Who’s a Vaccine Skeptic? Framing Vaccine Hesitancy in Post-Covid News Coverage

Abstract

U.S. print news coverage of Covid vaccine hesitancy represents a departure from previous depictions of vaccine skepticism as a problem of wrong belief. This article reports on a mixed methods study of 334 New York Times texts about Covid nonvaccination and vaccine hesitancy published between December 2020–December 2021. Texts were analyzed for common themes and compared with prior media depictions of vaccine skepticism. Findings show that texts published during phased Covid vaccine distribution framed nonvaccination as a response to structural inequities, while later texts returned to blaming individuals for their hesitancy. These findings attest to the durability of individualistic framings of health while also illustrating possibilities of alternative frames.