Vaccines and vaccine hesitancy in European media discourses. Covid and beyond.

This seminar will present the results of comparative discourse analysis of vaccines in media of 7 European countries before and after the Covid-19 outbreak. The main threads and ways of defining vaccines will be presented, showing the shifts in discourses. Significant differences and some similarities in country-specific media debates will be presented. Focus will be put both on the mainstream media and alternative media channels, including social media, where vaccine contesting was most visible. This multi-faceted approach will allow us to reconstruct the set of meanings related to vaccines, with their normative and epistemological dimensions, which can influence vaccine hesitancy.

The research was conducted within a comparative Horizon 2020 project ”VAX-TRUST: Addressing vaccine hesitancy in Europe” (Grant Agreement 965280).

Paulina Polak is Associate Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonia University in Krakow.  She is currently leading the Polish research team and a work package on media discourses on vaccination within the ”VAX-TRUST: Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Europe” Horizon 2020 Project.  Her main research interests lie in sociology of health and illness, law and society, public sphere and public discourses. She is currently conducting research on vaccines and patients’ rights. She recently published articles on anti-vaccination movements, physicians’ protests and the Polish healthcare system problems. She published an acclaimed book on corruption in the Polish pharmaceutical system.

The seminar is freely accessible for those attending f2f, if you intend to attend online, please fill in your email HERE.