The vaccine war : A critical discourse analysis of how antivaccinators are being constructed in Dagens Nyheter.

In the last two years of our lives we have been living in a world that revolves around the covid-19-pandemic. During this time we have, and still are, exposed to a large amount of information that circulates both through media but also in real life. This information contains everything from management, scientific research, statistics and people's own experiences about the subject. Everyday we are fed with new pieces of information and the media is the biggest source to collect it from. With an uprising pandemic, there is also a revealed question about vaccines. The question about vaccines and their outcome has been on the table for generations and is still something that the world has very different opinions about. This subject has left whole countries, communities and individuals divided due to their opinions. Medias discursive representation and construction of people or certain groups during crisis is therefore crucial. Our work will be presented and connected to previous research about crises focused on communication methods and where blame often is being placed in situations like this. It will also touch previous scientific research about how groups and sometimes individuals have been constructed and portrayed in media from a pandemic-aspect. In this case it’s about the anti-vaccination movement as a group and antivaxxers as individuals. We will use a theoretical framework based on discourse, framing and social identity to critically review articles from Dagens Nyheter. This study will expose the relations between media and construction of those who haven't been or don't want to get vaccinated for different kinds of reasons. The study examines which discursive strategies are being used to communicate and which actors who are represented and why. Furthermore, the analysis of the selected articles investigates if there are any underlying agendas and if there are aware or unaware ideological perspectives. The study indicates that vaccine- hesitancy or vaccine-resistance are being portrayed as one of the main reasons this pandemic is still an ongoing experience. The discourse shows that unvaccinated people are overall being blamed for continued spread of infection and distribution of disinformation and conspiracy theories. By applying a critical discourse analysis method on our work we have been able to provide empirical evidence which shows how people who haven't gotten vaccinated for different kinds of reasons are being overall constructed in negative terms in the discourse. Often with few chances of defending themselves and their opinions.