The Effects of Partisan Media in the Face of Global Pandemic: How News Shaped COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

ABSTRACT

Some might expect the promise of ending a global pandemic via vaccination to interrupt conventional partisan media effect processes. We test that possibility by bringing together sentiment-scored COVID vaccine stories (N > 17,000) from cable and mainstream news outlets, N > 180,000 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports, and six original surveys (N = 6,499), in order to investigate (1) whether partisan news outlets covered COVID vaccination in different ways, and (2) if differences in coverage increased vaccine hesitancy. We find that Fox News’ (FXNWS) coverage was significantly more negative than that of other cable and mainstream sources, and is associated with increased negative public vaccine sentiment. In the aggregate, adverse event reports tended to increase following periods of heightened negativity on FXNWS. At the micro-level, self-reported FXNWS exposure is associated with increased vaccine refusal. Collectively, the results provide new insights into the public health consequences of vaccine politicization.

KEYWORDS:

• Media effects
• partisan media
• COVID-19
• health politics
• public opinion

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website at https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2023.2187496.

Notes

1. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlsons-fox-news-show-undermined-vaccines-99-days-it-covered-them-biden.

2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2022/05/17/fox-news-hits-65-consecutive-weeks-at-1-in-prime-time/?sh=67e97e576a64.

3. LIWC’s positive emotion dictionary includes 620 words like love, nice, or sweet. The negative emotion dictionary is based on a corpus of 744 words like hurt, ugly, or nasty. More information can be obtained at https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/31333/LIWC2015_LanguageManual.pdf.

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/11/business/media/vaccines-fox-news-hosts.html.

5. https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/08/22/darcy-fox-news-host-spouts-anti-mask-venom-while-his-staff-wears-masks.cnn.

6. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/is-sean-hannity-a-journalist-or-not-heres-why-it-matters/2018/04/18/ca6b6bc2-431e-11e8–8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html.

7. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matt Motta

Matt Motta is an assistant professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy, & Management at the Boston University School of Public Health. His research aims to identify the social and political determinants of anti-science attitudes, investigate their policy impact, and design communication strategies that promote effective engagement between the public and the scientific community on politically contentious issues.

Dominik Stecula

Dominik Stecula is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University. His research focuses on the news media environment and its effects on society by examining both the supply side and demand side of news consumption.