Vaccination Against Covid-19 — An Analysis of Portuguese Official Sources’ Digital Health Communication

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.3593

Keywords:

covid-19, vaccination, official sources, health communication, strategic communication

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic poses complex challenges to governments and health authorities all around the globe. Institutions have to cope simultaneously with the efforts to control the dissemination of the disease and the need to undertake articulated health communication procedures. This communication process is challenging to manage, due to the considerable uncertainty of the available information, the increase in misinformation stemming from a scattered (and often unmediated) mediascape, and some social groups’ resistance to adhere to the recommended preventive measures. Vaccination emerges as a topic that fuels extreme positions — on the one side, the eagerness for vaccine availability (which encourages illicit attempts to get it); on the other, the obstinate refusal of vaccination (based on theories with no medical-scientific grounds). In this context, we aim to assess how the leading Portuguese governmental and health institutions communicate with their audiences in the digital environment through their official websites and online social networks. In five websites and four online social networks used by the chosen sources, we have collected the content about vaccination published between the announcement of the authorisation of the first vaccine and the beginning of the administration of the second round to health professionals. Then we have applied content analysis methodology to the corpus of this case study. The results have shown that the primary Portuguese official sources give themselves the floor regarding the covid-19 vaccination process, addressing three main themes using an eminently informative frame: vaccine administration, priority groups definition and a general approach to the vaccine. Bearing in mind health communication’s primary goals — engage, empower and influence citizens — we conclude that Portuguese official sources have promoted conservative forms of communication, potentially missing the opportunity to foster a more pedagogical and customised digital communication.

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Author Biographies

Olga Estrela Magalhães, Centro de Investigação em Tecnologias e Serviços de Saúde, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

Olga Estrela Magalhães, PhD in communication sciences by the University of Minho, specializes in media relations in health research. She is a researcher at CINTESIS (Centro de Investigação em Tecnologias e Serviços de Saúde), and she coordinates the Communication Management Unit at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto. Her research interests include health communication, science communication, journalism, and media relations.

Clara Almeida Santos, Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Clara Almeida Santos is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information, Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and a researcher at the Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies. She has a PhD in communication sciences, and she served as vice-rector in charge of Culture, Communication, Heritage and Former Students at the University of Coimbra between 2011 and 2018. She worked as a journalist in the Lisbon News Channel and in SIC, where she worked mainly in SIC Online. She was a teacher at Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra and communication director at Interacesso. She was editor and deputy director of the magazine Rua Larga. She has participated in several European projects related to intercultural dialogue and media. She was a consultant for the Council of Europe within the campaign “Speak Out Against Discrimination”.

Catarina Duff Burnay, Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal

Cataria Duff Burnay has a post-doc in communication sciences from the School of Communication and Arts, University of São Paulo. She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Portuguese Catholic University, and she is the Master in Communication Sciences coordinator. She is a researcher and board member at Research Centre for Communication and Culture and Centro de Estudos dos Povos e Culturas de Expressão Portuguesa. She coordinates the Portuguese team for the Ibero-American Observatory of Television Fiction. Her research interests include television and audiovisual studies, production and programming strategies, publics and audiences.

Rita Araújo, Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

Rita Araújo, PhD in communication sciences, is a researcher at Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho. Her research interests are health communication and journalism, news sources, and health literacy. She was a visiting scholar at Hunter College, City University School of Public Health, New York, and she was a member of the Portuguese research team of Health Reporting Training Project (2010-3675 HeaRT), financed by European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Program. She was a researcher within the national project Disease in the News (PTDC/CCI-COM/103886/2008), financed by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. She is author and co-author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and she has presented her research in many national and international conferences.

Felisbela Lopes, Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

Felisbela Lopes is an associate professor with aggregation at the University of Minho, where she has been working since 1994. She was a pro-rector for communication from 2009 to 2014. Her research is focused on television information, health journalism and news sources, and she teaches in the field of journalism. Both her aggregation and PhD work are focused on television information. She is author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and books, amongst which are Marcelo, Presidente Todos os Dias (Marcelo, Everyday President; Porto Editora, 2019); Jornalista: Uma Profissão Ameaçada (Journalist: A Threatened Profession ; Alêtheia, 2015); Vinte Anos de TV Privada em Portugal (Twenty Years of Private TV in Portugal; Editora Guerra e Paz, 2012); A TV do Real (The Real TV; Minerva, 2008); A TV das Elites (The TV of the Elites; Campo das Letras, 2007) and Telejornal e o Serviço Público (Television News and Public Service; Minerva, 199)

Ana Teresa Peixinho, Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Ana Teresa Peixinho is an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra. She is a PhD in communication sciences and teaches in the field of journalism and communication. She is an integrated researcher at the Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies, where she is co-coordinator with Clara Almeida Santos of the media narratives and media analysis research group. She researches in the field of narrative media studies and media analysis.

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Published

2021-12-22

How to Cite

Magalhães, O. E., Santos, C. A., Burnay, C. D., Araújo, R., Lopes, F., & Peixinho, A. T. (2021). Vaccination Against Covid-19 — An Analysis of Portuguese Official Sources’ Digital Health Communication. Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, 8(2), 215–236. https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.3593

Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2021): Inclusion of Persons With Disabilities. Policies, Practices, Research and Narratives

Section

Varia

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Copyright (c) 2021 Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes, Ana Teresa Peixinho

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors own the copyright, providing the journal with the right of first publication. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons - Atribuição 4.0 Internacional License.

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