Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy : A mixed methods investigation of matters of life and death

Summary, in English

In this article, hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccinations is investigated as a phenomenon touching upon existential questions. We argue that it encompasses ideas of illness and health, and also of dying and fear of suffering. Building on a specific strand within anti-vaccination studies, we conjecture that vaccine hesitancy is, to some extent, reasonable, and that this scepticism should be studied with compassion. Through a mixed methods approach, vaccine hesitancy, as it is being expressed in a Swedish digital open forum, is investigated and understood as, on the one hand, a perceived need of protecting one’s body from techno-scientific experiments, and thus the risk of becoming a victim of medicine itself. On the other hand, the community members express what we call a tacit belief in modern medicine by demonstrating their own “expert” pandemic knowledge. The analysis also shows how the COVID-19 pandemic triggers memories of another pandemic, namely the swine flu in 2009–2010, and what we term a medical crisis that occurred then, due to a vaccine that caused a rare but severe side effect in Sweden and elsewhere.

• Författare: Mia-Marie Hammarlin; Lars Borin; Dimitrios Kokkinakis
• Avdelning/ar: Journalistik; Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap; Birgit Rausing Centrum för Medicinsk Humaniora (BRCMH); LU profilområde: Proaktivt åldrande
• Publiceringsår: 2023-09-15
• Språk: Engelska
• Sidor: 31-61
• Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie: Journal of Digital Social Research
• Volym: 5
• Issue: 4
• Fulltext: - 332 kB; Download statistics
• Länkar: http://dx.doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v5i4.170
• Dokumenttyp: Artikel i tidskrift
• Förlag: DIGSUM
• Ämne: Media Studies
• Nyckelord: COVID-19; vaccine hesitancy; pandemic; social media; illness narrative; mixed methods; Flashback; topic modelling
• Status: Published
• Projekt: Rumour Mining: Vaccination engagement on the internet
• ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt: ISSN: 2003-1998