“Vaccinate or Terminate”
A CDA of USA and Italian Online Petitions on Covid-19 Vaccines
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2024.i23.1434Parole chiave:
anti-vaccinationism, Covid-19 vaccines, e-petitions, critical discourse analysis, corpus-assisted discourse studiesAbstract
In the contemporary crisis of representative democracy, the increased accessibility of the Internet has favoured novel forms of civic engagement. E-petition platforms like Change.org have empowered individuals to address decision-makers on various issues, utilising the web to gather endorsement. During the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccination campaigns polarised public opinion, with some advocating a widespread distribution of vaccines and others rejecting them for various reasons. The swift authorisation and implementation of vaccine mandates amplified fear and mistrust, skilfully exploited by spreaders of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Integrating Critical Discourse Analysis with Corpus Linguistics, this study examines a corpus of online petitions in favour and against Covid-19 vaccinations published on Change.org in the United States and Italy. In both countries, vaccination proponents emphasise the prioritisation of human health by protecting vulnerable groups and waiving vaccine patent rights. Opposers of vaccination present a range of motivations, including doubts about vaccine safety, concerns about individual rights, and arguments against mandates. They may also tap into a populist distrust of political elites and health authorities. Consequently, the petitions blend elements from different genres, encompassing political propaganda and popular science.
Riferimenti bibliografici
Aiello, Jacqueline. “‘Don’t Mask the Truth’: Analyzing Anti-Mask Discourses Advanced by a ‘Trusted Expert’ and Activists Acting On- and Offline.” Lingue e Linguaggi. Special Issue. The Languages and Anti-Languages of Health Communication in the Age of Conspiracy Theories, Mis/Disinformation and Hate Speech 47 (2022): 87-113.
Aiezza, Maria Cristina. “#AmericaFirst vs #primagliitaliani: A Corpus-Assisted CDA of Trump’s and Salvini’s Twitter Communications.” Politics and Populism across Modes and Media. Edited by Ruth Breeze and Ana M. Fernández Vallejo. Bern: Peter Lang, 2019. 127-153.
---. “‘Make a Change for Climate Change’: A Comparative Discourse Analysis of Online Environmental Petitions in the USA and UK.” Anglistica AION. Special Issue. Climate Change Discourse: Remediation and Recontextualisation in News and Social Media 26.1 (2022): 49-67.
---. “‘Sign and Make Your Mark on the World a Positive One.’ A Discourse and Genre Analysis of UK Online Petitions to Reduce Single-Use Plastics.” Anglistica AION. Special Issue. Environmental Conflicts and Legal Disputes Across Media Discourse 22.1 (2018): 109-130.
Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos and Tony McEnery. Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes: The Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Berman, Jonathan M. Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2020.
Bertero, Arturo and Antonella Seddone. “Italy: Populist in the Mirror, (De)Politicizing the COVID-19 from Government and Opposition.” Populism and the Politicization of the COVID-19 Crisis in Europe. Edited by Giuliano Bobba and Nicolas Hubé. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 45-58.
Bezzini, Daiana, et al. “First Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: Data and Evidence.” Coronavirus Therapeutics–Volume II: Clinical Management and Public Health. Edited by Alexzander A. A. Asea and Punit Kaur. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. 91-113.
Bolsen, Toby and Risa Palm. “Politicization and COVID-19 Vaccine Resistance in the U.S.” Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science 188.1 (2022): 81-100.
Change.org Italy. Change.org 2022. www.change.org/?lang=it-IT. All websites were visited on 14/09/2023.
Change.org USA (United States). Change.org 2022. www.change.org/?lang=en-US.
---. “Community Guidelines.” Change.org 30 August 2022. www.change.org/policies/community?lang=en-US.
---. “Declaring Petition Victory.” Change.org 2023. guide.change.org/declare-petition-victory.
Cozma, Ana-Maria and Lotta Lehti. “Online Petition as an Echo Chamber.” Analyzing Digital Discourses Between Convergence and Controversy. Edited by Marjut Johansson, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen and Jan Chovanec. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 333-364.
Cruickshank, Iain, et al. “Content and Dynamics of Websites Shared Over Vaccine-Related Tweets in COVID-19 Conversations: Computational Analysis.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 23.12 (2021): e29127.
Crulli, Mirko. “Scientists Versus the People: Science, Anti-Science and Counter-Science in Italian Populist Communication Before and During the Pandemic.” Italian Political Science 16.3 (2021): 196-219.
De Blasio, Emiliana and Donatella Selva. “COVID-19 in Italy: Performing Power and Emotions.” Frontiers in Political Science 3 (2021): 661378.
Demata, Massimiliano, Natalia Knoblock and Marianna Lya Zummo, edited by. Lingue e Linguaggi. Special Issue. The Languages and Anti-Languages of Health Communication in the Age of Conspiracy Theories, Mis/Disinformation and Hate Speech 47 (2022).
ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. An Agency of the European Union). “Overview of the Implementation of COVID-19 Vaccination Strategies and Deployment Plans in the EU/EEA.” ECDC 08 September 2022. www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/overview-implementation-covid-19-vaccination-strategies-and-deployment-plans.
Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43.4 (1993): 51-58.
Etzioni, Amitai. “Community and COVID-19: Japan, Sweden and Uruguay.” Survival—Global Politics and Strategy 63.1 (2021): 53-76.
European Parliament and Council of the European Union. “Regulation (EU) 2021/953 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2021 on a Framework for the Issuance, Verification and Acceptance of Interoperable COVID-19 Vaccination, Test and Recovery Certificates (EU Digital COVID Certificate) to Facilitate Free Movement During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Official Journal of the European Union L 211.1 (15 June 2021).
Fatkhiyati, Nurrahma Restia and Suharno Suharno. “Rhetorical Strategy and Linguistics Features in E-Petition Through Change.org.” Lingua Cultura 13.4 (2019): 239-245.
Fuchs, Christian. Communicating COVID-19: Everyday Life Digital Capitalism, and Conspiracy Theories in Pandemic Times. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021.
Ghaltakhchyan, Siranoush. “Online Petition as a Type of Persuasive Discourse.” Armenian Folia Anglistika 9.1-2.11 (2013): 100-110.
Giorgi, Giada. “No Green Pass, da Milano a Roma i Cortei di Protesta contro l’Estensione dell’Obbligo: «Giù le Mani dal Lavoro» – Il Video.” Open 18 September 2021. www.open.online/2021/09/18/coronavirus-proteste-no-green-pass-no-vax-italia-video.
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. London: Harper and Row, 1974.
Hagen, Loni, et al. “E-Petition Popularity: Do Linguistic and Semantic Factors Matter?”. Government Information Quarterly (2016): 1-13.
---. “Introducing Textual Analysis Tools for Policy Informatics: A Case Study of E-Petitions.” Proceedings of the 16th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (2015): 10-19.
HHS (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services). “COVID-19 Vaccines.” HHS 24 October 2022. www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/index.html.
Holder, Josh. “Tracking Coronavirus Vaccinations Around the World.” The New York Times 13 March 2023. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccinations-tracker.html.
Inwood, Olivia and Michele Zappavigna. “The ID2020 Conspiracy Theory in YouTube Video Comments During COVID-19: Bonding Around Religious, Political, and Technological Discourses.” Conspiracy Theory Discourses. Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2022. 241-266.
Ioannidis, John P. A. “Coronavirus Disease 2019: The Harms of Exaggerated Information and Non-Evidence-Based Measures.” European Journal of Clinical Investigation 50 (2020): e13223.
Johns Hopkins University & Medicine. “COVID-19 Dashboard.” Coronavirus Resource Center 2023. coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.
Karpf, David. Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001.
Lello, Elisa, et al. “Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal During the Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy: Individualistic Claims or Repoliticisation?”. Partecipazione e Conflitto 15.3 (2022): 672-696.
Macintosh, Ann. “Using Information and Communication Technologies to Enhance Citizen Engagement in the Policy Process.” Promise and Problems of E-Democracy: Challenges of Online Citizen Engagement. Edited by Joanne Caddy and Christian Vergez. Paris: OECD, 2003. 19-142.
Mair, John, et al., edited by. Populism, the Pandemic and the Media Journalism in the Age of Covid, Trump, Brexit and Johnson. Bury St Edmunds: Abramis Academic Publishing, 2021.
Mazzoleni, Oscar and Giles Ivaldi. “Right-Wing Populism and the Trade-Off Between Health and the Economy During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison Between Western Europe and the United States.” Populism and Science in Europe. Edited by Hande Eslen-Ziya and Alberta Giorgi. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 255-284.
Mede, Niels G. and Mike S. Schäfer. “Science-Related Populism: Conceptualizing Populist Demands Toward Science.” Public Understanding of Science 29.5 (2020): 473-491.
Merkley, Eric and Peter John Loewen. “The Correlates and Dynamics of COVID-19 Vaccine-Specific Hesitancy.” Vaccine 40.13 (2022): 2020-2027.
Messaris, Paul. Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997.
Mikolič, Vesna. “Comparing Slovenian and Italian Media Discourse in the Cross-Border Area During Covid-19.” Pandemic and Crisis Discourse: Communicating Covid-19 and Public Health Strategy. Edited by Andreas Musolff, et al. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. 375-393.
Mujib, Minaa. “The Conflict Between Public Health and Civil Liberties: The Initial UK Government Policy Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Reinvention: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research 16.1 (2023): 978.
Musolff, Andreas, et al., edited by. Pandemic and Crisis Discourse Communicating Covid-19 and Public Health Strategy. London: Bloomsbury, 2022.
Napolitano, Antonella and Maria Cristina Aiezza. “The Press War in the Post-Truth Era: A Corpus-Assisted CDA of the Discourse of US Political Analysts on Trump’s Figure and Policy.” TEXTUS. Aspects of Political Language in the Age of “Post-Democracy” and Beyond 31 (2018): 91-118.
O’Hair, H. Dan and Mary John O’Hair, edited by. Communicating Science in Times of Crisis: The COVID-19 Pandemic. Hoboke: Wiley Blackwell, 2021.
Oswald, Steve, et al., edited by. The Pandemic of Argumentation. Cham: Springer, 2022.
Peikola, Matti. “Supplicatory Voices: Genre Properties of the 1692 Petitions in the Salem Witch-Trials.” Studia Neophilologica 84.1 (2012): 106-118.
Peng, Ylang. “Politics of COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: Left/Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, and Libertarianism.” Personality and Individual Differences 194 (2022): 111661.
Peters, Micah D.J. “Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy and Resistance for COVID-19 Vaccines.” International Journal of Nursing Studies 131 (2022): 104241.
Raffini, Luca and Clemente Penalva-Verdú. “The Problematic Relationship Between Science, Politics and Public Opinion in Late Modernity: The Case of the Anti-Vax Movement in Spain and Italy.” Populism and Science in Europe. Edited by Hande Eslen-Ziya and Alberta Giorgi. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 141-162.
Rahmani, Kazem, et al. “The Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines in Reducing the Incidence, Hospitalization, and Mortality from COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Frontiers in Public Health 10 (2022): 873596.
Reisigl, Martin and Ruth Wodak. “The Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA).” Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Edited by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer. London: Sage, 2009. 87-121.
Roberts, Kenneth M. “Performing Crisis? Trump, Populism and the GOP in the Age of COVID-19.” Government and Opposition (2022): 1-19.
---. “The United States: Trump, Populism, and the Pandemic.” Populists and the Pandemic: How Populists Around the World Responded to COVID-19. Edited by Nils Ringe and Lucio Rennó. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. 19-28.
Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristóbal and Paul Taggart. “The Populist Radical Right and the Pandemic.” Government and Opposition: An International Journal of Comparative Politics (2022): 1-21.
Scott, Mike. WordSmith Tools 7.0. Oxford: Lexical Analysis Software Ltd and Oxford University Press, 2019.
Solis, Marie. “Anti-Vaxxers Stole ‘My Body, My Choice’ from the Abortion Rights Movement.” Vice 18 June 2019. www.vice.com/en/article/d3neza/why-are-anti-vaxxers-saying-my-body-my-choice-about-vaccines.
Spitale, Giovanni, Nikola Biller-Andorno and Federico Germani. “Concerns Around Opposition to the Green Pass in Italy: Social Listening Analysis by Using a Mixed Methods Approach.” Journal of Medical Internet Research 24.2 (2022): e34385.
Supreme Court of the United States. “Biden v. Missouri.” Supreme Court of the United States 13 January 2022. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21a240_d18e.pdf.
Tan, Sabine and Marissa K. L. E, edited by. Discourses, Modes, Media and Meaning in an Era of Pandemic: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach. New York and London: Routledge, 2023.
The White House. “COVID-19: The Biden-Harris Plan to Beat COVID-19.” The White House 21 January 2021. www.whitehouse.gov/priorities/covid-19.
Treccani. “Stòp.” Vocabolario Treccani 2023. www.treccani.it/vocabolario/stop.
Van Dijk, Teun A. “Ideology and Discourse Analysis.” Journal of Political Ideologies 11.2 (2006): 115-140.
WHO (World Health Organization). “Infodemic.” WHO 22 December 2020. www.who.int/health-topics/infodemic#tab=tab_1.
Wodak, Ruth. “Crisis Communication and Crisis Management During COVID-19.” Global Discourse 11.3 (2021): 329-353.
Wodak Ruth and Michael Meyer, edited by. Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE Publications, 2009.
Woolhandler, Steffie, et al. “Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era.” The Lancet 397.10275 (2021): 705-753.
Zanotti, Lisa and Carlos Meléndez. “Italy: The Diverging Strategies of the Populist Radical Right During the Pandemic.” Populists and the Pandemic: How Populists Around the World Responded to COVID-19. Edited by Nils Ringe and Lucio Rennó. London and New York: Routledge, 2023. 94-104.
Downloads
Pubblicato
Fascicolo
Sezione
Licenza
Copyright (c) 2024 Maria Cristina Aiezza
Questo lavoro è fornito con la licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale 4.0 Internazionale.
Iperstoria è una rivista accademica ad accesso libero.
a. Gli autori detengono il copyright e danno alla rivista il diritto per la prima pubblicazione con il contributo sotto licenza Creative Commons che permette di condividere l’articolo con il riconoscimento della prima pubblicazione su questa rivista.
b. Gli autori possono inoltre stabilire ulteriori direttive contrattuali per la distribuzione non esclusiva della versione del contributo pubblicata sulla rivista (es. ripubblicarlo in archivi istituzionali o in un volume), con uno specifico riconoscimento della prima pubblicazione su questa rivista. Chiediamo pertanto agli autori di contattarci nel caso di eventuali ripubblicazioni.
