ABSTRACT
As false and debunked claims about the COVID‐19 virus and vaccines were pervasively disseminated across online social networks, their detrimental effects necessitated that social media companies track down and remove the disinformation. To explore the lingering vaccine hesitancy and resistance within a vaccine discussion group on Facebook, this study applies a nascent framework called Information Acts in three communication styles. Employing critical discourse analysis methodology, this study showed that the dominant communication styles of vaccine hesitant participants (VHPs) are locutionary and perlocutionary acts. Those VHPs can reduce and eventually end their vaccine hesitancy and resistance in the process of informative and rational communication and interactive and ad‐hoc support for informed decision‐making. The results pose challenges and opportunities for public health communication and information provision to cultivate information resilience and interventions targeting VHPs.
Keywords: COVID‐19 Pandemic, Critical Discourse Analysis, Disinfodemic, Information Acts, Vaccine Hesitancy
INTRODUCTION
The term disinfodemic, coined by UNESCO (Posetti & Bontcheva, 2020), explicates the dire information crisis that pervaded and subsequently undermined the global efforts to disseminate scientific information and boost public acceptance of COVID‐19 restrictions and vaccination. As online social networks afforded immediate transmission of disinformation, social media companies including Facebook initiated fact‐checking campaigns in January 2020. These initiatives automatically detected disinformation and subsequently removed over 20 million pieces of content that violated Facebook's rules against spreading disinformation about COVID and vaccination. This study is designed to further explore the manifestations of vaccine hesitancy and resistance among vaccine hesitant participants (VHP) in the new COVID era information environment within a private vaccine discussion group on Facebook. It poses a research question––how VHPs communication style and information‐seeking behavior illuminates their actions around vaccination.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Information Acts are conceived through the lens of Austin's Speech Acts (1962; 1975). In brief, speech utterances embody three forms of intent; locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. Speakers either make utterances to offer information with no expectation of response (locutionary), to elicit further information to build understanding (illocutionary), and to influence a shift in belief (perlocutionary) (Bonnici & Ma, 2021). Information Acts, which convey information coupled with intent by the sender, serve to influence or make a difference. Receipt of the information packaged in intent may catalyze change in thought, spur action, or result in that “aha moment” where realization brings clarity of thinking and perhaps a resultant change in behavior (Bonnici & Ma, in progress). Three different might declare the importance of receiving the COVID vaccines. But the difference in the message is in how it is delivered: the intent.
RESEARCH METHOD
In analyzing the attributes of communication and information seeking behaviors within this group, this study adopted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to explore how vaccine hesitant people's communication style and information‐seeking behavior reveals their actions toward vaccination. As an influential methodology to decode the structural relationships between power and inequity in language, CDA has been efficiently used in uncovering the interplay between linguistic‐communicative patterns and concrete actions of a group through their verbal or textual discourses (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000; Fairclough & Mauranen, 1997). Framed by the Information Acts framework, this study adopted Fairclough's (1995) systematic analytic method with a three‐layer model of critical discourse analysis: description (textual analysis), interpretation (process of discursive practice), and explanation (analysis of social practices) (Abbas, 2022; Jaber, 2021; Ma & Stahl, 2017). After performing a comprehensive search about vaccine hesitancy, a total of 4,331 posts (including 26 original posts and 4,305 comments) during the periods between July 27, 2020 to May 11, 2022 were manually captured. A codebook based on Information Acts was created in a pilot study of 309 posts (another dataset of this group's postings) and validated through reaching a high intercoder reliability (86%) between two LIS researchers. Applying CDA, a total of 279 collected posts (including 26 original posts and top 10 comments for each post) were analyzed thematically by types of VHP's communication styles and information seeking behavior.
FINDINGS
The results of data analysis reveal that locutionary acts dominated the discourse with 155 (56%) posts compared to perlocutionary acts with 101 (36%) and illocutionary acts with 23 (8%). Different themes in their communication style and information seeking behavior emerged around VHPs' stances:
1. Locutionary: (a) quote mining: one example is a blunt decontextualized claim––“Bill Gates recently made statements concerning omicrons greater effectiveness over vaccines.” (b) post hoc, ergo propter hoc, refers to “one of the most powerful fallacies of human logic…Especially when it comes to vaccines.” “That's taken out of context.” (c) racist infiltrator––“The high‐risk genetic signal is carried in sixty per cent of people with south Asian heritage… The gene is present in 15 per cent of those with European ancestry, the study revealed, but is only found in 2 per cent of those with African‐Caribbean ancestry.”
2. Perlocutionary: (a) ambivalent attitude/feelings to vaccination––“Can vaccines cause ADHD?” (b) unlearning by active communication and information seeking––“I admire people who ask questions and are willing to look at different views and make their own decision, you are attacking a legitimate article that I actually found very helpful with all the links for my own research so I can contrast them to a pro vaccine stance gives me more food for thought instead of just being bullied/manipulated into a certain position.”
3. Illocutionary: (a) call for global public health or government data on vaccine side effects––“Has anyone read the first batch of Pfizer data that was revealed a few days ago?…I haven't read the data and if anyone can link it here would be appreciated. If you've read it what are your thoughts?” (b) call for personal claims or anecdotal experience, or interpretation about vaccine injury––“If you're unvaccinated for Covid why did you make that choice? Is there anything that would change your mind? And has that decision had any impact on your life in regards to work, freedom of travel, relationships with family etc?” (c) seeking affirmation and validation––“Is there any data on giving one COVID vaccine shot for ages 5‐11?”
CONCLUSION
Findings indicate that civility, empathy, and genuineness cultivate informative and rational communication within the Facebook group where VHPs are more likely to open up about their concerns, fears, and ignorance (e.g., take second‐hand knowledge at face value) when making an informed decision around vaccines. Their indecisiveness is often influenced by their personal beliefs, close‐knit relationships, exposure to anti‐vaccination rhetoric, emotional distress, fears, and concerns about vaccine safety and efficacy. Among those VHPs, open communication and unlearning could become turning points of breaking down their beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors towards vaccine hesitancy and resistance. The results pose challenges and opportunities for public health communication and information provision to cultivate information resilience and interventions targeting VHPs.
The implications extend to the development and delivery of public health data/information into different types of conversational messages in layman's terms that could reduce emotional distress, such as embarrassment, vulnerability, uncertainty, distrust, fears, or angst. Furthermore, with renewed urgency to better communicate and inform, it is essential to create and deliver tailored health information based on the differentiation between the misinformed and the uninformed, between their attitudes/emotions and behaviors. VHPs shared that they went through a long journey to get vaccinated by actively communicating, unlearning, or deconstructing disinformation, especially measuring the risks of vaccine side effects alongside the severity of COVID infection.
Contributor Information
Jinxuan Ma, Email: jma4@emporia.edu.
Laurie Bonnici, Email: lbonnici@ua.edu.
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