The Politics of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation: Evidence from Brazil and Turkey

• In Event: Political Communication and COVID Beliefs

Abstract

This research explores the role of political elite stance in online misinformation in the context of Covid-19 vaccines. It aims to improve our understanding of the influence of the political elite disputes in spreading misinformation. To do so, it compares Brazil and Turkey, two regimes led by populist governments who differ in their stance towards the Covid-19 vaccines. Using mixed methods, qualitative content analysis and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling, this paper analyses Covid-19 vaccine-related online misinformation reported by fact-checking platforms. The results indicated that dispute among political elites can lead to the politicization of a non-political matter. Our sample data showed that there was a high level of political content in the vaccine-related misinformation in Brazil whereas in Turkey, the number of false claims on vaccines linked to politics was negligible. Moreover, in the case of Brazil, we found that vaccine-misinformation was used as a propaganda item by Bolsonaro to attack his rivals during the run-up to the 2022 elections. In the case of Turkey, we observed that the vaccine related misinformation did not reflect the political disputes. This paper evidences the role of political elite stance towards vaccines and concludes that the influence of political disputes extends beyond political matters.

Authors

• Aybuke Atalay, University of Edinburgh

• Ricardo Ribeiro Ferreira, University of Edinburgh