The Covid-19 Vaccination Narrative On Social Media

Abstract

In the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, online media outlets with their newsfeeds have played a crucial role in shaping the public’s opinion on many issues. The chapter at hand offers a critical discourse and pragmatic analysis of the vaccination-related comments posted in the comment sections of posts on newsfeeds dealing with the Covid-19 vaccination from a number of online media outlets published in North Macedonia. The purpose of the analysis is to explore Macedonian citizens’ stance towards the vaccination through analysis of the lexical, pragmatic and discursive devices they employ in building their argumentation, be it pro- or anti-vaccination. In addition, parallels are drawn between two periods, the beginning of the first and second halves of 2021, in order to draw conclusions as to how the rhetoric online changed in the country and whether it was in line with the situation in other countries worldwide.The results show differences in the rhetoric of commenters in the two periods. Namely, in the first half of 2021, people’s concern was not about the vaccines or the vaccine-related side effects, but the comments mostly reflected people’s deep-rooted mistrust in the authorities and their ability to provide them. In the second half of 2021, however, the comments revealed people’s concern with the nature of the vaccine and its imposition by the government so their comments were burdened with irony, threats, curses and even summons for action against the government-imposed restrictions. These results might not come as a surprise since similar reactions were present in many countries, especially in the last few months of the period studied when many protested against the imposed vaccination and the restrictive measures against the unvaccinated.