‘To get or not to get vaccinated against COVID-19’: Saudi women,vaccine hesitancy,and framing effects

Abstract

The use of language and images in the media may have a strong effect on people’s political cognition. In this regard, conspiracy theories and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine can lead to reluctant uptake of the vaccine even among medical staff. In two experiments, this article tests the hypothesis that the public’s willingness to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus depends on the framings they are presented with. Two hundred thirty-two female Saudi students are exposed to either pro- or anti-vaccination messages. In Experiment 1, they are asked to read semi-artificial news stories, and in Experiment 2 political cartoons. The results show that readers of the news articles, but not of the cartoons, are susceptible to framing effects. We consider the implications of how issues are framed for journalists and health professionals.

Keywords

COVID-19 hesitancy and framing effects misinformation news reports versus political cartoons Saudi women vaccine

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abdel-Raheem

(2017) Can cartoons influence Americans’ attitudes toward bailouts? Visual Communication Quarterly 24(3): 179–191.

Abdel-Raheem

(2019) Pictorial Framing in Moral Politics: A Corpus-Based Experimental Study. New York: Routledge.

Abdel-Raheem

(2020) Mental model theory as a model for analysing visual and multimodal discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 155: 303–320.

Abdel-Raheem

(2021a) “He is a dirty sanitary towel:” Taboo metaphor and gender in Egyptian culture. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Abdel-Raheem

(2021b) Reality bites: How the pandemic has begun to shape the way we, metaphorically, see the world. Discourse & Society 32: 519–541.

Aillaud

Piolat

(2012) Influence of gender on judgment of dark and nondark humor. Individual Differences Research 10(4): 211–222.

Borah

(2011) Conceptual issues in framing theory: A systematic examination of a decade’s literature. Journal of Communication 61(2): 246–263. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01539.x

Butler

MacDonald

and SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy (2015) Diagnosing the determinants of vaccine hesitancy in specific subgroups: The Guide to Tailoring Immunization Programmes (TIP). Vaccine, 33(34), 4176–4179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.04.038

Casasanto

Boroditsky

(2008) Time in the mind: Using space to think about time. Cognition 106: 579–593.

10.

Charteris-Black

(2017) Fire Metaphors: Discourses of Awe and Authority. London: Bloomsbury.

11.

Chilton

(1987) Metaphor, euphemism and the militarization of language. Current Research on Peace and Violence 10(1): 7–19.

12.

Chong

Druckman

(2007) A theory of framing and opinion formation in competitive elite environments. Journal of Communication 57(1): 99–118.

13.

Conners

(1998) Hussein as enemy: The Persian Gulf War in political cartoons. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3(3): 96–114.

14.

Druckman

(2001a) The implications of framing effects for citizen competence. Political Behavior 23(3): 225–256.

15.

Druckman

(2001b) On the limits of framing effects: Who can frame? The Journal of Politics 63: 1041–1066.

16.

Edwards

(1997) Political Cartoons in the 1988 Presidential Campaign: Image, Metaphor, and Narrative. New York: Garland Publications.

17.

Ellingsen

Johannesson

Mollerstrom

, et al. (2013) Gender differences in social framing effects. Economics Letters 118(3): 470–472.

18.

El Refaie

(2009a) Metaphor in political cartoons: Exploring audience responses. In: Forceville

Urios-Aparisi

(eds) Multimodal Metaphor. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp.173–196.

19.

El Refaie

(2009b) Multiliteracies: How readers interpret political cartoons. Visual Communication 8(2): 181–205.

20.

Fauconnier

Turner

(2002) The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

21.

Fillmore

(ed.) (1982) Frame semantics. In: The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.) Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin, pp.111–137.

22.

Forceville

(2020) Visual and Multimodal Communication: Applying the Relevance Principle. New York: Oxford University Press.

23.

Gantiva

Jiménez-Leal

Urriago-Rayo

(2021) Framing messages to deal with the COVID-19 crisis: The role of loss/gain frames and content. Frontiers in Psychology 12: 568212.

24.

Geoghegan

O’Callaghan

Offit

(2020) Vaccine safety: Myths and misinformation. Frontiers in Microbiology 11: 372.

25.

Goffman

(1974) Frame Analysis: An Easy on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

26.

Gombrich

(2000) Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

27.

Hameleers

(2021) Prospect theory in times of a pandemic: The effects of gain versus loss framing on risky choices and emotional responses during the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak – Evidence from the US and the Netherlands. Mass Communication & Society 24: 479–499.

28.

Jostmann

Lakens

Schubert

(2009) Weight as an embodiment of importance. Psychological Science 20(9): 1169–1174.

29.

Kahneman

Tversky

(1979) Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica 47: 263–291.

30.

Kahneman

Tversky

(1984) Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist 39(4): 341–350.

31.

Kahneman

Tversky

(2000) Choices, Values, and Frames. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

32.

Kelly

(2012) Framing Democracy: A Behavioral Approach to Democratic Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

33.

Lakoff

Johnson

(1980) Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

34.

Landau

Meier

Keefer

(2010) A metaphor-enriched social cognition. Psychological Bulletin 136(6): 1045–1067.

35.

McNeil

Pauker

Sox

, et al. (1982) On the elicitation of preferences for alternative therapies. New England Journal of Medicine 306: 1259–1262.

36.

McNeil

Pauker

Tversky

(1988) On the framing of medical decisions. In: Bell

Raiffa

Tversky

(eds) Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.562–568.

37.

Meier

Hauser

Robinson

, et al. (2007) What’s “up” with God?: Vertical space as a representation of the divine. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93(5): 699–710.

38.

Minsky

(1975) Frame system theory. In: Johnson-Laird

Wason

(eds) Thinking: Reading in Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.355–376.

39.

Nelson

Oxley

Clawson

(1997) Toward a psychology of framing effects. Political Behavior 19: 221–246.

40.

Olmastroni

Guidi

Martini

, et al. (2021) Framing effects on the COVID-19 see-saw. Swiss Political Science Review 27(2): 257–270.

41.

Sanders

Stockdale

Hume

, et al. (2021) Loss aversion fails to replicate in the coronavirus pandemic: Evidence from an online experiment. Economics Letters 199: 109433.

42.

Sanford

Fay

Stewart

, et al. (2002) Perspective in statements of quantity, with implications for consumer psychology. Psychological Science 13: 130–134.

43.

Scheufele

(2003) Frames―Framing―Framing-Effekte. Theoretische Und Methodische Grundlegung Sowie Empirische Befunde zur Nachrichtenproduktion. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

44.

Scheufele

Iyengar

(2014) The state of framing research: A call for new directions. In: Kenski

Jamieson

(eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication Theories. New York: Oxford University Press, pp.1–18.

45.

Schön

(1993) Generative metaphor. In: Ortony

(ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp.137–163. (Original work published 1979).

46.

Semino

(2021) “Not soldiers but fire-fighters” – Metaphors and covid-19. Health Communication 36(1): 50–58.

47.

Slovic

Fischhoff

Lichtenstein

(1982) Facts versus fears: Understanding perceived risks. In: Kahneman

Slovic

Tversky

(eds) Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp.463–489.

48.

Smith

(1996) Laughing at the way we see: The role of visual organizing principles in cartoon humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 9(1): 19–38.

49.

Sniderman

Theriault

(2004) The structure of political argument and the logic of issue framing. In: Saris

Sniderman

(eds) Studies in Public Opinion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp.133–165.

50.

Sontag

(1978) Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

51.

Thibodeau

Boroditsky

(2011) Metaphors we think with: The role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS One 6(2): e16782.

52.

Thibodeau

Boroditsky

(2013) Natural language metaphors covertly influence reasoning. PLoS One 8(1): e52961.

53.

Tosun

Faghihi

Vaid

(2018) Is an ideal sense of humor gendered? A cross-national study. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 199.

54.

Tversky

Kahneman

(1981) The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science 211(4481): 453–458.

55.

Tversky

Kahneman

(1986) Rational choice and the framing of decisions. Journal of Business 59(S4): S251–S278.

56.

van Dijk

(2014) Discourse and Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

57.

van Dijk

(2020) Critical Review of Framing Studies in Social Movement Research. Barcelona: Center of Discourse Studies.

58.

Wallis

Nerlich

(2005) Disease metaphors in new epidemics: The UK media framing of the 2003 SARS epidemic. Social Science & Medicine 60(11): 2629–2639.

59.

Wehling

(2013) A nation under joint custody: How conflicting family models divide US politics. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, University of California, Berkeley.