Does Local Context Matter? - Content Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Online Comments in Hungary

Kmetty, Zoltán and Vancsó, Anna and Katona, Eszter Rita and Boros, Krisztián (2025) Does Local Context Matter? - Content Analysis of COVID-19 Vaccine-Related Online Comments in Hungary. JOURNAL OF HEALTH COMMUNICATION, 30. pp. 200-208. ISSN 1081-0730

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Abstract

The COVID-19 situation brought novelties into discourses on anti-vaccination and vaccine hesitancy on social media—both in logic and concerning topics. The complexity of vaccine production and distribution parallel to constant political negotiations on a global level created an opaque and confusing system seedbed for misinformation, which decreased the trust in public management and authorities as the vaccination discussions became embedded in both local and global politics. In this study, we contrast the anti-vaxxers and the vaccine-hesitant people’s attitudes toward the local aspects of vaccination. We compare these groups’ main narratives in two key vaccine-related topics – locality and authority. Based on our analysis, anti-vaxxer comments are nonpolitical or differentiate national politics from global aspects of COVID-19 vaccination. On the contrary, vaccine-hesitant discourses are highly contextual and dependent on the continuous changing of the conditions. The east-west political narrative has severely impacted both non-anti-vaxxer and vaccine-hesitant groups and contributed to increased vaccination hesitancy in Hungary.

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