Table 3.

Narrative tropes (organized by primary antagonist).

Antagonist: Government/Establishment and Elites: Narratives 1–8 are framed in such a way as to villainize experts, authorities, and figures of cultural influence. These “elites” consist of groups such as the medical establishment, governments, media, and press.

1. 1984

This narrative depicts the COVID pandemic and all public health measures associated with it as the final few steps toward a maximally repressive global government. It presents a “domino theory,” in which free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of travel will soon be abolished. Every time a new public health directive has been passed, it says, many vaguer, but far worse, oppressions are sure to come next.

2. Alarmist Authorities

This narrative presents a distorted pattern of events in which authorities’ warnings and measures against COVID are overblown. (see Fluffing the Curve and Follow the Money)

3. Censored!

Digital platforms and social media are portrayed as actively engaged in “censoring” advocates of “health freedom.” This is often framed as a David vs. Goliath scenario where powerful companies conspire against brave individuals speaking truth to power. This is described in the language of a grave injustice.

4. Corrupt Elite

This narrative is a standard populist appeal. The world can be divided into a corrupt elite and a righteous majority. The corrupt elite is on the side of lockdowns and mandatory masks/vaccines. The fact that the elite favors these lockdowns, masks, and vaccines is taken as more than sufficient evidence that they should not be trusted. So the reasoning goes: the elites must be corrupt, because they are pushing an untrustworthy and potentially dangerous medicine.

5. Fluffing the Curve

This narrative argues that officials are misrepresenting the numbers of COVID injuries and deaths, or that doctors are somehow incentivized to report more deaths. Perhaps they are doing so to ensure profits (see “Follow the Money”), or perhaps to instill fear and control (see “1984,” “Sinister Motives”). This category also includes “apples to oranges” comparisons of patient categories, different diseases’ mortality rates, vaccinated vs. unvaccinated health outcomes, and more.

6. Follow the Money

This narrative paints the COVID pandemic as an unprecedented opportunity for corporate looting and medical profiteering. Additionally, anything that points to more robust public health initiatives is almost certainly a set-up for crony handouts and panic-driven marketing. There is big money in medicine, this narrative says, and for media giants, there is big money in making people “panic-watch” and “doomscroll.” These are stories in which powerful men will do whatever it takes to compete and aggrandize their wallets and ego—whether it means lying, neglect, withholding care or resources, or plain out killing. There is a specific sub-category that describes claims made against Anthony Fauci regarding supposed fraud. Most famous is the “HIV Scandal” involving a series of vague accusations of silencing patients, academics, and scientists to uphold a Ponzi scheme related to HIV treatment protocols [88].

7. Freedom Under Siege

This narrative paints a story in which common rights such as speech, assembly, or possession of some entitled object are being stripped from citizens. This claim attempts to hijack feelings of protection, vulnerability, and the sacred. Can also be framed with the key words, “Religious and Philosophical Exemption.”

8. Unaccountable Elites

These narratives are framed around the assumption that doctors, politicians, and the media will never have to account for their lying or incompetence. So the story goes: if they have no skin in the game, then why should we believe a word they say?

Antagonist: Society at Large: Narratives 9–12 pit anti-vaccine advocates and COVID denialists against society in general or specific elements of it, such as our public political discourse or areas where racial disparities are acutely felt.

9. Heroes and Freedom Fighters

Here, doctors (and “doctors”) speaking out against vaccine injury or COVID alarmism are brave whistleblowers, acting at tremendous personal and professional risk to bring the truth to the people. The people protesting public health measures are painted as the moral and ideological equivalent of Soviet dissidents, the founding fathers, and the Arab Spring all rolled into one. This narrativizes the “Brave Truthtellers” rhetorical strategy by imbuing it with specific protagonists and struggles.

10. Erasing POC

This narrative argues that people of color are shut out of public debate over vaccination, that their voices are dismissed, or they are tokenized and only deployed when it is convenient for the white and powerful. It might also argue that people of colors’ rights to “health freedom” or their experiences of “vaccine injury” are invisible due to systemic racism in the medical system. It usually accompanies tropes such as “Racist Medicine” or “POC Injury.” It is an example of how effective anti-vaccine narratives can be essentially correct, but still point toward false and damaging conclusions.

11. Racist medicine

This narrative points to the real history of medical abuse of minorities in the US and elsewhere and implies that minorities should, therefore, mistrust what they hear about COVID and vaccines. Usually, no specific threat or conspiracy is articulated. The history is described and the connection with the present day is left implicit, but clear (see also: Intersection with Social Justice, Erasing POC, POC Injury).

12. “You made it political!”

This frames the conflict between vaccination and non-vaccination as a partisan political issue. On one hand, it might state that pro-public health voices are the ones making this political, when it is actually a matter of common sense, religious freedom, or personal choice. On the other hand, this narrative category might take an explicitly partisan tone, for example arguing that former President Donald Trump was heroically battling big pharma and a corrupt elite.

Antagonist: Shadowy Villain: Narratives 13–14 do not offer a specific villain, but implicate an extremely powerful and mysterious agent whose means and motives are unknown—perhaps beyond comprehension. Conspiracy theories that verge on the supernatural often framed their antagonist in these terms. These demonstrate that narratives can be based around an absence or unarticulated mystery (see literature review).

13. Chinese Virus

These stories claim with absolute certainty while lacking in substantive proof that the virus was created or leaked from the Wuhan lab in China. These tropes are distinct from legitimate inquiry into a possible “lab-leak hypothesis,” because of the narratives that they indicate. Sometimes, those narratives claim that a virus cannot mutate that quickly, or that COVID is a powerful bioweapon and the idea that we can easily stop it with masks or a vaccine is laughably naïve. These narratives are highly compatible with long-existing anti-Asian stereotypes as a sinister “enemy within” Western countries.

14. Sinister Motives

The people behind the COVID vaccine are described as shadowy and suspicious. Geopolitical powers, pharmaceutical corporations, and intelligence agencies are likely implicated.

Antagonist: The Vaccine Itself: Narratives 15–19 focus on the harm they imagine a COVID vaccine will inflict. Unless tied to another narrative or rhetoric specifying additional antagonists or personifying the vaccine, these narratives offer an antagonist that is impersonal and without motive.

15. The Perfect Family

These narratives are often framed around anecdotes of supposed vaccine injury. Children are presented as perfect angels, baby geniuses, junior Olympians, etc. Parents are presented as bursting with pride, ready for a smooth, normal, American (or English or Australian or w/e) life. Then came the vaccine, and its injury. Then came the never-ending tribulations. The dream is long dead.

16. POC Injury

This narrative states that ethnic minorities have congenital conditions which allopathic medicine does not properly consider during the development of treatments and vaccines. One example is the claim that African Americans, particularly boys, have stronger immune systems that are more reactive to vaccines. While the coding team did not encounter similar messages targeting women of any race, it seems possible that women’s higher rates of autoimmune disorder, and historic mistreatment in medicine, could underpin similarly pseudoscientific theories (see also “Racist Medicine”).

17. Rushed Vaccine

These narratives say that the COVID vaccine has been rushed to market without proper testing, that it could not have gone through trustworthy safety protocols, and that the public cannot trust that it will be safe.

18. Unknowable Dangers

These narratives assume that we should apply the precautionary principle to dangers associated with preventing COVID (i.e., vaccines) but not to COVID itself (e.g., the danger is overblown, go to the pub!) (see also: Mountains and Molehills). This is distinct from the Vaccine Injury narrative, as it focuses on vague potential future outcomes, whereas Vaccine Injury focuses on specific, and often present-day, claims of injury.

19. Vaccine Injury

A catch-all term for all the bad things vaccines can do to you, with no legitimate causal link required. Extremely common.

Miscellaneous/No Clear Antagonist: Narratives 20–22 either did not present a clear antagonist or were not consistent enough in their imagined antagonists to effectively classify.

20. All-or-Nothing

These narratives cast their heroes and villains as either all trustworthy, good, and “on the right side” or else dangerously misguided, stupid, or evil.

21. Imminent Threat

Narratives of this sort warn their audience that “time is running out,” and something terrible is either happening or about to happen very soon. This threat could be specific (e.g., a law being debated that would mandate vaccines for public school attendance), or it could be vague (e.g., the end of America). The warning is very frequently accompanied with some call to action, such as calling your congressman or evangelizing in favor of anti-vax messages.

22. Overblown Risk

These narratives dismiss risks associated with COVID as overblown. They sometimes misuse statistics to reach this conclusion, such as comparing high-risk populations’ flu mortality rates to low-risk populations’ COVID mortality. Most often, these narratives center around an emotionally dismissive claim of others’ alarmism. This is distinct from the Alarmist Authorities code, as it addresses a more general cultural alarmism that may originate in not-elite sources.