Anti-vaccine COVID-19 narratives: A critical textual analysis of American and Indonesian online news

Imelsa Dwi Veronika, Agwin Degaf

Abstract


This study utilized Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), grounded in Van Dijk’s framework to investigate how online news articles from American and Indonesian outlets portrayed anti-vaccine views related to COVID-19. Through systematic online searches, the research examined the data through the lenses of macrostructure, superstructure, and microstructure. Eight articles were selected for this study: four from American sources and four from Indonesian sources. The selected articles were published during specific periods: February 2022 to February 2023 for the U.S., and January 2021 to January 2022 for Indonesia. These articles, ranging from 500 to 1500 words, focused on ‘Anti-Vaccine COVID-19’ topics. The findings revealed distinct thematic differences. The macrostructure analysis showed that American articles highlighted distrust in specific vaccines and opposition to mandates, fostering skepticism, while Indonesian articles examined a wider range of cultural, religious, and personal factors influencing vaccine hesitancy, including anti-vaccine sentiments among expatriates and athletes. The superstructure analysis indicated that American reports emphasized controversy, whereas Indonesian reports explored motivations more deeply. Additionally, linguistic choices in the microstructure influenced portrayals, with American articles using dysphemism and active voice to emphasize danger, while Indonesian articles employed strong language to convey diverse perspectives. Despite its emphasis on textual analysis, this study offered significant insights into the sophisticated discussions of anti-vaccine sentiments in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as reflected in American and Indonesian online news.


Keywords


anti-vaccine COVID-19; Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA); online news; textual analysis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abbas, A. H. (2022a). Politicizing COVID-19 vaccines in the press: A critical discourse analysis. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 35(3), 1167–1185. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09857-3

Abbas, A. H. (2022b). Politicizing the pandemic: A schemata analysis of COVID-19 news in two selected newspapers. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 35(3), 883–902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09745-2

Aini, N., & Widodo, P. (2018). Critical discourse analysis of the bombing attack news: An analysis of Teun A. van Dijk’s model. International Conference on Contemporary Social and Political Affairs, 165, 226–230. https://doi.org/10.2991/iccsr-18.2018.49

Al-Jayyousi, G. F., Sherbash, M., Ali, L. A., El-Heneidy, A., Alhussaini, N., Elhassan, M. E., & Nazzal, M. A. (2021). Factors influencing public attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination: A scoping review informed by the socio-ecological model. Vaccines, 9(548). https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines9060548

Al-Qaysi, F. H. A., & Singh, M. K. M. (2022). Critical discourse analysis of COVID-19 vaccine news in the English and Arabic media. e-Bangi: Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 19(7), 11. https://doi.org/10.17576/ebangi.2022.1907.11

Al-Ghamdi, N. A. (2021). Ideological representation of fear and hope in online newspaper reports on COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia. Heliyon, 7(4), e06864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06864

Amoussou, A. (2018). Principles, theories, and approaches to critical discourse analysis. International Journal on Studies on English Language and Literature (IJSELL), 6, 11-18.

Bentley, F., Quehl, K., Wirfs-Brock, J., & Bica, M. (2019). Understanding online news behaviors. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, 3, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300820

Boumans, J., Trilling, D., Vliegenthart, R., & Boomgaarden, H. (2018). The agency makes the (online) news world go round: The impact of news agency content on print and online news. International Journal of Communication, 12, 1768–1789.

Cap, P. (2018). Critical discourse analysis. In C. B. Moss & D. P. Grant (Eds.), Methods in Pragmatics (pp. 425–451). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110424928-017

Damian, J. U., & Tshitangano, T. G. (2023). Mapping the global adoption of mandatory vaccination against COVID-19: A scoping review. Journal of Respiration, 3(3), 153-163; https://doi.org/10.3390/jor3030015

Davies, P., Chapman, S., & Leask, J. (2002). Anti Vaccination activists on the World Wide Web. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 87(1), 22-25. https://doi.org/10.1136/adc.87.1.22

Degaf, A., Wijana, I., & Poedjosoedarmo, S. (2019). Textual analysis on celebrity news in the online media. LiNGUA: Jurnal Ilmu Bahasa dan Sastra, 14(2), 249–260. https://doi.org/10.18860/ling.v14i2.7428

Dezhkameh, A., Layegh, N., & Hadidi, Y. (2021). A critical discourse analysis of COVID-19 in Iranian and American newspapers. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 21(3), 231–244. https://doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2021-2103-13

Elyas, T., Aljabri, A., Mujaddadi, A., Almohammadi, A., Oraif, I., Alrawi, M., AlShurfa, N., & Rasheed, A. (2023). Politicizing COVID-19 lingua in Western and Arab newspapers: A critical discourse analysis. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 36(2), 869–892. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-022-09933-2

Fastyaningsih, A. (2021). Keberhasilan aplikasi Peduli Lindungi terhadap kebijakan percepatan vaksinasi dan akses pelayanan publik di indonesia. Gema Publica, 6(2), 95-109. https://doi.org/10.14710/gp.6.2.2021.95-109

Fauzi, A., Cahyani, R. Y. D., Fauziah, S.W. (2022). Critical discourse analysis Van Dijk of COVID-19 cases on CNN International period 2021. The GIST, 5(1), 4–13.

Fitriani, S. S., Ananda, R., Irawan, A. M., Samad, I. A., & Weda, S. (2021). Representation of 212 rallies in the Jakarta Post articles: A hybridity of CDA and SFL analysis. Studies in English Language and Education, 8(1), 328–345. https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v8i1.16836

Firmansyah, H. D. T., & Degaf, A. (2024). A critical discourse analysis of Jayland Walker’s demise in digital journalism. Englisia: Journal of Language, Education, and Humanities, 11(2), 67-90. https://doi.org/10.22373/ej.v11i2.21792

Hemmler, V. L., Kenney, A. W., Langley, S. D., Callahan, C. M., Gubbins, E. J., & Holder, S. (2020). Beyond a coefficient: an interactive process for achieving inter-rater consistency in qualitative coding. Qualitative Research, 22, 194 - 219.

Holovatenko, M. (2022). Constitutional approaches to state vaccination policy against the COVID-19 pandemic: Problems of legal definition and regulation. Analytical and Comparative Jurisprudence, 5, 50-53.

Husna, S. A., Anshori, D. S., & Nurhadi, J. (2021). Analisis teori wacana Van Dijk terhadap berita “Sekitar 4 Ribu Pemudik Positif Corona, Satgas COVID-19: Masih Berpotensi Meningkat!!” [Van Dijk’s discourse theory analysis of the news “Around 4 Thousand Homecoming Travelers Test Positive for Corona, COVID-19 Task Force: Numbers Could Still Increase!!”] Semantik, 10(2), 197–207. https://doi.org/10.22460/semantik.v10i2.197-208

Jahedi, M., Abdullah, F. S., & Mukundan, J. (2014). An overview of focal approaches of critical discourse analysis. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 2(4), 28-35. https://journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/IJELS/article/view/1299

Kata, A. (2012). Anti-vaccine activists, Web 2.0, and the postmodern paradigm—An overview of tactics and tropes used online by the anti-vaccination movement. Vaccine, 30(25), 3778-3789. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.11.112

Keselman, A., Arnott Smith, C., Wilson, A. J., Leroy, G., & Kaufman, D. R. (2022). Cognitive and cultural factors that affect general vaccination and COVID-19 vaccination attitudes. Vaccines (Basel), 11(94). https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines11010094

Maci, S. (2019). Discourse strategies of fake news in the anti-vax campaign. Languages Cultures Mediation, 6(1), 15–43. https://doi.org/10.7358/LCM-2019-001-MACI

McKinley, C. J., & Lauby, F. (2021). Anti-vaccine beliefs and COVID-19 information seeking on social media: Examining processes influencing COVID-19 beliefs and preventative actions. International Journal of Communication, 15, 4252–4274.

Meyer, M. (2001). Between theory, method, and politics: Positioning of the approaches to CDA. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 95-120).

Mitchelstein, E., & Boczkowski, P. J. (2010). Online news consumption research: An assessment of past work and an agenda for the future. New Media & Society, 12(7), 1085-1102. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810365312

Moon, M. D. (2019). Triangulation: A method to increase validity, reliability, and legitimation in clinical research. Journal of Emergency Nursing, 45, 103–105.

Mullet, D. R. (2018). A general critical discourse analysis framework for educational research. Journal of Advanced Academics, 29(2), 116–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/1932202X18758260

Nazar, M., Rutumalessy, M., & Purba, N. (2021). Critical discourse in online news of Nadim Makarim’s statement in COVID-19 case (Model Teun A. van Dijk). Budapest International Research and Critics Institute-Journal (BIRCI-Journal), 4(3), 5623–5631.

Pratiwi, V. U., Nofrahadi, N., Pendri, A., Komalasari, D., & Sumarlam, S. (2020). News text on Kompas.com media of COVID-19 and the underlying conspiracy theory: A Teun van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis. Budapest International Research and Critics Institute (BIRCI-Journal): Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(4), 3894–3903. https://doi.org/10.33258/birci.v3i4.1455

Qowim, A., & Degaf, A. (2024). Kanjuruhan tragedy in the New York Times: A critical discourse analysis. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 13(3), 468-476. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v13i3.66957

Scannell, D., Desens, L., Guadagno, M., Tra, Y., Acker, E., Sheridan, K., Rosner, M., Mathieu, J., & Fulk, M. (2021). COVID-19 vaccine discourse on Twitter: A content analysis of persuasion techniques, sentiment and mis/disinformation. Journal of Health Communication, 26(7), 443–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2021.1955050

Smith, N., & Graham, T. (2019). Mapping the anti-vaccination movement on Facebook. Information, Communication & Society, 22(9), 1310-1327.

Sun, X. (2020). Anti-vaccine discourse under the COVID-19 context: A corpus-assisted discourse analysis. Journal of Language and Literature, 13, 1–17.

Tongco, M. D. (2007). Purposive sampling as a tool for informant selection. Ethnobotany Research and Applications, 5, 147-158.

Trilling, D., & Schoenbach, K. (2015). Challenging selective exposure: Do online news users choose sites that match their interests and preferences? Digital Journalism, 3(2), 140-157. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2014.899749

Van Dijk, T. A. (1985). News as discourse. Longman.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News analysis: Case studies of international and national news in the press. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Van Dijk, T. A. (1991). Racism and the press. Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Multidisciplinary critical discourse analysis: A plea for diversity. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 95-120).

Van Dijk, T. A. (2006). Politics, ideology, and discourse. In Politics of teaching (pp. 728-740). https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00722-7

Wakefield, A. J., Murch, S. H., Anthony, A., Linnell, J., Casson, D. M., Malik, M., Berelowitz, M., Dhillon, A. P., Thomson, M. A., Harvey, P., Valentine, A., Davies, S. E., & Walker-Smith, J. A. (1998). Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. The Lancet, 351(9103), 637–641. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(97)11096-0

Willig, C. (2000). A discourse-dynamic approach to the study of subjectivity in health psychology. Theory & Psychology, 10(4), 547-570. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354300104006

Wodak, R. (2001). What critical discourse analysis is about: A summary of its history, important concepts, and its developments. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 1-13).

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2001). Methods of critical discourse analysis. SAGE.

Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2008). Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory, and methodology. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd ed., pp. 1-33). SAGE.

Yasin, H., Hidayat, D. N., & Alek, A. (2021). Jokowi’s opinions and attitudes towards COVID-19 in Indonesia: A critical discourse analysis. IJOTL-TL: Indonesian Journal of Language Teaching and Linguistics, 6(2), 164-176. https://doi.org/10.30957/ijotl-tl.v6i2.671

Zulhamsyah, M. N., & Degaf, A. (2022). Micro textual analysis on first presidential speeches in U.S. President’s inaugural address. PARADIGM: Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 5(2), 75–96. https://doi.org/10.18860/prdg.v5i2.17797




DOI: https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v11i3.37380

Article Metrics

Abstract view : 37 times
PDF - 34 times

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Print ISSN: 2355-2794, Online ISSN: 2461-0275

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


View Journal Stats