Vacinação contra a COVID-19 - uma análise da comunicação de saúde das fontes oficiais portuguesas em ambiente digital

Vaccination Against Covid-19 — An Analysis of Portuguese Official Sources’ Digital Health Communication Olga Estrela Magalhães Centro de Investigação em Tecnologias e Serviços de Saúde, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal Clara Almeida Santos Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal Catarina Duff Burnay Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal Rita Araújo Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal Felisbela Lopes Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal Ana Teresa Peixinho Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal Abstract The covid-19 pandemic poses complex challenges to governments and health authorities all around the globe. Institutions have to cope simultaneously with the efforts to control the dissemination of the disease and the need to undertake articulated health communication procedures. This communication process is challenging to manage, due to the considerable uncertainty of the available information, the increase in misinformation stemming from a scattered (and often unmediated) mediascape, and some social groups’ resistance to adhere to the recommended preventive measures. Vaccination emerges as a topic that fuels extreme positions — on the one side, the eagerness for vaccine availability (which encourages illicit attempts to get it); on the other, the obstinate refusal of vaccination (based on theories with no medical-scientific grounds). In this context, we aim to assess how the leading Portuguese governmental and health institutions communicate with their audiences in the digital environment through their official websites and online social networks. In five websites and four online social networks used by the chosen sources, we have collected the content about vaccination published between the announcement of the authorisation of the first vaccine and the beginning of the administration of the second round to health professionals. Then we have applied content analysis methodology to the corpus of this case study. The results have shown that the primary Portuguese official sources give themselves the floor regarding the covid-19 vaccination process, addressing three main themes using an eminently informative frame: vaccine administration, priority groups definition and a general approach to the vaccine. Bearing in mind health communication’s primary goals — engage, empower and influence citizens — we conclude that Portuguese official sources have promoted conservative forms of communication, potentially missing the opportunity to foster a more pedagogical and customised digital communication. Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021, pp. 215-236 https://doi.org/10.21814/rlec.3593 Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 216 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho Keywords covid-19, vaccination, official sources, health communication, strategic communication Vacinação Contra a Covid-19 — Uma Análise da Comunicação de Saúde das Fontes Oficiais Portuguesas em Ambiente Digital Resumo A pandemia por covid-19 tem colocado complexos desafios às instituições governamentais e de saúde em todo o mundo. Para além da dificuldade em controlar a disseminação da infeção, as instituições têm de encetar um processo de comunicação de saúde particularmente difícil de gerir, por causa do elevado grau de incerteza associado à informação de que dispõem, do aumento da desinformação resultante de um ambiente mediático pulverizado (e, muitas vezes, sem mediador) e da resistência de alguns grupos da sociedade em aderir às medidas preventivas recomendadas. A vacinação surge, pois, como um tema que alimenta posições extremas — desde a ânsia pela sua disponibilidade (que potencia tentativas ilícitas de obtenção da vacina) até à sua recusa intransigente (baseada em teorias sem fundamentação médico-científica). Neste enquadramento, pretendemos avaliar a forma como as fontes oficiais — as principais instituições governamentais e de saúde portuguesas — comunicam com os seus públicos em ambiente digital, nomeadamente através dos websites e das redes sociais online. Para isso, foram recolhidos os conteúdos sobre vacinação publicados em cinco sites e quatro páginas nas redes utilizadas pelas fontes analisadas, no período compreendido entre o anúncio da autorização da primeira vacina e o arranque da administração da segunda dose aos profissionais de saúde. O material em estudo foi examinado através de técnicas de análise de conteúdo. Os resultados revelaram que as principais fontes oficiais portuguesas chamam a si o protagonismo em torno da vacinação contra a covid-19, que declinam em três temas fundamentais — administração, definição de grupos prioritários e abordagens genéricas, através de conteúdos com um enquadramento maioritariamente informativo. Atendendo a que a comunicação de saúde tem como objetivos envolver, capacitar e influenciar os indivíduos, concluímos que as fontes oficiais promoveram formas de comunicação conservadoras, perdendo potencialmente a oportunidade de fomentar uma comunicação em ambiente digital mais pedagógica e personalizada. Palavras-chave covid-19, vacinação, fontes oficiais, comunicação de saúde, comunicação estratégica Introduction At the end of 2020, after the world had suffered an annus horribilis due to the covid-19 pandemic, which in December totalled nearly 2,000,000 deaths worldwide (Center for Systems Science and Engineering, 2021), finally hope is reborn. Months after an unprecedented investment in medical-scientific research to find a solution that could stop the spread of SARS-Cov-2, the first vaccine against covid-19 is authorized. In Europe, the European Medicines Agency gave the “green light” on December 21, 2021. That led to the European Commission’s swiftness in authorizing the marketing Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 217 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho and distribution of the vaccines in all 27 member states. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the vaccination process would be concerted, starting between December 27 and 29, 2020, in all 27 countries. For a while, the media and social narrative changed. The vaccine — product of the medical-scientific capacity of the old continent — and European coordination brought hope, a word much repeated in the following days. Also, in Portugal, a country afflicted by the excessive mortality linked to the pandemic and the ageing population (around 115,000 deaths in 2020, a number unheard since 1949; Guedes, 2020), the vaccine received the most media and social attention. The official sources (associated with governmental and health institutions) involved in the complex vaccination campaign, whose imminent process carefully prepared the scenarios and strategically conveyed their messages to journalists eager for information and a society thirsty for good news on health. However, although undeniably relevant, traditional media are not the only communication channel used by institutional sources to communicate with different groups in society. In the current “disintermediated” media panorama (Eldridge et al., 2019; Lévy, 1998), digital communication, namely through websites and online social networks, assumes a strong relevance that should be analyzed. What health communication did official sources promote there? Theoretical Framework Health Communication Health communication is still a recent discipline, which has evolved at different paces in different regions of the globe and has received the most attention in the United States of America. However, even if it is still a “pre-paradigmatic” area (Araújo, 2017), its relevance is unquestionable (Ishikawa & Kiuchi, 2010) and has been reinforced with the advancement of the global pandemic by covid-19 (Fielding, 2020; Finset et al., 2020). Health communication is a crucial strategy for informing the public about health concerns and keeping essential health issues on the public agenda (World Health Organization, 1998). The World Health Organization (WHO) argues that to be effective, this type of communication should be (a) accessible and applicable; (b) credible and reliable; (c) relevant, (d) timely, and (e) understandable by decision-makers (World Health Organization, n.d.). Renata Schiavo (2014) adds a refreshing perspective, explaining that one of the main goals of health communication should be to “engage, empower, and influence” individuals and communities (p. 5). In other words, the ultimate goal of health communication is to promote behavioural maintenance or change that aligns with the promotion of individuals’ health. Within the framework of a pandemic and despite the absolute value of the different levels of health communication involving many different agents (interpersonal, group, Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 218 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho and other), the social level demands more significant effort. It is where the most noticeable results are expected. Kreps (2001) describes this level of communication as focused on creating, disseminating, and using health information communicated through various media to a wide range of professional and lay audiences in society, which influence health education and promotion practices (p. 235). Thus, the focus should be more robust at this level because it can impact a wide range of audiences (Goldberg et al., 2015). Let us think about one of the health crises over the last decade, such as the ebola outbreak in 2014, for example. It is enough to understand how essential health communication at the social level is to inform populations from various countries, condition behaviours and thus make the population an ally in maintaining their health security, promoting the containment of an epidemic through preventive behaviours. It was also within this level of communication that what may have been the most transversal health communication campaign in the world — the campaign against covid-19 — was put into practice. However, for health communication campaigns to be efficient, they must be well designed and rigorously targeted, through the most appropriate channels, and with a frequency that allows the message to be received, assimilated, and remembered (Abroms & Maibach, 2008, p. 221). As far as covid-19 is concerned, we cannot claim there has been a real campaign, despite the efforts made in this sense, particularly on the part of the WHO. Furthermore, the pandemic’s extent and the lack of scientific evidence on the virus’ nature and behaviour led to many assumptions of what should be a health communication being forgotten, lost in the flood of uncertainty. The zika epidemic between 2015 and 2016 had proven a tendency to spread misinformation1 in the absence of confirmed information about the disease (Vraga & Jacobsen, 2020). Given this health crisis scenario, with no solid scientific evidence to guide the political decision safely and clearly, society reacted, relentlessly seeking more information to adjust its behaviour and thus ensure its safety (Paakkari & Okan, 2020). As a result, the news media have become extremely important as indispensable partners in response to this public health emergency and as mediators between governments, health institutions and the public (Mheidly & Fares, 2020). Indeed, the public seeks “accurate information, sound scientific facts, government decisions and general public reactions” (Mheidly & Fares, 2020, p. 411) through the media and, increasingly, social media (Newman, 2020): the increase in news consumption during the covid-19 pandemic illustrates their centrality (Casero-Ripolles, 2020). 1 The Portuguese term “desinformação” covers three types of information disorder: disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information; all these phenomena differ on the axis of falseness and intent to harm (Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017). Disinformation is false information deliberately created to harm. Misinformation is also false information but not intended to harm. Malinformation is based on reality but does not reflect the entirety of history or perspectives and is used to inflict harm on people, organizations, or countries. In the Portuguese version of this article, we use the concept of “desinformação” with the meaning of misinformation. Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 219 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho Vaccination — A Major Challenge for Health Communication The vaccination process against covid-19 launched by the European Union on December 27, 2020, will be remembered as a response to the most significant challenge that humanity has faced in the first years of this century (Jeyanathan et al., 2020). The communication of this campaign was itself an exceptional case that is worth evaluating. Across Europe, in a concerted fashion, official sources, media and society turned their attention to the vaccine. This long-awaited solution was capitalized politically by the European Commission and the governments of the European Union’s member countries. However, the communicative challenge posed by the vaccination campaign goes far beyond the political arena. Communication was a crucial strategy in public health (Rudd & Baur, 2020), and its role in the vaccination campaign was immediately acknowledged as essential. In fact, within health communication, vaccination was a challenge in itself. It was one of the most studied topics due to its association with critical misinformation phenomena, which triggered anti-vaccination movements. One of the causes of this problem was a scientific article published by Andrew Wakefield and other specialists in the renowned scientific journal The Lancet in 1998. The paper linked the MMR vaccine (against measles, epidemic parotitis, and rubella) to autism. Although the article was a case study with a sample of only 12 children, its results had an enormous impact on the community, namely due to the media coverage it received. Thus, between 2003 and 2004, the vaccination rate against measles, epidemic parotitis and rubella in 2-year-old children in the United Kingdom dropped to around 80% (Editorial Board, 2012). Although The Lancet removed the discredited article from its archives in 2010, the anti-vaccination movement kept growing (Arif et al., 2018). As a result, as Renata Schiavo (2020) stresses, the media’s involvement in this process becomes fundamental, considering the role of journalists in ensuring accurate and evidence-based media coverage as very important and “training scientists and government agencies to discuss in plain language the benefits of a future vaccine for the COVID-19 with the media” (p. 74). Today, with the massive proliferation of online information, the risks associated with communication on vaccination are even higher. Data remains in an online environment, indelible, regardless of its quality, with consequences extending to various domains and hard to manage (Suiter & Culloty, 2021). Therefore, “counteracting misinformation on vaccines by health authorities is part of the solution” (Arif et al., 2018, p. 10). Thus, the responsibility that falls on political and health authorities is exceptionally high. Apart from adequately promoting the reception, distribution and administration of the vaccine, they will have to rigorously and cautiously facilitate the communication process about the vaccine; otherwise, instead of ensuring the much-needed adherence to vaccination, they will “increase misconceptions or reduce the intention to vaccinate” (Nyhan et al., 2014, p. e835). Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 220 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho In their favour, official sources rely on the willingness of most citizens to be inoculated. According to a European study published as recently as 2020, 75% of the Portuguese admitted they want to be vaccinated (Neumann-Böhme et al., 2020). Communication about vaccination was therefore starting favourably. Official Sources and Strategic Communication In the media space, sources are the origin of the information we read, see and hear. According to Hall et al. (1978), the authoritative and objective sources represent the prominent social institutions, institutional power with representative status (members of parliament, ministers, trade unions, etc.), and experts. Among the existing sources, the official ones hold a dominant position (Araújo, 2017; Lopes et al., 2015; Ribeiro, 2006; Santos, 1997). Studies in Portugal have revealed an elite of organized sources that define the health news (Araújo, 2017; Lopes et al., 2011), influencing the production of three out of 10 pieces of information on this subject in the national press (Magalhães, 2012). The sources seek to increase their visibility, set the public agenda, gain support or adherence to ideas, prevent or repair damages, neutralize opponents’ interests, and create a positive public image (Pinto, 2000, p. 280). In other words, sources in general, and the authorities that we recognize as official sources, in particular, use their communication potential strategically, intentionally to fulfil a specific mission, crossing areas such as management, marketing, advertising and public relations (Hallahan et al., 2007). Hence, strategic communication corresponds to unifying different communication actions designed to help achieve the strategic goals of a given entity, using the available forms of communication to meet its objectives, its tactics and action plans defining each of these forms (Carrillo, 2014). Translating this to the challenge of implementing a generalized vaccination campaign that starts within a pandemic, we realize that adopting a communication strategy logic is essential for the authorities involved in the vaccination process to achieve their goals. Using media advisory strategies allows them to influence public opinion through traditional media and use “disintermediated” strategies (Eldridge et al., 2019; Lévy, 1998), namely in the digital environment, which facilitate a closer “dialogue” with different groups of society. Methodology This study aimed to understand the communication strategies adopted by official national sources to communicate on the covid-19 vaccination. It is part of a larger project seeking to analyze this topic through the media coverage of the covid-19 vaccination in the Portuguese media (namely in the news services of open signal generalist channels Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 221 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho and the newspapers Público and Jornal de Notícias) and the strategic communication promoted by Portuguese and European official sources. The relevance of digital communication in the current media and information panorama is undeniable (Neuman, 2016; Reyna et al., 2018), so official sources are increasingly focusing on this type of communication by boosting their websites and their pages in the most active and closest to the public online social networks (Statista, 2021). In Portugal, users spend an average of 96 minutes per day browsing, which rises to 135 minutes among the youngest. Facebook still leads the chart, but Instagram is gaining ground, as 67% of Portuguese people, in 2020 used these platforms to consume information (Marktest, 2020). Between 2015 and 2020, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2020 (Newman et al., 2020), television has been challenged by online and social media, and smartphone use has grown steadily. From the standpoint of organizations with an online social media presence, 70% have a corporate page on Facebook, followed by LinkedIn (54%), Youtube (44%) and Twitter (42%). At the same time, Instagram stands out as the platform with the most significant growth potential (NOS, n.d.). Building on these indicators, we analyzed the official websites and the online social networks accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn) of Directorate-General for Health (Direção-Geral da Saúde, DGS), government/prime minister; National Authority of Medicines and Health Products (Autoridade Nacional do Medicamento e Produtos de Saúde I.P., Infarmed); Ministry of Health; National Health Service (Serviço Nacional de Saúde, SNS). The selection of sources focused on identifying the authorities directly involved in the pandemic management and the public health response (Table 1). Official source Website Online social networks —number of followers in January 2021 Directorate-General for Health https://www.dgs.pt/ Facebook: 701,400 Instagram: 22,500 Twitter: 47,000 LinkedIn: 2,600 (without posts) Government/prime minister https://www.portugal.gov.pt/pt/gc22 Facebook: 77,400 Instagram: 22,500 Twitter: 47,000 LinkedIn: 2,600 (without posts) Infarmed https://www.infarmed.pt/ Facebook: 16,500 Instagram: not applicable Twitter: 6,300 LinkedIn: 42,300 Ministry of Health https://covid19.min-saude.pt/ Not applicable National Health Service https://www.sns.gov.pt/ Facebook: 266,300 Instagram: 173,000 Twitter: 30,000 LinkedIn: not applicable Table 1 Portuguese official sources analyzed between December 21, 2020, and January 21, 2021 Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 222 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho For the Ministry of Health, we chose to analyze the website dedicated to covid-19, which included a microsite devoted to vaccination, since this was the Ministry of Health’s privileged platform for communicating with society on this topic. Moreover, the ministry did not have an account on online social networks. The content related to covid-19 vaccination was mapped, selected and analyzed, totalling 134 occurrences on official websites and 297 posts on online social networks from December 21, 2020 — the day the first vaccine was authorized by the European Union — to January 21, 2021. Analysis Grids and Variables To analyze the content, we applied two analysis grids with a standard set of variables, adjusted according to the type of content analyzed (content published on a website or a post published on an online social network). The grids were designed to identify the main characteristics of the content published by official sources, according to the variables presented in Table 2. Websites Online social networks Description Official source Official source Name of the official source providing the information Not applicable Social network Name of the online social network where the content was published Type of content Type of content/multimedia Communication support adopted (the categories of this variable were adjusted to the platforms — websites or social networks) Public Not applicable Society group targeted with the content (assessed from the perspective of the recipient) Framework Framework Tone of the content Topic Topic Areas of intervention and angles of approach on vaccination Protagonist Protagonist Individual who plays a key role in the content Not applicable Hypertextuality Links available for further information Table 2 Variables used in the analysis grids applied in the study and their descriptions The data collected were then coded and categorized in SPSS, allowing for simple frequency analyses and crossing of variables, which contributed to a more extensive and in-depth understanding of the form, content and objectives of the communication strategies of the official sources selected on the topic under study. Outcomes Presence of Official Sources in Online Channels More than half of our sample consisted of content communicated by the SNS through its website and online social networks pages. Looking at the websites, Infarmed Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 223 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho is next on the list of most valuable sources for communicating new information on covid-19 vaccination, with a percentage of 20%, followed by the government (13%), the Ministry of Health’s website dedicated to the pandemic and vaccination (9%) and, finally, the DGS, whose content on this topic was only 8%. The behaviour of sources in online social networks is, however, different. The government holds a more prominent place, as it is the second most frequent source, accounting for 12% (Table 3). Websites Online Social Networks Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage National Health Service 67 50.0 223 75.1 Infarmed 27 20.1 21 7.1 Government 18 13.4 36 12.1 Ministry of Health /Covid-Vac (Ministry of Health’s website on covid and vaccination) 12 9.0 N/A N/A Directorate-General for Health 10 7.5 17 5.7 Total 134 100.0 297 100.0 Table 3 Covid-19 vaccination content published by official national sources on their websites and online social networks Portuguese official sources focused their communication efforts on online social networks on Twitter (Table 4). The Portuguese government most used this platform, posting approximately 70% of its vaccination-related content on Twitter. However, the SNS added a higher number of occurrences on this network (n = 93). It is worth mentioning that the DGS opted for a different platform, favouring the use of Facebook (47%), although with a reduced number of posts in the sum of the four networks analyzed (n = 17). Online social networks Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn Government Frequency 6 5 25 0 Percentage 16.7 13.9 69.40 0 Directorate-General for Health Frequency 8 4 5 0 Percentage 47.1 23.5 29.40 0 Infarmed Frequency 5 0 9 7 Percentage 23.8 0.0 42.90 33.30 National Health Service Frequency 74 56 93 0 Percentage 33.2 25.1 41.70 0 Total Frequency 93 65 132 7 Percentage 31.3 21.9 44.40 2.40 Table 4 Distribution of posts on covid-19 vaccination from official sources per online social network Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 230 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho According to our results, the SNS takes over as the main interlocutor of the Portuguese when it comes to covid-19 vaccination. However, despite the SNS being particularly prolific in the digital environment, doubts remain about this official source’s degree of coordination with the other analyzed authorities. In the future, it is necessary to evaluate the communication on vaccination of these sources from a multimedia perspective. Media relations still strongly influence the communication promoted by official national sources in the digital environment. On social networks, sources communicate through Twitter, possibly to set traditional media’s agenda and influence opinion-makers, as citizens tend to prefer networks with other attributes. The intense focus on the vaccine administration could suggest that the sources have let themselves be swept along by the media’s current affairs flow, centred on it. On the other hand, as we know that sources tend to be the main determinants of the information conveyed by the media, we suggest that the confluence on this topic is a strategic choice with political purposes. The administration of the vaccine represents an unprecedented success of European policies and influences the national policies of each European Union country. Capitalizing on this success means improving the political reputation of official sources and their representatives. In Portugal, this situation was made even more evident by the proximity of the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union, starting a few days after the vaccination began. The focus on vaccine administration went hand in hand with the undervaluation of other topics equally crucial from a health perspective but possibly less appealing from a political perspective, namely vaccine safety and possible distribution problems arising from lack of supply. Portuguese official sources did not actively and significantly promote content on these two essential topics in the digital channels analyzed. However, it was known that safety and side effects were of concern to some citizens and that the supply capacity of the pharmaceutical companies producing the vaccine might fall short. Assuming that these options may have been intentional, they suggest that official sources approach the communication process on vaccination from a political communication perspective and not from a health communication perspective. Considering that health communication aims to “engage, empower and influence individuals and communities” (Schiavo, 2014, p. 5), we conclude that, during the period of analysis, official sources promoted conservative forms of communication, potentially missing the opportunity to foster a more direct, educational, interactive and personalized communication in the digital environment. Translation: Anabela Delgado Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 231 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho Acknowledgements This work is supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under project UIDB/04255/2020 (base funding) and UIDP/04255/2020 (programmatic funding), project UIDB/00736/2020 (base funding)andUIDP/00736/2020 (programmaticfunding), and within the scope of the contract signed under the transitional provision laid down in article 23 of Decree-Law no. 57/2016, of August 29, as amended by Law no. 57/2017, of July 19. References Abroms, L. C., & Maibach, E. W. (2008). The effectiveness of mass communication to change public behavior. Annual Review of Public Health, 29(1), 219–234. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev. publhealth.29.020907.090824 Araújo, R. (2017). Dinâmicas de construção do noticiário de saúde: Uma análise da imprensa generalista portuguesa [Doctoral dissertation, Universidade do Minho]. 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She is a researcher at CINTESIS (Centro de Investigação em Tecnologias e Serviços de Saúde), and she coordinates the Communication Management Unit at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto. Her research interests include health communication, science communication, journalism, and media relations. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7559-4611 Email: [email protected] Address: Alameda Prof. Hernâni Monteiro, 4200-319 Porto, Portugal Clara Almeida Santos is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Information, Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra and a researcher at the Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies. She has a PhD in communication sciences, and she served as vice-rector in charge of Culture, Communication, Heritage and Former Students at the University of Coimbra between 2011 and 2018. She worked as a journalist in the Lisbon News Channel and in SIC, where she worked mainly in SIC Online. She was a teacher at Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra and communication director at Interacesso. She was editor and deputy director of the magazine Rua Larga. She has participated in several European projects related to intercultural dialogue and media. She was a consultant for the Council of Europe within the campaign “Speak Out Against Discrimination”. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9122-387X Email: [email protected] Address: Universidade de Coimbra, Faculdade de Letras, CEIS20 - Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares, Largo da Porta Férrea, 3004-530 Coimbra, Portugal Cataria Duff Burnay has a post-doc in communication sciences from the School of Communication and Arts, University of São Paulo. She is an associate professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences, Portuguese Catholic University, and she is the Master in Communication Sciences coordinator. She is a researcher and board member at Research Centre for Communication and Culture and Centro de Estudos dos Povos e Culturas de Expressão Portuguesa. She coordinates the Portuguese team for the IberoAmerican Observatory of Television Fiction. Her research interests include television and audiovisual studies, production and programming strategies, publics and audiences. Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 235 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7730-1707 Email: [email protected] Address: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Faculdade de Ciências Humanas, CECC - Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura, Palma de Cima. 1649-023 Lisboa Rita Araújo, PhD in communication sciences, is a researcher at Communication and Society Research Centre, University of Minho. Her research interests are health communication and journalism, news sources, and health literacy. She was a visiting scholar at Hunter College, City University School of Public Health, New York, and she was a member of the Portuguese research team of Health Reporting Training Project (2010-3675 HeaRT), financed by European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Program. She was a researcher within the national project Disease in the News (PTDC/CCI-COM/103886/2008), financed by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. She is author and co-author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, and she has presented her research in many national and international conferences. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7124-6057 Email: [email protected] Address: Campus de Gualtar, 4710057 Braga, Portugal Felisbela Lopes is an associate professor with aggregation at the University of Minho, where she has been working since 1994. She was a pro-rector for communication from 2009 to 2014. Her research is focused on television information, health journalism and news sources, and she teaches in the field of journalism. Both her aggregation and PhD work are focused on television information. She is author of several publications in peer-reviewed journals and books, amongst which are Marcelo, Presidente Todos os Dias (Marcelo, Everyday President; Porto Editora, 2019); Jornalista: Uma Profissão Ameaçada (Journalist: A Threatened Profession ; Alêtheia, 2015); Vinte Anos de TV Privada em Portugal (Twenty Years of Private TV in Portugal; Editora Guerra e Paz, 2012); A TV do Real (The Real TV; Minerva, 2008); A TV das Elites (The TV of the Elites; Campo das Letras, 2007) and Telejornal e o Serviço Público (Television News and Public Service; Minerva, 199) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9227-8998 Email: [email protected] Address: Campus de Gualtar, 4710 - 057 Braga, Portugal Ana Teresa Peixinho is an associate professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra. She is a PhD in communication sciences and teaches in the field of journalism and communication. She is an integrated researcher at the Centre of 20th Century Interdisciplinary Studies, where she is co-coordinator with Clara Almeida Santos of the media narratives and media analysis research group. She researches in the field of narrative media studies and media analysis. Revista Lusófona de Estudos Culturais / Lusophone Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2021 236 Vaccination Against Covid-19 . Olga Estrela Magalhães, Clara Almeida Santos, Catarina Duff Burnay, Rita Araújo, Felisbela Lopes & Ana Teresa Peixinho ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4533-7921 Email: [email protected] Address: Universidade de Coimbra, Faculdade de Letras, CEIS20 - Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares, Largo da Porta Férrea, 3004-530 Coimbra, Portugal Submitted: 13/10/2021 | Accepted: 09/11/2021 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.