(Dis)trust, (un)sefety and Cohesion: Discourses of Vaccinations in Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of vaccination discourses as ways of constructing and transforming social reality. Vaccination is considered, firstly, as a direction of state policy in the social and medical sphere; secondly, as a basis for realizing a legitimizing identity or constructing a resistance identity. Based on M. Castells’ concept of identity and the theory of discourse by E. Laclos and C. Mouffe, two discourses are distinguished that coexist in an antagonistic struggle – "for" (support) and "against" (resistance) to vaccination. The state is the main subject of the formation of the discourse for vaccination, constructing a legitimizing identity. The nodal points of this discourse are analyzed in the sphere of the regulatory law, particularly, in the Roadmap for COVID-19 Vaccines. This discourse is constructed on the nodal points of inclusion (being vaccinated means "being included" and having access to certain benefits), trust (in health care system and the vaccines), safety (both on the individual and national levels). The discourse "against" vaccination, which is the basis for the formation of the resistance identity, is characterized by the absence of the main subject of its construction. The channels of its objectification through which the media act becomes more significant than the status of the discourse constructing subjects. The nodal points of this discourse are analyzed in the context of new media – Ukrainian-language publications of the online media in Ukraine – as a space of the "culture of freedom" that creates the basis for the transition from mass communications to mass self-communications. Such discourse is constructed on interconnected nodal points of distrust and unsafety (the formation of scientific and medical doubts, discrediting the quality of vaccines, direct or indirect articulation of the sign of death). This study has recorded the exceptional significance of distrust as a point of catalyzing other nodal points and signs. The construction of discourses of support and resistance to vaccination occurs according to different algorithms: if, in the field of discourse struggle, the articulation of the point of distrust is sufficient for the dominance of the discourse of resistance, then for the discourse of support for vaccination it is necessary to construct various signs and nodal points to reproduce the positions of its dominance. It is obviously that public policy should provide for the meaningful integration of the nodal points of security and trust, as well as the construction of a new nodal point of rallying, which should be articulated not only in the legal framework, but also in the plurality of discourse fields that form the discourse of support for vaccination (speech officials, communications from the responsible authorities and generally within the vaccination information campaign).