Representing agency and action in the #storiesfromvaccination governmental campaign in Romania. A multimodal approach

Abstract

Vaccination continues to be one of the most debated topics worldwide, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and in countries like Romania, where the COVID-19 vaccination rate is very low. Studies showed that in public pro-vaccination campaigns, despite the tendencies towards using evidence-based content strategies focusing on factual information delivered by experts, emotional content through personal stories also triggers a positive engagement in fostering vaccine confidence. In April 2021, the Romanian Government launched a new Facebook campaign entitled #storiesfromvaccination/ #povestidelavaccinare. Drawing from two concepts (point of view and multimodality) relevant to narrative online health messages, the study has a threefold aim: (1) to investigate the online engagement of the narrative perspectives in the #storiesfromvaccination campaign; (2) to provide a comparative analysis of the multimodal cohesion in the Facebook #storiesfromvaccination multimodal texts posted by various message sources; (3) to identify the various representations of agency and action in the interplay of the three metafunctions (experiential, interpersonal and textual) in the personal stories from vaccination.