Institutional Theory and Discourse Analysis: an empirical investigation of the rhetoric of Anti Vaccination movement

Project Information

DISCOURSEVAX

Grant agreement ID: 842019

DOI

10.3030/842019

Project closed

EC signature date 17 April 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 December 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 174 167,04

EU contribution

€ 174 167,04

Coordinated by

WIRTSCHAFTSUNIVERSITAT WIEN
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DISCOURSEVAX (Institutional Theory and Discourse Analysis: an empirical investigation of the rhetoric of Anti Vaccination movement)

Reporting period: 2020-01-01 to 2021-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Since decades, our society has been facing a worrying increase of public polarization towards divisive and controversial topics, such as the importance of vaccination. In the last decade, the anti-vaccination movement has attracted a heterogeneous set of actors who contest or refuse the vaccination benefits by attacking the legitimacy of established modern institutions, such as scientific community. DISCOURSEVAX project aims at studying the phenomenon of anti-vaccination movement as an exemplary case of how controversial issues might be revealing of a shared anti-establishment sentiment that might undermine institutional trust and maintenance. To do so, the project engages with the rhetorical discourse appeared online on Facebook that covers a decade (2010-2020) and shows how the anti-vaccination movement adherents rely on a set of frames – free choice, anti-capitalism, back to nature, and oppression and conspiracy – that combines a variety of different identities, actor roles, and arguments in ways that simultaneously enact multiple ‘truths’ for broader mobilization.
Understanding the dynamics and the impact of how controversial issues are framed by public is crucial and a necessary building block to reach the European goals and to guarantee institutional well-being.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

DISCOURSEVAX researchers followed several steps. First, the initial stages of the project were focused at retrieving the data. Specifically, the researcher downloaded data from two types of sources: newspapers and social media, specifically the social platform Facebook. The pages have been detected by following a snowball sampling and comprised public pages produced in English and Italian with the aim to cover a large representation of the rhetorical discourse. In addition, to observe how the discourse evolved over time, data were selected data from 2010 to 2020. The third phase of the project was devoted to the qualitative analysis of the data of both visual and verbal texts.

Regarding the theories, DISCOURSEVAX has drawn from institutional theory, framing, and multimodality that allowed the researcher to deal with the complexity of the phenomenon. Such an analytical lens, that integrates framing theory with social semiotics, allowed the researcher to disclose how the practice of vaccination is deeply re-interpreted, negotiated, and revised in light of distinctive frames of reference.

DISCOURSEVAX researchers have found that the rhetorical discourse about vaccination present four dominant frames: free choice, anti-capitalism, back to nature, and oppression and conspiracy. The researcher has found in the de-institutionalization literature the theoretical framework apt to explain how the anti-vaccination movement has been affecting institutions. It is crucial that institutions, as well as policy makers, conduct a monitoring activity of how controversial topics may affect institutional trust and stability. The researcher and her team found that the radicalization of various conspiracy theories about the vaccination were present since the initial stages of data collection (2010) and normalized over time, overtaking the other frames.

DISCOURSEVAX results, including intermediate ones, have been presented at international conferences, seminars, and workshops. Researchers will proceed in the next months to ensure the results of the project are published and accessible.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

DISCOURSEVAX has contributed to the literature on institutional theory that investigates the de-institutionalization processes by providing evidence of how rhetorical discourse of controversial and ideologically charged issues can affect the institutional maintenance. Underpinned by strong theoretical frameworks based on social constructionism and by rigorous data analysis drawing on traditional framing analysis with social semiotic theory of the visual, the researcher and her co-authors showed that de-institutionalization may be triggered by social, political, and technological changes or upheaval. Moreover, research advanced the current state of the art by revealing how the inherent ambiguity of the anti-vaccination discourse, that draws on a variety of established discourses, is a tactic that renders the discourse even more powerful and able to ensure a larger consensus.

DISCOURSEVAX project has contributed to increase the academic awareness on the urgency to study these type of phenomena, specifically regarding the anti-establishment sentiment towards institutions that seem to be escalated in the last decades.

The DISCOURSEVAX project has some policy making implications. First, the research contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of the anti-vaccination movement which is constituted by a heterogeneous and mixed composition of adherents. Considering its diversity, ad hoc solutions may be inefficient while it requires planned interventions from policy makers able to tackle a vast array of concerns coming from the public. These concerns range from the fear of lacking individual freedom with mandate vaccination, the strategic and self-interested agenda of pharmaceutical companies as well as of scientific community, that also include a diffuse sentiment of anti-establishment. Second, it is clear the role of aggregation played by social media (in particular the social media platform Facebook) in which different actors mobilize and intercept multiple discourses, where post-truth culture and fake news find a fertile ground. Third, considering the longitudinal scope of the research project, it is clear how some discourses which were characterized by conspiracy theories, became normalized over time and dominant within the anti-vaccination debate. Taking into considerations all the observations outlined, it is crucial that policy makers and observatories keeps monitoring the role of social media in society, the radicalization of potential risky groups, and how divisive issues – such as anti-vaccination or other similar topics – could potentially aggregate disparate groups which are not easily identifiable, as they often do not share similar political interests, ideological views, or personal agenda.

References of the project