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(De)legitimation of COVID-19 vaccination narratives on Facebook comments in Romania: Beyond the co-occurrence patterns of discursive strategies.

Camelia Cmeciu
Published in: Discourse & society (2023)
The postmodern medical paradigm has empowered online users in the (de)legitimating process of health-related topics. By employing a co-occurrence analysis, this study identifies the thematic patterns used by Romanian online users in their multimodal comments to the #storiesfromvaccination Facebook campaign run by the Romanian government. The findings show that the commenters assessed source credibility through two thematic patterns: 'source exemplarity' and 'source distrust'. Health experts were more legitimized than laypersons and role models as sources in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Two thematic patterns emerged in the assessment of vaccination, namely: 'immunization - past and present challenges' and 'vaccination supporter versus opponent cleavage'. In the discussion on immunization, a polarization between a nostalgic longing for the past and a present corrupted medical and political system prevailed, whereas the important feature of discursive antagonism could be observed in the latter thematic pattern. The co-occurrences of (de)legitimation strategies are explained with reference to the political and medical context, along with the challenges of social media usage in online vaccination communication campaigns.
Keyphrases
  • public health
  • social media
  • health information
  • healthcare
  • coronavirus disease
  • sars cov
  • machine learning
  • mental health
  • pain management
  • drinking water
  • risk assessment
  • dna methylation
  • chronic pain
  • clinical evaluation