Information Channels and Narratives:  To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate,  That is the Question

Roxanne Holly Padley

doi:10.54103/2035-7680/19127

Autori

Roxanne Holly Padley Università degli Studi di Salerno https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2326-7261

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54103/2035-7680/19127

Parole chiave:

Pandemic; Discourse Analysis; COVID-19 Vaccinations; Vaccine Narratives

Abstract

The discourses surrounding the COVID-19 vaccination are extensive and have been prolific over the last eighteen months. There has been particular debate among groups of vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals discussing health benefits and a sense of civic duty in order to protect oneself and those around us as well as considering the extent to which a state really can oblige citizens to uptake the vaccine through a vaccination mandate.

This study investigated the discourses regarding choosing to undergo the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination or otherwise and how these discourses are framed within the global and Italian contexts. The role of information channels, including the media, was also investigated along with the power balances revealed among the vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals’ discourses. An online ethnographic poll was designed and distributed through online channels and follow up focus groups using semi-structured interviews were recorded for transcription and linguistic analysis. Results show some interesting linguistic findings regarding potential discrimination due to the vaccination pass mandate along with the narratives that surround these.

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Biografia autore

Roxanne Holly Padley, Università degli Studi di Salerno

Roxanne Holly Padley is PhD doctoral researcher in Linguistic Studies at the Department of Humanities and contract professor at the Department of Medicine (University of Salerno) along with the Department of Agricultural Sciences (University of Sassari). She is also academic tutor at the University of Oxford Language Centre as well as institutional translator and conference interpreter. Her research interests include English for specific purposes (medical, scientific and academic English), sociolinguistics and corpus-based discourse analysis. She has published and presented extensively and internationally on topics related to healthcare communication.

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