Vaccines, media and politics: A corpus-assisted discourse study of press representations of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines

Abstract

This study gives a corpus-assisted discourse study of the representations of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines in three representative newspapers from the US, Hong Kong, and the Chinese mainland: New York Times (NYT), South China Morning Post (SCMP), and China Daily (CD). The primary purpose is to explicate the dynamics between vaccines, media, and politics. Combining the theories and methods of critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, this study has revealed their preferential ways of constructing the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines at different levels of discourse. The safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines thus serve as an important ideological battlefield for newspapers from different origins to advance their respective national or regional interests and shape understanding of different COVID-19 vaccines in the international arena.