Spreading the Antidote – The Framing of COVID- 19 Vaccination Campaigns in the Brazilian Social Media Sphere

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Stieglitz
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences ; Data Management, Data-Intensive Systems, Computer Science Methods in Business Informatics
• Term: from 2021 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468208878

The global COVID-19 pandemic gave rise to a parallel spreading of misinformation in onlinecommunication, also coined as the ‘COVID-19 Infodemic’. In this light, especially social mediahave become preferential outlets for amplifying information of untrusted sources, misinformation, rumors, or conspiracy theories. This complicates social mobilization and awareness campaigns by health organizations, e.g., for sensitizing the public for COVID-19 vaccination. Therefore, interdisciplinary research is needed to better understand how collective action frames succeed (or fail) in social media pandemic response. This joint project combines qualitative frame analyses with social media analytics (SMA) techniques to investigate collective action frames on social media about the COVID-19 vaccination in Brazil. The analysis aims at deriving strategies for health organizations to succeed at social mobilization via social media and at overcoming ‘infodemic’ counter-movements. At the same time, frame analysis methods are to be improved by deploying data collection and processing techniques from the field of SMA.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Australia, Brazil, Norway, United Kingdom
• International Co-Applicant: Professorin Adriana Amaral
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Axel Bruns; Professorin Dr. Deborah Bunker; Professor Dr. Tim Majchrzak; Dr. Björn Ross