How Different News Sources Talked About COVID Vaccines

When the COVID-19 vaccines were first announced, they sparked a lot of debate. Most studies focused on misinformation on social media, but not much was said about how mainstream and alternative news sources talked about the vaccines. To fill this gap, researchers used cognitive network science and natural language processing to look at 5745 Italian news articles shared on Facebook and Twitter. They found that mainstream sources often talked about vaccines with feelings of trust and anticipation, while alternative sources didn't. There were also differences in how they talked about specific vaccines. For instance, alternative news often mentioned the AstraZeneca vaccine with sadness, which wasn't seen in mainstream news. Mainstream news initially linked Pfizer more with side effects than AstraZeneca. However, after the temporary suspension of AstraZeneca in March 2021, both mainstream and alternative news started talking more about its side effects. Pfizer, on the other hand, was increasingly seen as more effective. Words like "thrombosis" started to be linked with fear, and the word "death" lost its hopeful meaning in mainstream news. These findings show how important it is to understand how different news sources talk about vaccines.