COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy : A Mixed Methods Investigation of Matters of Life and Death
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v5i4.170Keywords:
COVID-19, pandemic, vaccine hesitanc, mixed methods, topic modelling, llness narrative, social media, Flashback ForumAbstract
In this article, hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccinations is investigated as a phenomenon touching upon existential questions. We argue that it encompasses ideas of illness and health, and also of dying and fear of suffering. Building on a specific strand within anti-vaccination studies, we conjecture that vaccine hesitancy is, to some extent, reasonable, and that this scepticism should be studied with compassion. Through a mixed methods approach, vaccine hesitancy, as it is being expressed in a Swedish digital open forum, is investigated and understood as, on the one hand, a perceived need of protecting one’s body from techno-scientific experiments, and thus the risk of becoming a victim of medicine itself. On the other hand, the community members express what we call a tacit belief in modern medicine by demonstrating their own “expert” pandemic knowledge. The analysis also shows how the COVID-19 pandemic triggers memories of another pandemic, namely the swine flu in 2009–2010, and what we term a medical crisis that occurred then, due to a vaccine that caused a rare but severe side effect in Sweden and elsewhere.
References
Andersson, Ulrika (2021). Myndighetsförtroende under coronapandemin [Trust in public authorities during the coronavirus pandemic]. SOM-undersökningen om coronaviruset 2021 [The SOM survey about the coronavirus 2021]. Göteborg: SOM-institutet, Göteborgs universitet.
Aasgaard Jansen, Karine (2018). ’Å bli vaksinert, eller ikke å bli vaksinert, er det (det eneste) spørsmålet? Norske holdninger til vaksinasjon og svineinfluensa-pandemien i 2009 til 2010’ [To vaccinate or not to vaccinate, is that (the only) question? Norwegian attitudes to vaccination and the swine flu pandemic 2009–2010]. Tidsskrift for kulturforskning, 17(1), pp. 73–78. https://ojs.novus.no/index.php/TFK/article/view/1538/1522
Bayer, Ronald and James Colgrove (2003). ‘Rights and dangers: Bioterrorism and the ideologies of public health’. In Moreno, Jonathan D. (ed.), In the wake of terror: Medicine and morality in a time of crisis, pp. 51–74. Cambridge: MIT Press. DOI: 10.4324/9781315239927
Bish, Alison et al. (2011). ‘Factors associated with uptake of vaccination against pandemic influenza: A systematic review’. Vaccine, 29, pp. 6472–6484. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.06.107
Björkman, Ingeborg and Margareta A. Sanner (2013). ’The Swedish A(H1N1) vaccination campaign: Why did not all Swedes take the vaccination?’ Health Policy, 109, pp. 63–70. DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2012.09.004
Blei, David M., Andrew Y. Ng and Michael I. Jordan (2003). ‘Latent Dirichlet Allocation’. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 3 (4–5), pp. 993–1022. DOI: 10.1162/jmlr.2003.3.4-5.993
Blume, Stuart (2006). ‘Anti-vaccination movements and their interpretations’. Social Science & Medicine, 62, pp. 628–642.
Blume, Stuart (2017). Immunization: How vaccines became controversial. Chicago: Reaktion Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cascini, Fidelia et al. (2022). ‘Social media and attitude towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature’. eClinicalMedicine, 48, 101454. DOI: 10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101454
Chang, Tammy et al. (2021). ‘Accelerating mixed methods research with natural language processing of big text data’. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 15(3), pp. 398–412. DOI: 10.1177/15586898211021196
Chen, Yingying et al. (2023). ‘What we can do and cannot do with topic modeling: A systematic review’. Communication Methods and Measures. DOI: 10.1080/19312458.2023.2167965
Claeson, Mariam and Stefan Hanson (2021a). ‘COVID-19 and the Swedish enigma’. The Lancet, 397, Comment Section, pp. 259–261.
Claeson, Mariam and Stefan Hanson (2021b). ‘The Swedish COVID-19 strategy revisited’. The Lancet, 397, Correspondence Section, p. 1619.
de St Maurice, Annabelle et al. (2022). ‘Parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in diverse communities: A national survey’. Academic Pediatrics, 22(8), pp. 1399–1406. DOI: 10.1016/j.acap.2022.06.016
Dr??kiewicz, El?bieta (2022). ‘Study conspiracy theories with compassion’. Nature, 603, p. 765.
Durbach, Nadja (2005). Bodily matters: The anti-vaccination movement in England, 1853-1907. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fetters, Michael .D, Leslie A. Curry and John W. Creswell (2013). ‘Achieving integration in mixed methods designs – principles and practices’. Health Serv Res., 48, pp. 2134–2156. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6773.12117
Fetters, Michael D. and José F. Molina-Azorin (2021). ‘Special issue on COVID-19 and novel mixed methods methodological approaches during catastrophic social changes’. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 15(3), pp. 295–303. DOI: 10.1177/15586898211029100
Fiesler, Casey and Nicholas Proferes (2018). ’”Participant” perceptions of Twitter research ethics’. Social Media + Society, 4(1), pp. 1–14. DOI: 10.1177/2056305118763366
Frank, Arthur W. (2005). The renewal of generosity: Illness, medicine, and how to live. Paperback edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Frank, Arthur W. (2013). The wounded storyteller: Body, illness, and ethics. Second Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Frankenthal, Dvora et al. (2022). COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Israeli adults before and after vaccines’ availability: A cross-sectional national survey. Vaccine, 40, pp. 6271–6276. DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.070
Goldenberg, Maya J. (2021). Vaccine hesitancy: Public trust, expertise, and the war on science. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1ghv4s4
Hammarlin, Mia-Marie (2022). ‘“This is home”: Vaccination Hesitancy and the Meaning of Place’. Ethnologia Scandinavica, 52. https://lucris.lub.lu.se/ws/portalfiles/portal/131561070/ES_52_2022_Hammarlin_PUBLISHED_VERSION.pdf
Hannerz, Erik, Veronica Burcar Alm and David Wästerfors (2022). ‘Accomplishing reality media: The effective lure of online crime discussions’. Cultural Sociology. DOI: 10.1177/17499755221113944
Harambam, Jaron (2020). Contemporary conspiracy culture: Truth and knowledge in an era of epistemic instability. New York: Routledge.
Harrison, Robert L., Timothy M. Reilly and John W. Creswell (2020). ‘Methodological rigor in mixed methods: An application in Management Studies’. Journal of Mixed Methods Research, 14(4), pp. 473–495. DOI: 10.1177/1558689819900
Hausman, Bernice L. (2019). Anti/Vax: Reframing the vaccination controversy. Ithaca: ILR Press.
Hutto C. and Eric Gilbert (2014). ‘VADER: A parsimonious rule-based model for sentiment analysis of social media text’. Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, 8(1). DOI: 10.1609/icwsm.v8i1.14550
Ivankova, Nataliya V., John W. Creswell and Sheldon L. Stick (2006). ‘Using mixed-methods sequential explanatory design: From theory to practice’. Field Methods, 18(1), pp. 3–20. DOI: 10.1177/1525822X05282260
Islam, Saiful et al. (2021). ‘COVID-19 vaccine rumors and conspiracy theories: The need for cognitive inoculation against misinformation to improve vaccine adherence’. PLOS ONE, 16(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0251605
Johnson, Neil F. et al. (2020). ‘The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views’. Nature, 582, pp. 230–233. DOI:. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2281-1
Karlsson, Linda C. et al. (2021). ‘Fearing the disease or the vaccine: The case of COVID-19’. Personality and Individual Differences, 172, pp. 1–11. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110590
Kitta, Andrea (2012). Vaccinations and public concern in history: Legend, rumor, and risk perception. New York: Routledge.
Klintman, Mikael (2019). Knowledge resistance: How we avoid insight from others. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Koski, Kaisu and Johan Holst (2017). ‘Exploring vaccine hesitancy through an artist–scientist collaboration: Visualizing vaccine-critical parents’ health beliefs’. Bioethical Inquiry, 14, pp. 411–426. DOI: 10.1007/s11673-017-9798-5
Lagerkvist, Amanda (2022). Existential media: A media theory of the limit situation. New York: Oxford University Press
Larson, Heidi J. (2020). Stuck: How vaccine rumors start – and why they don't go away. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lindvall, Johannes and Björn Rönnerstrand (2022). ‘Challenges for public-service delivery: The case of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy’. Journal of European Public Policy. DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2022.2123024
Lundgren, Britta (2015a). ‘Narrating narcolepsy: Centering a side effect’. Medical Anthropology, 34(2), pp. 150–165. DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2014.962694
Lundgren, Britta (2015b). ‘”Rhyme or reason?” Saying no to mass vaccination: Subjective re-interpretation in the context of the A(H1N1) influenza pandemic in Sweden 2009–2010’. Medical Humanities, 41, pp. 107–112. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2015-010684
Lundgren, Britta (2016). Solidarity at the needle point: The Intersection of compassion and containment during the A(H1N1) pandemic in Sweden 2009. Sociology and Anthropology, 4(12), pp. 1108–1116. DOI: 10.13189/sa.2016.041210
Lundgren, Britta (2017). ‘Health politics, solidarity and social justice: An ethnography of enunciatory communities during and after the H1N1 pandemic in Sweden’. Ethnologia Europaea 47(2), pp. 22–39. DOI: 10.16995/ee.1142
Mezza, Maurizia and Stuart Blume (2021). ‘Turning suffering into side effects: Responses to HPV vaccination in Colombia’. Social Science & Medicine, 282, 114135. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.114135
Nihlén Fahlquist, Jessica (2018). ‘Vaccine hesitancy and trust: Ethical aspects of risk communication’. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 46, pp. 182–188, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28847220/
On, Jeongah (2019). ‘Sentiment analysis of social media on childhood vaccination: Development of an ontology’. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 21. DOI: 10.2196/13456
Partinen, Markku et al. (2012). ‘Increased incidence and clinical picture of childhood narcolepsy following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic vaccination campaign in Finland’. Plos One. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0033723
Sarkanen, Tomi et al. (2017). ‘Incidence of narcolepsy after H1N1 influenza and vaccinations: systematic review and meta-analysis’. Sleep Medicine Reviews. DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2017.06.006
Reisenbichler, Martin and Thomas Reutterer (2019). ‘Topic modeling in marketing: Recent advances and research opportunities’. Journal of Business Economics, 89, pp. 327–356, DOI: 10.1007/s11573-018-0915-7
Rosen, O. Aviana et al. (2022). ‘Is social media a new type of social support? Social media use in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic: A mixed methods study’. In International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19, 3952. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19073952
Rönnerstrand, Björn (2021). Svenskarnas vaccinvilja och oro för vaccinets biverkningar [The Swedes’ willingness to vaccinate and their worries about vaccine side effects]. SOM-undersökningen om coronaviruset 2021 [The SOM survey about the coronavirus 2021]. Göteborg: SOM-institutet, Göteborgs universitet.
Schmidtke, Kelly Ann et al. (2022). ‘Evaluating the relationship between moral values and vaccine hesitancy in Great Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-sectional survey’. Social Science & Medicine, 308, 115218. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115218
Sveningsson Elm, Malin (2009) ’How do various notions of privacy influence decisions in qualitative internet research?’ In: Markham, Annette N. and Nancy K. Baym (eds) Internet Inquiry: Conversations about Method, pp. 69–87. London: Sage.
Uhnoo, Sara and Hans Ekbrand (2017). ’Flashback för kriminologer’ [Flashback for criminologists]. In: Mallén, Agneta (ed.) Kriminologiska metoder och internet [Criminological methods and the internet]. Stockholm: Liber.
Ulver, Sofia and Christofer Laurell (2020). ‘Political ideology in consumer resistance: Analyzing far-right opposition to multicultural marketing’. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 39(4), pp. 477–493. DOI: 10.1177/0743915620947083
Vanderslott, Samantha et al. (2022). ‘Attributing public ignorance in vaccination narratives’. Social Science & Medicine, 307, 115152. DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115152
Vogel, Gretchen (2020). ‘Sweden’s gamble’. Science, 6 Oct 2020, https://www.science.org/content/article/it-s-been-so-so-surreal-critics-sweden-s-lax-pandemic-policies-face-fierce-backlash
Wahlström, Mattias and Anton Törnberg (2021). ’Social media mechanisms for right-wing political violence in the 21st century: Discursive opportunities, group dynamics, and co-ordination’. Terrorism and Political Violence, 33(4), pp. 766–787. DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2019.1586676
Watson, Oliver J. et al. (2022). ‘Global impact of the first year of COVID-19 vaccination: A mathematical modelling study’. Lancet Infectious Diseases. 22, pp. 1293–1302. DOI: 10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00320-6
Wollebæk, Dag et al. (2022). ‘Right-wing ideological constraint and vaccine refusal: The case of the COVID-19 vaccine in Norway’. Scandinavian Political Studies, 45, pp. 253–278. DOI: 10.1111/scps.12224
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Mia-Marie Hammarlin, Dimitrios Kokkinakis, Lars Borin
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
