Monitoring social values in online media articles on child vaccinations : a case study on European online media news coverage of adolescents' and children's vaccination

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous effect on our societies on many levels: social trust, trust in institutions, satisfaction with democracy and economic hardship for many. An important step out of the predicament were vaccinations, which have become widely available and used within the EU. However, the pandemic is far from over and fall 2022 and winter 2022/2023 are predicted to lead to dramatically increasing case numbers again (WHO 2022). In addition, the next pandemic could to be around the corner with monkeypox dominating recent headlines (ECDC 2022). Despite very high rates of vaccinations in many EU countries, each Member State has a significant proportion of the population, which is either reluctant or opposed to vaccinations. Especially for younger adults and children, there may be stronger value trade-offs and concerns around the need for vaccinations. News media is an important channel for expressing values and value trade-offs, and reporting on newer developments on vaccines, allowing citizens to form their attitudes as non-experts. This study is intended to shed light on the values made salient in news reporting around vaccinations for young adults and children. The purpose is to understand the narratives that are surrounding the debates in EU Member States, providing guidance to understand concerns and potential responses that may vary by country and by vaccine. The data analysed in this report overlaps with the internal report COVID-19 Vaccines in the headlines, and its updated version (Pasztor et al, 2021; Baggio and Pasztor, 2022).