How News Media Coverage Influences COVID Vaccine Coverage

• In Event: COVID Communication and Politics

Abstract

Ensuring that a sufficient number of Americans choose to vaccinate against COVID-19 will be essential for putting the COVID-19 pandemic's spread into decline. While many have suggested that COVID-19 vaccine uptake has become politically contentious, few have investigated how partisan media might engender or exacerbate vaccine politicization.

In this study, we investigate the content of vaccine news coverage across partisan and nonpartisan media sources, via automated sentiment analyses, from December 2020 - September 2021. Critically, we also investigate whether or not fluctuations in the tone COVID-19 vaccine news coverage, across partisan media outlets, has an effect on measurable vaccine behavior; measured via vaccine adverse event reports to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Based on previous content analytic studies that we have conducted on the pandemic -- which found that right-leaning media sources were more likely to discuss COVID-19 misinformation -- we anticipate that negative vaccine media coverage (e.g., stories about reported side effects; vaccine rollout protocol critiques) will be more prevalent on right-leaning media sources (compared to left-leaning or more-neutral sources). This, we suspect, is a partisan reaction to dissatisfaction with the Biden administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Additionally, based on previous adverse event reporting research we have conducted on the MMR vaccine -- which finds that negative news attention to vaccines can increase public vaccine skepticism -- we suspect that increases in negative media coverage will be associated with increased reporting of adverse events following the vaccine's first dose. This is potentially problematic, as previous research suggests that the perceived experience of side effects could interfere with respondents' intentions to receive a second dose; thereby jeopardizing the possibility that these individuals receive full immunity to the virus. As adverse event reports can take weeks to be filed with the federal government, we will explore the possibility adverse event reports are a lagging indicator of the effects of partisan news coverage, and supplement these data with analyses of how media coverage influences vaccine intentions measured in aggregated polling data.

We conclude by discussing the impact of partisan vaccine coverage on public health outcomes, including the possibility that right-leaning media outlets may have played a role in prolonging the COVID-19 pandemic by discouraging some from seeking the full vaccine regimen necessary to achieve both individual and population immunity.

Authors

• Dominik Andrzej Stecula, Colorado State University

• Matthew P. Motta, Oklahoma State University