OBSERVARE
Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic Dossier
International Relations and Social Networks
July2021
157
THE COVID-19 VACCINATION AGENDA. EUROPEAN AND PORTUGUESE
OFFICIAL SOURCES’ PERFORMANCE IN FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM, TWITTER
AND LINKEDIN
CLARA ALMEIDA SANTOS
clara.santos@uc.pt
Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information of the
Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and integrated researcher in CEIS20 -
Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies.
OLGA ESTRELA MAGALHÃES
olgamagalhaes@med.up.pt
Coordinator of the Communication and Image Office of the Faculty of Medicine of the University
of Porto (Portugal) and researcher at CINTESIS - Health Technologies and Services Research
Centre.
CATARINA DUFF BURNAY
cburnay@ucp.pt
Associate Professor at FCH/UCP (Portugal), Coordinator of the Masters in Communication
Sciences and researcher at the Centre for Communication and Culture Studies (CECC).
RITA ARAÚJO
rita.manso.araujo@gmail.com
Researcher at CECS - Centre for Communication and Society Studies, University of Minho,
Institute of Social Sciences (Portugal).
Abstract
The authorization for the vaccine against Covid-19 and the beginning of the vaccination in the
European Union represent a very singular moment in several dimensions, including strategic
communication. In the context of a pandemic and an infodemic - an epidemic also recognized
by the World Health Organization (WHO) characterized by the abnormal increase of
information on a given subject carrying the risk of severe disinformation phenomena - the
need for authorities (both Portuguese and European) to convey accurate information and to
maintain a communicative proximity is crucial. In these circumstances, online social networks
represent ineluctable channels to deliver official information. In this article, we analyze how
the European Commission, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the WHO Regional Office
for Europe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the Representation of
the European Commission in Portugal, the Portuguese Government, the Portuguese
Directorate-General of Health, and the Portuguese National Health Service have used
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to communicate the vaccination during one month
since the EMA’s authorization (21st December 2020). All posts from the referred sources on
the four social networks (719 occurrences) were collected and content analysis methods were
then applied. The results show that both Portuguese and European official sources use social
media to convey authoritative information about the vaccination against Covid-19: more than
one third of the posts analyzed link to institutional websites and more than half the
publications have an informative framing. On the other hand, the analyze suggests that there
is a strong political capitalization of the momentum of hope. This exploratory study case shows
the importance of social media analysis in the context of the Covid-19
Keywords
Covid-19; Vaccination; social media; Disinformation; European Union
How to cite this article
Santos, Clara A.; Magalhães, Olga E.; Burnay, Catarina D.; Araújo, Rita. The COVID-19
vaccination agenda. European and portuguese official sources’ performance in facebook,
Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin. Thematic dossier International Relations and Social
Networks, July 2021. Consulted [online] on date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-
7251.DT21.11
Article received on January 5, 2021 and accepted for publication on March 20,0 2021
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
158
THE COVID-19 VACCINATION AGENDA. EUROPEAN AND PORTUGUESE
OFFICIAL SOURCES’ PERFORMANCE IN FACEBOOK, INSTAGRAM,
TWITTER AND LINKEDIN
1
CLARA ALMEIDA SANTOS
OLGA ESTRELA MAGALHÃES
CATARINA DUFF BURNAY
RITA ARAÚJO
1. Introduction
It was quite surprising when European Commissioner Thierry Breton, in May 2020,
speaking on a debate promoted by the Regulation Center in Europe, said that
disinformation was “the disease of the century”. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic,
the statement was likely to sound misfit, to say the least. Nevertheless, we can be quite
sure that we are globally dealing with a syndemic, a concept developed by Merrill Singer
(2009) that refers to complex epidemics implying disease interactions. Along with and
fueled by Covid-19, an infodemic has developed worldwide. Coincidentally enough, the
term “infodemic” was coined by David Rothkopf in 2003
2
in relation to the flood of
information accompanying the SARS-CoV-1 (the “first" coronavirus) outbreak. An
infodemic, as defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is an “overabundance of
information – some accurate and some not – that occurs during an epidemic. It can lead
to confusion and ultimately mistrust in governments and public health response”
3
. The
dimension of this infodemic (and consequent syndemic, according to Santos et al, 2021)
is amplified by the unprecedented massive use of technology and social media.
Researchers (eg Cinelli et al, 2020) are using variants of standard epidemic models to
simulate the spreading of information on social media.
In fact, one of the fundamental dimensions of this global crisis is digital dependence.
Digitalization and digitization made it possible to overcome many of the restrictions the
world had to face. Lockdowns obviously increased the time spent online and changed
1
Article translated by the autors and reviewed by Carolina Peralta.
2
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/05/11/when-the-buzz-bites-back/bc8cd84f-
cab6-4648-bf58-0277261af6cd, accessed January 21 2021.
3
https://www.who.int/teams/risk-communication/infodemic-management, accessed January 21 2021.
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
159
digital habits. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020, and not
surprisingly, the use of online and social media substantially increased in most countries.
In this aspect (as in others) the Coronavirus disease is unprecedented: it is “the first
pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive
scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected. At the same time, the
technology we rely on to keep connected and informed is enabling and amplifying an
infodemic that continues to undermine the global response and jeopardizes measures to
control the pandemic”
4
. In early May 2020, the European Commission registered daily
more than 2.700 articles with “fake news” related to Covid-19 on social networks,
including false or misleading publications.
In October 2018, several platforms and companies – including Facebook, Twitter, Google
and Mozilla – signed a “Code of Practice”, under the umbrella of the European
Commission, that includes a wide range of commitments to fight online disinformation.
Since then, the signatories have been producing periodic self-assessment reports on the
measures undertaken “from transparency in political advertising to the closure of fake
accounts and demonetisation of purveyors of disinformation”
5
. The declared aim is to
“contribute to a fast and measurable reduction of online disinformation”
6
.
According to the report from Facebook for December 2020
7
, over 401 thousand pieces of
content on Facebook and Instagram were removed for containing misinformation that
might lead to imminent physical harm, such as content relating to fake preventative
measures or exaggerated cure, and 40 thousand pieces of content related to Covid-19
and which violated the platform medical supply sales standards.
The war against infodemy is particularly relevant to prevent and control the effects of
the syndemic. As Josep Borrell, Vice-President of the European Commission put it:
“Disinformation in times of the coronavirus can kill. We have a duty to protect our citizens
by making them aware of false information and expose the actors responsible for
engaging in such practices”
8
.
1.1. “Information disorder”
Following UNESCO’s recommendations (Ireton and Posetti, 2018), we will not use the
popular term “fake news” to refer to information disorders. Wardle and Derakhshan
(2017) dismiss the utilization of this expression for two reasons: on the one hand,
because it has been used by politicians to describe news coverage that they find
“disagreeable”; on the other hand, because they find that it is “woefully inadequate to
describe the complex phenomena of information pollution” (Wardle and Derakhshan,
2017: 5). In plus, as several other authors point out, the term “news” presumptions
information that is delivered after a process of professional verification – which is not the
case for “fake news”. The referred authors coined the expression “information disorder”
4
https://www.who.int/news/item/23-09-2020-managing-the-covid-19-infodemic-promoting-healthy-
behaviours-and-mitigating-the-harm-from-misinformation-and-disinformation, accessed January 21 2021.
5
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/STATEMENT_18_5914, accessed February 3 2021.
6
Idem
7
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/latest-set-reports-and-way-forward-fighting-covid-
19-disinformation-monitoring-programme, accessed January 20 2021.
8
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1006, accessed February 3 2021.
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
160
to describe a much more complex phenomenon considering two dimensions: falsity and
intention. “Information disorder” includes three types of “toxic” information:
misinformation, disinformation and mal-information. Misinformation and disinformation
are both characterized by falseness. The difference according to Wardle and Derakhshan
is that misinformation has no intention to harm while disinformation is conveyed with
malicious intentions. Disinformation might include different forms of willingly forged
content and context, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Concepts of misinformation, disinformation and mal-information
Source: Ireton and Posetti (2018).
Mal-information though mischiefing, is based on reality. True facts or partially truthful
facts are used but in most of the cases, it is not the whole story and the narrative is
purposefully used to “inflict harm on a person, organisation or country” (Wardle and
Derakhshan, 2017: 46).
In the Covid-19 syndemic context, the information disorder combined with the already
referred unprecedented usage of social media create an humungous challenge for
authorities that need to keep the population accurately informed about the virus and the
disease and to disseminate important health messages. Previous epidemic crisis during
the 21st century have shown how harmful and even lethal the information disorder can
be (eg Oyeyemi, Gabarron, Wynn, 2014, Knobler et al, 2004). It adds up that given the
uncertainty in much that is related to the virus and the disease, “distorted versions of
concepts and scientific facts proliferate, employing extraordinarily plausible narrative and
rhetorical forms that flourish in the midst of the scarcity of contents recommending
biosafety practices during a pandemic” (Vasconcellos-Silva and Castiel, 2020: 2). The
same authors claim that fact-twisting – emerging as misinfomation, desinformation or
mal-information – proliferates in the absence of the official narrative. As the WHO puts
it in the context of the 1st WHO Infodemiology Conference, held on June and July 2020,
“like pathogens in epidemics, misinformation spreads further and faster and adds
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
161
complexity to health emergency response”
9
. The WHO recognizes the difficulty to find
trustworthy sources and reliable guidance. And “even when people have access to high-
quality information, there are still barriers they must overcome to take the recommended
action”
10
.
The usage of social media by governments and other official entities can be regarded as
part of evolving practices of digital governance. As Magro (2012) underlines after
analysing several case studies, using social media in disaster management is an
important role for governments. According to Dadashzadeh (2010), using social media
in governance might prompt many benefits such as: improving social and economic
conditions of citizens, providing access, engaging, and educating all citizens, improving
Government accountability by increased transparency, or improving te effectiveness of
initiatives and providing citizens the opportunity to “talk back”.
1.2. Health communication: the Covid-19 vaccination campaign
The vaccination campaign against Covid-19 that started in every member state of the
European Union (EU) on the 27th December 2020 represents a very singular moment in
several aspects. Firstly, because of its institutional, concerted, transnational, political and
scientific character as a response to “the most formidable challenge to humanity in a
century” (Jeyanathan et al, 2020). As far as communication is concerned, a vaccination
campaign occurring in the midst of the pandemic and infodemic increases drastically the
need for official sources to disseminate accurate and reliable information. Vaccination is
actually the theme of one of the most well-known case studies on the effects of
information disorder. In 1998 Andrew Wakefield published an article in the prestigious
medical journal The Lancet that linked mumps, measles, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and
autism. The journal eventually retracted the paper in 2010 because the findings were
discredited but its message had already reached many people (Arif et al, 2020) namely
through subsequent news. Online, both information and information disorders remain
(and remain). As the referred authors conclude, counteracting disinformation about
vaccines by health authorities is part of the solution. Political and health authorities face
many challenges as current public health communications about vaccines may not be
effective and may, in fact, “increase misperceptions or reduce vaccination intention”
(Nyhan et al 2014: 2013). The authors claim that more studies of pro-vaccine messaging
are needed, and that vaccination messaging should be carefully tested before making it
public.
A study conducted by Neumann-Böhme et al (2020) has shown the willingness of
Europeans from seven countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the
Netherlands, and the UK) to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The results show that 73.9%
of the 7664 participants stated that they would be willing to get vaccinated. The
willingness ranged from 62% in France to approximately 80% in Denmark and the UK.
Only 7.2% stated that they do not want to get vaccinated. France, Portugal and Germany
present the highest rate of respondents that stated their uncertainty towards the vaccine.
9
https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2020/06/30/default-calendar/1st-who-infodemiology-
conference, accessed on January 20 2021.
10
Idem.
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The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
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When asked about the reasons for being unsure, more than half (55%) said they were
concerned about potential side effects of a vaccine. Around 15% of respondents stated
concern about the vaccine safeness.
Figure 2: Willingness to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by country
Source: Neumann-Böhme et al (2020)
In this context, it is crucial to recognize the importance of health communication, which
has emerged as one of the most important public health issues in this century (Ishikawa
and Kiuchi, 2010). Furthermore, several authors agree that it is a key factor in fighting
the Covid-19 pandemic (Finset et al, 2020, Fielding, 2020). Indeed, he sudden
appearance of SARS-CoV-2 has highlighted the importance of health communication and
health literacy within infectious diseases, and the constant evolution of the virus and the
science surrounding it makes people seek health information in order to adapt their
behaviors (Paakari and Okan, 2020), see their questions answered, and limit
transmission.
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the infodemic surrounding Covid-19 “poses a
serious problem for public health” (Zarocostas, 2020), since an adequate level of health
literacy is required to deal with both misinformation and disinformation. In that sense,
the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to light the underestimated public health problem of
low health literacy (Paakari and Okan, 2020). Indeed, “providing the population with
evidence-based scientific data is beneficial and necessary but does not necessarily lead
to individuals correctly understanding or interpreting the information” (Biasio et al,
2020). Several studies recognize the importance of health literacy as a determinant of
health outcomes and a driver of unnecessary costs (Parker and Ratzan, 2010; Berkman
et al, 2010; Paasche-Orlow and Wolf, 2010), as well as pointing out the association
between literacy skills and the engagement in health-related decisions, such as the
management of a chronic disease or the compliance with health-promoting and disease-
preventive behaviors (Rudd et al, 2012, Zarcadoolas et al, 2006). Vaccination is one of
those disease-preventive behaviors that can be seriously affected by low health literacy
JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations
e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
163
levels, along with dis- and misinformation. Vaccine hesitancy – the reluctance or refusal
to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines – is recognized by the WHO
11
as a major
threat to global health. Moreover, the rapid production of Covid-19 vaccines and all the
information surrounding vaccine development and implementation as well as safety and
efficacy may be challenging for individuals to gather and process (Vanderpool et al,
2020).
Hence, news media play a central role in the promotion of health since they are often the
primary source of information to the lay public. During a public health crisis people
depend on the news media to convey accurate and up-to-date information that allows
them to make informed health decisions. Equally important is “training scientists and
government agencies to discuss in plain language the benefits of a future Covid-19
vaccine with the media” (Schiavo, 2020: 74). The medical-scientific language is one of
the problems traditionally identified by journalists in health and science communication
and all strategies that can improve the individual skills of sources to communicate with
different audiences, including journalists, are welcome. Therefore, the intervention and
expertise of communication professionals, who understand the media routines and
master efficient health communication strategies, is very important (Magalhães, 2020).
Health authorities and political leaders are responsible for mitigating the potential
information disorder around the vaccination through communication. Social media
provide the possibility to communicate in a “disintermediated environment” (Vicario et
al, 2016), the exact same environment that can foster confusion, encourage mistrust and
allow communicative proximity, and convey accurate and authoritative information.
The vaccination campaign in the UE provides a precious momentum to analyze how
official sources use social media to encourage vaccination, to dismiss doubts and
apprehension about the safety of the vaccines and to disseminate reliable facts
counteracting against possible information disorders.
2. Research design and methodology
Social media are in contemporary communication dynamics the main vehicles of
disinformation, misinformation and mal-information (Newman et al, 2020). Fracturing
themes become permeable to the instantaneous construction and rapid dissemination of
conspiracy theories and little grounded perspectives, motivating, in the context of a
pandemic like Covid-19, over and under reactions (Pennycook et al, 2020). These
reactions call into question the safety of the individual, but in this specific case, the safety
of the community itself, making it difficult to control the disease and its global effects. In
a joint and global effort, strategies have been developed to combat the proliferation of
false or distorted news around Covid-19 from a communication/journalistic and legal
point of view, as also by the social media platforms, showing themselves to be more
aggressive than they were on political topics (Radu, 2020, Nunziato, 2020).
According to Reuters Digital News Report 2020, Portugal, along with Finland, is the
country, out of 40 analysed, that trusts the news the most, but less than 3 out of 10
11
https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/ten-threats-to-global-health-in-2019, accessed on January
18th 2021.
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Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
164
Portuguese say they trust news spread by social media and three quarters of the sample
shows concern about the legitimacy of online content. If Facebook is the main network
for news consumption (50.2%), it is interesting to see how in a pandemic context instant
messaging apps (eg Whatsapp) have gained relevance, boosting the dissemination of
disinformation (Cardoso et al, 2020). At the same time, because of their reach and
spreadability potential, social media are also powerful weapons to fight back against
information disorders, playing an important role in policy announcement and health
education (Tsao et al, 2021), allowing sources to deliver authoritative information directly
to the receivers. In this sense, the use of social media by official sources as a vehicle of
excellence to reach a wide and widespread audience has grown, showing itself as a
potential step towards dealing with misinformation (Butcher, 2021).
Passing on the information that vaccines are safe is a new challenge in managing
communication on pandemic issues, therefore, the present study
12
sought to understand
the use of social media in building credible and reliable information on the subject. We
selected four social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn – and
collected all utterances concerning vaccination posted by the European Commission
(EC/EU), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the World Health Organization Regional
Office for Europe (WHO/ROE), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
(ECDPC), Representation of the European Commission in Portugal (REC/PT), Portuguese
Government (Gov/PT), Portuguese Directorate-General of Health (DGS), and Portuguese
National Health Service (SNS) during one month, starting from the authorization of the
first vaccine in the EU (21st December 2020).
The relevance of digital communication in the current media and information landscape
is undeniable (Neuman, 2016; Reyna et al, 2018), so the official sources are increasingly
betting on this type of communication, through the promotion of their websites and their
pages in digital social networks that are more active and closer to the public. The choice
of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) was based on an exploratory
analysis of the platforms most used and promoted by the elected official authorities.
According to data presented by Statecounter/Global Stats
13
, for the period between
January 2020 and January 2021, Facebook had a usage of around 77%, followed by
Pinterest (10.3%), Twitter (7.2%) and Instagram (2.1%). With a view to large-scale
communication, the sources analyzed used the three social media platforms of
mainstream interaction (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), to which was added
LinkedIn, a professional platform with almost 740 million members (166 million in
Europe)
14
, showing signs of growth, both in terms of access and in terms of interaction.
12
This is part of a wider project that aims to study the communication about Covid-19 vaccination through a
twofold analysis: the media coverage of Covid-19 vaccination in the Portuguese news media and the
strategic communication of official news sources, both Portuguese and European.
13
https://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/europe, accessed on February 14th 2021.
14
https://news.linkedin.com/about-us#Statistics, accessed on February 14th 2021.
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e-ISSN: 1647-7251
Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
165
Table 1: Number of followers of the official sources on each platform in January 2021 (M-Million;
m-thousand)
Source: Prepared by the authors
3. Case study and data analysis
The corpus consists of 719 posts corresponding to all utterances on the subject of or
referring “vaccination” published between December 21st, 2020, and January 21st, 2021,
by verified public pages of the above-mentioned official sources on the selected social
media platforms
15
.
15
After coding and using the application Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) the posts were
submitted to content analysis using the following variables:
V1. Social Media [Indicates the platform where the post was published]
1.Facebook
2.Instagram
3.Twitter
4.LinkedIn
V2. Official source [Indicates who authored the post]
1. European Commission
2. WHO Regional Office for Europe
3. European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
4. Portuguese Government
5. Portuguese Directorate-General of Health
6. Infarmed, IP
7. Portuguese National Health Service
8. Representation of the European Commission in Portugal
V3 and V4. Multimediality [Indicates the media formats used in the post, up to 2]
1. Text
2. Photo
3. Photo gallery (more than one photo)
4. Video
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Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
166
5. Audio
6. Graphic
7. Poster
8. Animation
9. Live
10. Infographics
V5. Hypertext [Describes the landing pages or platforms to where the post links to]
1. Developed information in sites (other than the source’s)
2. Further information in the platform where the post was published
3. Other national sources (sites)
4. Other international sources (sites)
5. Other social media
6. Source’s site
7. Repost [when the post is simple repost with no other format (V3 or V4)
8. Other resources
V6. Hashtags [string variable that collects all the hashtags used in the post]
V7. Geography [Indicates the geographical approach]
1. National
2. International
3. Both
V8. Frame [Analyses the post’s discourse aiming to assess the motivation/intention of the post and post’s
author]
1. Informative
2. Pedagogical
3. Persuasive
4. Defensive
5. Positive
6. Other
V9. Theme [Indicates the main theme of the post; the list of potential themes was adapted from a project on
health communication] (Lopes et al, 2013, Araújo, 2016).
1. Research development
2. Ribonucleic acid
3. Clinical trials
4. Vaccine validation
5. Vaccine administration
6. Difficulties in administration
7. Adverse effects
8. Deadlines
9. Priority groups
10. Distribution
11. Storage
12. Deadline failure
13. Distribution problems
14. Storage problems
15. National portraits
16. International portraits
17. Political decisions
18. Health officers’ decisions
19. Political reactions
20. Economy
21. Protests
22. Vaccine security
23. Professional situations
24. European success
25. Generic approach
26. Authorization
27. Technical/scientific information
28.Acknowledgment
29. Fact check
V10. Actor [Indicates the main actor/s in the post; if the post is a repost, the actor is the author of the original post]
1. Source’s official representative
2. Expert
3. Celebrity
4. Politician
5. Citizen(s)
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Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
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The posts were collected in the four platforms during the period of analysis (from the
21st to the December 2020 to the 21st of January 2021). The objective was to gather all
the posts produced by the sources that are being studied.
We computed the data using SPPS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Then, we
run a descriptive analysis of all variables, crossing results when considered interesting
for getting some insight.
4. Findings and discussion
From all sources analyzed, the most prolific was the Portuguese National Health Service,
authoring 31% of all posts, followed by the EC, with 24% of the posts.
Table 2. Number of publications by source
Source: Prepared by the authors
Twitter was the most used social media platform with 56,9% of all posts, followed by
Facebook with less than all the amount of posts (22.5%). All sources (except the
Portuguese
Directorate-General of Health) used more Twitter than the other social media (Table 3).
6. Several (when more than one of the other actors in this list)
7. Health professional(s)
8. Other official source
9. Other
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Thematic dossier– International Relations and Social Networks (July 2021), pp. 157-179
The Covid-19 vaccination agenda. European and Portuguese official sources’ performance
in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Linkedin
Clara Almeida Santos, Olga Estrela Magalhães, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo
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Table 3: social media used by each source
Source: Prepared by the authors
During the time period that was analyzed, the days with more posts (more than 5% of
the total) coincide with: 1) the authorization of the first vaccine in the European Union
(21st December 2020); 2) a public meeting held by the EMA about the vaccine (8th
January 2021); 3) the beginning of vaccination in every member state of the EU (27th
December); 4) the day before the beginning of vaccination in the EU (26th December
2020); 5) the authorization of the second vaccine (6th January 2021) (Table 4 and
Graphic 1).
Table 4: Number of posts per date
Source: Prepared by the authors
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Graphic 1: Number of posts per date
Source: Prepared by the authors
When crossing the date with the theme for those five days, we find that the most
prominent themes were “Vaccine administration”, “Authorization”, “Generic approach”
and “Vaccine security” (Table 5).
Table 5: Themes on specific dates
Source: Prepared by the authors
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The posts about “Vaccine administration” focus on the beginning of the vaccination
process in every member state of the EU and particularly in Portugal (as far as the
Portuguese sources are concerned). The National Health Service has carried out a
campaign showing vaccines being inoculated in several institutions outside the capital
and main cities. The European sources also used this kind of approach but being less
prolific. One interesting remark is the use of the hashtag #EUVaccinationDays. The theme
“Authorization” refers mainly to posts focusing on the announcement of the authorization
of the vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech, on the 21th December 2020, and Moderna on the 6th
January 2021). The “Generic approach” theme is registered when the vaccine is
mentioned generically, without any specific thematic or when several themes are
addressed in the same post, none of them being sufficiently prominent to be identified
as “the” theme of the post. “Vaccine security” identifies normally reassuring content
about the safeness of the vaccine, thus showing understanding citizens’ main concern.
These four themes account for 79.5% of all themes in the referred dates. If we include
all dates (Table 6), we will find that “Vaccine administration” is present in 34.8% of the
posts, followed by “Generic approach” (19.7%) and “Authorization” (12.2%). We should
also underline the 8.5% of posts devoted to “Vaccine security”, published by European
official sources and by the EC Representation in Portugal.
Table 6: Themes
Source: Prepared by the authors
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As far as multimediality is concerned, the most used format is text, present in nearly
80% of the posts. The posts that do not present texts are reposts (not identified as
having text authored by the official source). Posters, a category that identifies a sort of
billboard that uses both photography and typography, and sometimes even illustrations,
very similar to advertising signs, account for 28.4% of all formats used in the posts.
Crossing multimediality with sources, we find that the Portuguese National Health Service
uses this format in 133 posts (out of 223, representing the presence of this kind of
resource in 59.7% of all posts). The Representation of the European Commission in
Portugal also relies on this format in 29.3% of its posts and the European Commission
uses it in 12.8% of its posts.
It should be noted that the posters used by the Representation of the European
Commission in Portugal are often the same used by the European Commission (translated
into Portuguese).
Table 7: Multimediality
Source: Prepared by the authors
Video is used mainly by the European Commission (present in 20.3% of all posts), being
the second most used format by this source (after text) and by its Representation in
Portugal (24.2% of all posts).
Regarding hypertext in the posts, the most frequent is reposting (used in nearly half the
posts with hypertext), what relates to the wide use of Twitter and the habit of reposting
in this platform. Given this result, we crossed hypertext with the actors (Table 8) to find
that the reposts are mainly authored by other official sources (namely the ones identified
in this article, both national and international) and by the source’s official representative.
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Table 8. Hypertext and actors
Source: Prepared by the authors
Linking to the source’s official sites is done in 37.4% of all posts where we can find links.
It is interesting to notice that hypertext is present in 60.8% of all posts (not in all of
them actors can be identified). The sources that use this feature the most are the
European Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Infarmed, IP (only one of their
posts does not have hypertext). The Portuguese Government uses hypertext in more
than 90% of its posts (Table 9).
Table 9: Hypertext and sources
Source: Prepared by the authors
Many posts refer several actors simultaneously, namely UE citizens and health
professionals, what occurs frequently when the theme is the administration of the
vaccine. When adding up official sources and representatives of the source that authors
the publication or other official sources, official sources prevail (Table 10).
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Table 10. Actors
Source: Prepared by the authors
Regarding the discursive frame of the messages, the results show that the majority of
the posts (55.4%) are informative, conveying uncluttered and objective information. The
themes with more informative frame are "Vaccine administration” (43.7% of all posts
labeled as informative) and when the vaccine is generically approached (in 17.1% of the
informative posts) (Table 11). These are also the themes where a more positive discourse
is constructed. A pedagogical approach is used when posting about the vaccine safety
and about several aspects of the vaccine and vaccination process (Generic approach).
Table 11: Themes and message framing
Source: Prepared by the authors
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In absolute numbers, the most positive source is the European Commission, followed by
the Portuguese National Health Service, which is the most informative source (Table 12).
Table 12: Sources and discursive framework
Source: Prepared by the authors
When weighing the frame used with the total amount of posts, we find that the
Portuguese National Health Service is still the source with a higher percentage of
informative posts (80.7%). The more pedagogical is the European Medicines Agency
(31.3% of the posts), followed closely by the WHO Regional Office for Europe (27.3%).
The persuasive frame is more used by the European Commission (10.5% of its posts)
and by the European Commission’s Representation in Portugal (7.1%). The defensive
mode is practically only activated by the European Center for Disease Prevention and
Control (6% of its publications). The most positive source considering weight of this
frame on the total of publications is the European Commission’s Representation in
Portugal (61.8%), followed by the European Commission (43%).
Crossing frames with the social media platforms, Facebook is where the highest
percentage of informative posts is published. In all platforms, informative and positive
framing account a very high percentage of the total of posts (88% on Facebook; 89% on
Instagram; 84% on Twitter and 85% on LinkedIn) (Table 13).
Table 13: Message framing in social media
Source: Prepared by the authors
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5. Final remarks
The results show that Portuguese and European official sources (governmental and health
authorities) are using social media to convey information about Covid-19 vaccination. In
average, all sources together published 24 posts per day during the month of the study.
The most prolific source in this study, the Portuguese National Health Service, published,
in average, 7.4 posts each day.
Twitter is the platform where more posts are published by 8 out of 9 sources analyzed,
even though it is not the one with the highest number of followers. The exception is the
Portuguese General-Directorate of Health, whose number of total posts is scarce – 17
publications, representing 2.4% of the corpus. Although this source has played a very
prominent role since the beginning of the pandemics in terms of communication, the
vaccination campaign seems to have been delegated to the National Health Service.
Adding up all followers of the official pages of the sources in the digital networks in this
research (data accessed in January 2021), Facebook leads with 3.4 million, followed by
Twitter with 1.9 million, LinkedIn with 1.2 million and Instagram with 931 thousand. A
possible explanation for the 56,9% of all posts published on Twitter is that this platform
is attended by many journalists and is claimed to be the preferred professional
tool/source as far as social media are concerned (Parmelee, 2013). This possibility brings
us back to a sophisticated and digitalized version of Lazarsfeld and Katz’s theory of the
“two-step flow of communication”: using Twitter (and other social media), official sources
might reach journalists in an unconventional, uncommitted way; sources are directly
speaking to the general public knowing that the message will also target journalists. The
apparently unmediated content gains the potential to be mediated through journalists
playing their role as opinion leaders. In this version of the two-step flow theory, social
media are in the beginning of the chain and legacy media on the other end.
This communication strategy also contributes to create a buzz marketing effect. The
positive framing of the vaccine campaign (registered in 30.5% of all posts), especially in
what concerns the European accomplishment, the authorization and the administration
process starting on the same day in every member state, contributes to the emotional
trigger that buzz marketing relies on. The effect depends on repetition and redundancy:
administration and authorization in the EU account for 47% of the themes in all posts
that constitute the corpus. Other explanation for the expressive usage of Twitter has to
do with the platform’s posting characteristics, privileging shorter and more frequent
posting. Twitter shows, more than the other platforms, an articulation between European
official sources with many cross referral and tagging, especially between the European
Medicines Agency and the European Commission. Instagram, in turn, relies mainly in
images and official sources use that specificity to channel the more promotional format
and language, using the “poster” messages. The sources strategy takes into
consideration the specific potential of each platform, and efficiently adjusts the formats.
There seems to be some contempt regarding LinkedIn (with a considerable number of
followers in some sources’ page while other sources do not even have a page). Given the
nature of this social network it could be an effective space to disseminate authoritative
information, nourishing the “two-step flow”.
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With the death and disease tolls, after the lockdowns and under the shadow of a new
wave of Covid-19, vaccination represents hope (a “light at the end of the tunnel”, as was
constantly repeated) and that hope was capitalized by official sources (mainly
governmental, both European and Portuguese) also with strong political intentions. The
momentum, especially in what concerns the authorization of the vaccine and the
beginning of the vaccination process, was favorable to the appraisal of the European
ideals of solidarity, working for common goals and attaining them. The European
Commission and its Representation in Portugal are the most positive sources, reinforcing
the importance of the European project in an adversarial context. This positiveness is
enhanced by using abundantly the hashtags #EUVaccinationDays, #StrongerTogether
and #UnitedAgainstCoronavirus.
Political twist and uplifting do not mean that the main concerns about vaccinations –
assuring its security and providing authoritative information to mitigate information
disorders – were not met though the communication practices in social media. In more
than one third of the posts there are links developed information on the source’s official
websites. And it should be noted that informative framing is the most common one (in
55.4% of the posts). The strategy to convey authoritative information from reliable
sources is thus enforced. Yet, it seems that a much broader task of disseminating this
kind of information is entrusted to social media themselves, through several initiatives
that Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and also TikTok have agreed to engage in.
This case study shows the importance of social media analysis in the context of the Covid-
19 vaccination. It will be used as an exploratory study on official source’s digital
communication practices during the vaccination campaign in the EU.
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