Moral Foundations, Ideological Divide, and Public Engagement with U.S. Government Agencies’ COVID-19 Vaccine Communication on Social Media

Abstract

Guided by the moral foundation theory, this study examined how moral framing interacted with local constituents' ideological leaning to affect public engagement outcomes of government agencies' COVID-19 vaccine communication on Facebook. We analyzed a dataset of over 5,000 U.S. government agencies' Facebook posts on COVID-19 vaccines in 2021 (𝑁 = 70, 671), assessed their use of moral language using a newly developed computational method, and examined how political divide manifests itself at the collective level. Findings from both fixed and random effects models suggest that: 1) the use of moral language is positively associated with public engagement outcomes on government agencies' social media accounts; 2) five types of moral foundations have distinct effects on three types of public engagement (affective, cognitive, and retransmission); 3) moral foundations and local politics interact to affect public engagement, in that followers of government agencies in liberal states/counties prefer messages emphasizing the care/harm and fairness/cheating dimensions while those in conservative states/counties prefer the loyalty/betrayal dimension. The study demonstrates how a strategic employment of moral language can contribute to public engagement of government agencies' mass communication campaigns.

Politicization of Science in COVID-19 Vaccine Communication: Comparing US Politicians, Medical Experts, and Government Agencies

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed more than 6 million lives worldwide to date and brought significant changes to people's daily routines, work environments, and social realities (Giuntella et al, 2021). Since its onset in early 2020, the pandemic and the public discussion around its response policies have been characterized by sharp politicization and division along partisan lines (Arendt et al, 2022;Flores et al, 2022;Grossman et al, 2020;Shin et al, 2022;Zhou et al, 2022). It was thus not surprising that when COVID-19 vaccines were developed, the discourse about the vaccines also became highly politicized, which might have fueled vaccine hesitancy despite the growing scientific consensus on their efficacy (Bailard, 2022;Halpern, 2020;Hart et al, 2020).…”

“…Government communication is understudied in political communication literature. However, its effectiveness may directly affect millions of citizens' well-being (Canel & Sanders, 2012;Crozier, 2007;Horsley et al, 2010;Zhou et al, 2022). Since late 2020, government agencies have been tasked with persuading eligible citizens to get vaccinated against COVID-19.…”