504. https://doi.org/10.2196/19504

16.

Geisler

(2018). Coding for language complexity: The interplay among methodological commitments, tools, and workflow in writing research. Written Communication, 35(2), 215-249. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088317748590

17.

Golan

(2006). Inter-media agenda setting and global news coverage. Journalism Studies, 7(2), 323-333.

18.

Goldenberg

(2021). Vaccine hesitancy: Public trust, expertise, and the war on science. University of Pittsburgh Press.

19.

Hamraie

(2013). Designing collective access: A feminist disability theory of universal design. Disability Studies Quarterly, 33(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v33i4.3871

20.

Hausman

B. L.

(2019). Anti/Vax: Reframing the vaccination controversy. Cornell University Press.

21.

Hausman

B. L.

(2017). Immunity, modernity, and the biopolitics of vaccination resistance. Configurations, 25(3), 279–300. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2017.0020

22.

Hausman

B. L.

Ghebremichael

Hayek

Mack

(2014). ‘Poisonous, filthy, loathsome, damnable stuff’: The rhetorical ecology of vaccination concern. The Yale Journal of Biology & Medicine, 87(4), 403-416.

23.

Jack

(2014). Autism and gender: From refrigerator mothers to computer geeks. University of Illinois Press.

24.

Kata

(2010). A postmodern Pandora’s box: Anti-vaccination misinformation on the Internet. Vaccine, 28(7), 1709-1716.

25.

Kates

Tolbert

Orgera

(2021, September 14). The red/blue divide in vaccination rates. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rate

26.

Kirzinger

Kearney

Hamel

Brodie

(2021, November 16). KFF COVID-19 vaccine monitor: The increasing importance of partisanship in predicting COVID-19 vaccination status. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/poll-finding/importance-of-partisanship-predicting-vaccination-status/

27.

Kitta

Goldberg

D. S.

(2017). The significance of folklore for vaccine policy: Discarding the deficit model. Critical Public Health, 27(4), 506-514. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2016.1235259

28.

Koerber

(2018). From hysteria to hormones: A rhetorical history. Penn State University Press.

29.

Kolodziejski

(2020). Beyond the “hullabaloo” of the vaccine “debate”: Understanding parents’ assessment of risks when making vaccine decisions. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 3(1), 63-92. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2020.1003

30.

Konrad

A. M.

(2021). Access fatigue: The rhetorical work of disability in everyday life. College English, 83(3), 179-199.

31.

Lawrence

H. Y.

Hausman

B. L.

Dannenberg

C. J.

(2014). Reframing medicine’s publics: The local as a public of vaccine refusal. The Journal of Medical Humanities, 35(2), 111-129. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9278-4

32.

Leach

Fairhead

(2007). Vaccine anxieties: Global science, child health, and society. Routledge.

33.

Lule

(2001). Daily news, eternal stories: The mythological role of journalism. Guilford Press.

34.

Malkowski

(2014). Confessions of a pharmaceutical company: Voice, narrative, and gendered dialectics in the case of Gardasil. Health Communication, 29(1), 81-92.

35.

Martin

(1994). Flexible bodies: Tracking immunity in American culture from the days of polio to the age of AIDS. Beacon Press.

36.

Mitnik

Z. S.

Freilich

J. D.

Chermak

S. M.

(2020). Post-9/11 coverage of terrorism in the New York Times. Justice Quarterly, 37(1), 161-185. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2018.1488985

37.

Muck Rack. (2021). Top 50 newspapers in the US. https://muckrack.com/rankings/top-50-us- newspapers

38.

Ndugga

Hill

Artiga

Haldar

(2022, April 7). Latest data on COVID-19 vaccinations by race/ethnicity. Kaiser Family Foundation. https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-by-race-ethnicity/

39.

Owens

K. H.

(2009). Confronting rhetorical disability: A critical analysis of Women’s birth plans. Written Communication, 26(3), 247–272. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088308329217

40.

Pew Research Center. (2012). Demographic and political views of news audiences. Author. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/09/27/section-4-demographics-and-political-views-of-news-audiences/

41.

Reich

(2016). Calling the shots: Why parents reject vaccines. New York University Press.

42.

Reich

J. A.

(2014). Neoliberal mothering and vaccine refusal: Imagined gated communities and the privilege of choice. Gender & Society, 28(5), 679–704. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243214532711

43.

Saldaña

(2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. SAGE.

44.

Samudzi

(2017). We need to talk about anti-vaxxing in Black communities. Afropunk. https://afropunk.com/2017/07/need-talk-anti-vaxxing-black-communities/

45.

Segal

(2005). Health and the rhetoric of medicine. Southern Illinois University Press.

46.

Sobo

E. J.

Huhn

Sannwald

Thurman

(2016). Information curation among vaccine cautious parents: Web 2.0, Pinterest thinking, and pediatric vaccination choice. Medical Anthropology, 35(6), 529-546. https://doi-org/10.1080/01459740.2016.1145219

47.

Walker

Matsa

K. E.

(2021). News consumption across social media. Pew Research Centers. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/09/20/news-consumption-across-social-media-in-2021.

48.

Welhausen

C. A.

Popham

S. L.

Kondrlik

K. E.

Lawrence

H. Y.

Scott

J. L.

(2015). Rhetoric, ebola, and vaccination: A conversation among scholars. Poroi, 11 (2), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1232