Effects of Pope Francis’ Religious Authority and Media Coverage on Twitter User’s Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccination

Abstract

This paper is interdisciplinary and combines the research perspective of medical studies with that of media and social communication studies and theological studies. The main goal of this article is to determine [from arguments on all sides of the issue] whether, and to what extent, statements issued by a religious authority can be used as an argument in the COVID-19 vaccination campaign. The authors also want to find answers to the questions of how the pope’s comments affect public opinion when they concern the sphere of secular and everyday life, including issues related to health care. The main method used in this study is desktop research and the analysis of the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on vaccination and on the types and significance of the pope’s statements on various topics. The auxiliary methods are sentiment analysis and network analysis made in the open source software Gephi. The authors are strongly interested in the communication and media aspect of the analyzed situation. Pope Francis’ voice on the COVID-19 vaccination has certainly been noticed and registered worldwide, but the effectiveness of his message and direct impact on Catholics’ decisions to accept or refuse the COVID-19 vaccination is quite questionable and would require further precise research. Comparing this to the regularities known from political marketing, one would think that the pope’s statement would not convince the firm opponents of vaccination.

Spillover of Vaccine Hesitancy into Adult COVID-19 and Influenza: The Role of Race, Religion, and Political Affiliation in the United States

“…In addition, Catholic leaders in the US and Canada have raised concerns about some COVID-19 vaccines made using aborted fetal cells [ 53 ]. Of course, other moral and theological arguments could be made to support vaccination—for example, Pope Francis indicated that vaccination was a moral obligation [ 54 ]. The clergy may hold complex views on vaccination [ 55 ] but could nonetheless be important sources of information and education about vaccines.…”

Social media and attitudes towards a COVID-19 vaccination: A systematic review of the literature

“…85 Gawel and co-workers explored did Pope Francis words have an effect on Catholics' decisions to accept or refuse the COVID-19 vaccination, and although it is estimated that it did reach the public its' effectiveness is quite questionable. 86 The degree of polarization of views / content regarding COVID-19 vaccination on social networks There were 28 studies that examined the degree of polarization of social media content related to COVID-19 vaccines (Table 3). The degree of polarization mainly reflected the rate of positive versus negative views on specific COVID-19 vaccine-related content, expressed as either likes vs. dislikes or supporting vs. disapproving content.…”

Who chooses alternative sources of information about childhood vaccinations? A cross-sectional study

“…Recently, the effects of Pope Francis’ religious authority have been investigated by analyzing Twitter users’ attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination after the Pope addressed the matter by inviting everyone to get an anti-COVID-19 shot in order to stem the virus diffusion ( 41 ). It resulted that, while the Pope’s appeal would not convince those with firm beliefs against vaccinations, the ones in favor of vaccination would be provided with additional arguments in the debate and those who are undecided and looking for information to decide on the area of their faith could be encouraged by their leader’s voice on the topic ( 43 ). It would be interesting to perform further investigations on the topic, assessing whether following religious norms can have as counterpart a spontaneous adherence to social and institutionalized norms too, as opposed to a significant refuse of blind acceptance of rules by non-believers, who hold a more skeptical vision and henceforth tend to explore their options from different sources before complying with a law.…”