Affiliation:
1. Institute of Communication Studies , Communication University of China , Beijing , China
2. Communication and Study Skills Unit , University of Botswana , Gaborone , Botswana
Abstract
Abstract
This study explored how government institutions used digital platforms to enhance knowledge and share scientific information regarding the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines by drawing samples from official Twitter accounts in five different countries that were front-runners in vaccine manufacturing. Through content analysis, we selected a total of 243 tweets with 4,678 comments from the five Twitter accounts, and data were categorized into two sets for analysis, the first stage being to assign sentiment scores to all the collected comments from tweets to determine their positivity, negativity, and neutrality. Secondly, we analyzed themes derived from comments and established through the themes that geopolitics has exacerbated the anti-intellectualist logic of viewing science as impractical for the control and prevention of the pandemic leading to the domination of irrational thinking towards vaccine efficacy, the origin of COVID-19, and the undermining of the global health governance on COVID-19 control and management.