Hakemli Makale
11 Öz
Bu makalede Türkiye gazetelerindeki aşı haberleri Tematik İçerik Analizi yöntemi ile analiz edilmiştir. Çalışmada aşı haberleri ve artan aşı karşıtı hareket arasındaki ilişki incelenmiştir. Araştırmada 2015- 2019 yılları arasında sağlık haberciliği perspektifiyle yedi gazetede “aşı” kelimesi taranarak incelenmiştir. İncelenen gazetelerin ideolojik duruşuyla aşı haberlerini işleme biçimlerinin ilişkisi analiz edilmiştir. Sonuç olarak, tüm gazetelerin aşı taraftarı bir yaklaşımla habercilik yaptıkları gözlemlenmiştir. Bu gazetelerin arasında tek farklılaşan gazete dini yaklaşımlı hükümet taraftarı bir gazete olmuştur.
Anahtar Sözcükler: Aşı karşıtlığı, tematik içerik analizi, Türk gazeteleri, sağlık haberciliği, halk sağlığı
Abstract
This article analyzes vaccine reports in Turkish newspapers by using Thematic Content Analysis. The study investigates the relationship between the coverage of vaccine reports and the growing anti-vaccination movement, and ideological lines of the newspapers. Seven newspapers were scanned using the keyword “aşı” (vaccine) for the period 2015 – 2019. The vaccine reports analyzed from a health reporting perspective. In conclusion, all newspapers showed a predominantly pro-vaccination approach, with one minor difference in the religious pro-government daily.
AN ANALYSIS ON THE COVERAGE OF VACCINE IN TURKISH
NEWSPAPERS
Türkiye Gazetelerindeki Aşı Haberlerinin Analizi
Hande Uz Özcan*
L. Doğan Tılıç**
* Ph.D Student Carleton University, School of Journalism and Communication, Canada. handeuzozcan@cmail.carleton.ca Orcid Number: 0000-0002-3852-0306
Doktora Öğrencisi, Carleton Üniversitesi, Gazetecilik ve İletişim Okulu, Kanada, handeuzozcan@cmail. carleton.ca, Orcid Numarası: 0000-0002-3582-0306
** Prof. Dr. Baskent University, Faculty of Communication, Ankara, Turkey. dtilic@baskent.edu.tr Orcid Number: 0000-0003-2981-6938
Prof. Dr., Başkent Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi, Ankara, Türkiye. dtilic@baskent.edu.tr Orcid Numarası: 0000-0003-2981-6938
(Both authors equally contributed to this article
Acknowledgement: Authors are grateful to Paulette Seiler for proofreading their English text. Yazarlar bu makaleye eşit katkıda bulunmuşlardır. Yazarlar ingilizce metnin düzeltmeleri için Paulette
Seiler’e teşekkür eder)
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Keywords: Anti-vaccination, thematic content analysis, Turkish newspapers, health reporting, public health.
Introduction
In the last years, the anti-vaccination movement is thriving all around the world, and Turkey is not an exception. This study investigates the impact of Turkish media coverage of vaccination-related reports on the spreading of anti-vaccination mindsets in Turkish society. It also explores whether there is any relationship between the ideological orientations of the newspapers and their coverage of vaccine-related issues, and to what extent anti-vaxxers were motivated by religion.
On March 3rd 2020, Istanbul Economy Research, which is a market research and big data analytics company, revealed the results of its Turkey Survey. At a time when coronavirus was leading to a global fear and panic, and when Turkish officials were warning about the contagiousness of the virus, the company asked: “Would you get it if a coronavirus vaccine was found?” Despite many comments in the media that anti-vaxxers disappeared, the survey results indicated the strength of anti-vaccine attitudes in Turkey since 44.2 percent of all participants responded “No” to this question. The percentage of those who rejected the vaccine reached its peak at the 25-34 age group (50.9%), and almost every second person responded “No” to the vaccine in the 35-44 (49.1%) and 45-54 age groups (50.6%). In the high-risk age groups, 55-64 (32.7%) and 65 and over (36.6%), along with the 18-24 age group (36.1%), the rejection of the vaccine was decreasing. Istanbul Economy Research tried to explain this with the possible influence of an Islamist journalist who was claiming that the coronavirus vaccine would have an infertility effect (IER, 2020).
The 2018 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey of the Institute of Population Studies of Hacettepe University showed that the proportion of fully immunized children decreased from 74% in 2013 to 67% in 2018 (Hacettepe University Institute of Population Studies, 2019). The General Directorate for Public Health warned that the cases of measles which decreased to 0 in 2016 increased to 2.400 in 2019 (Cumhuriyet, 2020). Sinan Adıyaman, Chairman of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), said that the number of measles cases, which was 69 in 2017, became 510 in 2018 and had increased 5.2 times, reaching 2.666 in the first nine months of 2019 (Diken, 2020). The Chamber of Pharmacists announced in May 2019 that the rejection of vaccination was recorded as 183 in 2011, increasing to 913 in 2013, to 5.091 in 2015, and
13 jumping to over 23.000 in 2017. In the first months of 2019 it surpassed 40.000 (NTV, 2020).
As a result of successful vaccination programs, several diseases such as polio totally disappeared in Turkey (Republic of Turkey Ministry of Health, 2019). Vaccination around the world has eliminated most of the highly fatal diseases during the last century (Rappuoli et al., 2011), and Turkey was not an exception in that trend. Thanks to vaccination, a significant step was made in public health with the decrease of infectious diseases.
An anti-vaccine movement has been present since vaccines were developed. “Some of the anti-vaccine negative arguments have not changed while others have evolved over time and their arguments are very appealing to some parents” (Dube et al., 2015:99).
Turkey’s growing vaccine rejection attitudes are turning into a public health threat for Turkish society. Assuming that “pro” or “anti” vaccination supporters would be closely following the media reports about vaccines, and considering the rapid increase in vaccine rejection in Turkey, this paper discusses the role Turkish media’s vaccine reporting has on the growing anti-vaccine attitudes among citizens of Turkey.
Health Reporting in Turkey: A Brief Review
A comprehensive research study about health reporting in Turkey, conducted in 2010, showed that 60 percent of the research participants follow health reports to some extent on TV, 39 percent in newspapers, and 27 percent on the internet (Yüksel et al., 2010:21). When health reports in media are thought to be useful for them or for their relatives, this percentage increases to 72 percent, and if it is related to a problem concerning themselves or relatives, 60 percent closely follow them (Yüksel et al., 2010: 26). In the case of people who suffer from certain diseases, the media impact transcends the boundaries of educational level and wealth.
It can be assumed that this relationship between health reports and their readers is true also in case of vaccines and vaccination. Since there is a high interest in health reports of the media, one can assume that anti-vaccination ideas are also spread through the media, whether conventional or digital social, and this assumption has been the motivation behind this study.
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There are only a few studies on the coverage of vaccines and vaccination in Turkish newspapers, despite quite a lot of scholarly articles on health reporting. The studies on health reporting in Turkish media show that the lack of specialization in health and science reporting among journalists and insufficient media and health literacy among readers lead to grave public health problems when accompanied with the ownership structure of the media which is overwhelmingly pro-government.
The rating of health reports is quite high and no matter which issue is discussed, often the same persons are cited in the media. This implies that health reports also turn into a PR activity for certain “experts.” The leading problems of Turkish health reporting are; presenting results of unfinished researches as “definite”; talking about “miracles”; intensity of aesthetics, detox and diet news among health reports; giving priority to “alternative medicine”; sponsored health programs in TVs, paying to participate in a program; emphasizing sentimental tragic stories (Öz, 2015).
In line with the neoliberal transformation of global economies and the Turkish economy after 1980, Turkish media ownership structure had a radical shift in ‘90s from “traditional ownership” to “new media ownership”, which meant ownership of the media shifted from traditionally journalist families to holdings acting in many fields of the economy (Tılıç, 2009). Specialization in media was gaining importance in the 90s but this process was cut in the years following 2000 when the priority of the media and owners made their profit in other fields and “friendly relations” with the governments. “Mediatic medical doctors” replaced the specialized health reporters. As commercial interests became primary concern, more and more covered and open advertorial health reports were seen (Öğüt-Yıldırım, 2017).
Even though there is not much research on the coverage of vaccines and vaccination related reports in Turkish newspapers, it may be assumed that they had the same shortages of health reports in general. Teker’s research and article about the coverage of vaccines and vaccination related news in the 3 mainstream newspapers is one of the very few studies in this field. Teker (2019, p. 108), a public health specialist medical doctor, examined the contents of 286 reports in 3 newspapers and found out that 212 (74.1 %) of them had a positive message about vaccination, while 10 (3.5%) had a negative message; 64 news reports (22.4%) did not have any positive or negative message. Teker’s article determined that “although most of the newspaper news continues to have positive messages and to be compatible with positive
15 and scientific information, the news with negative messages and no scientific support continues to be published.” (Teker, 2019:113). That is very much in line with the findings of this study which we conducted with public health and health communication perspectives.
Methodology
The main aim of this research study is to find out if vaccination reports in the media are contributing to the anti-vaccine movement. We tried to answer the questions: How are the vaccine reports represented in selected Turkish newspapers? Does the ideological orientation of the papers play a role in promoting anti-vaccination attitudes?
In order to answer these questions, we selected seven national newspapers of Turkey, which we categorized as “secular/opposition” (Sözcü, Cumhuriyet, BirGün), “religious/pro-government” (Yeni Akit, Yeni Şafak), and “secular/ pro-government” (Hürriyet, Sabah). The secular opposition papers could be divided further as socialist leftist (BirGün), centre-left (Cumhuriyet), and secular nationalist (Sözcü). However, since we prioritized secularity for this group, the difference among the secular opposition papers has been ignored. Hürriyet and Sabah had been leading mainstream papers of the country, which were sold recently to government business groups and adopted a pro-government stance. On the other hand, Yeni Akit and Yeni Şafak have taken a clearly religious (Islamist) line since their foundation, and have adopted a pro-government line since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002.
By using the online search engine of these newspapers, the word “aşı” (vaccine) is scanned for the years between 2015-2019. We started the search from the year 2015, because the most significant increase in the vaccine rejection numbers was seen in that year (NTV, 2019). We chose “aşı” as the most inclusive scanning, so we do not miss any vaccine reports. However, we were aware of the fact that the word “aşı” in Turkish may also have different meanings depending on the ending of the word with the letter “ı”. “Aş” also means food, and there were reports in various pages about different dishes such as “soğuk çorba aşı” (cold soup dish), “nohut aşı” (chickpea meal). “Aşı” also means “budding” in agriculture. The total numbers of reports scanned for “aşı” were 9.593. Since all did not mean vaccination, we had to manually filter out through fast reading those reports with other meanings. After scanning, we finally had 697 only vaccine-related news reports determined for further content analysis.
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We preferred a Thematic Content Analysis (TCA), which is a common method to identify and interpret meanings within a text and to conduct a qualitative and descriptive study.
After having defined the news reports (n=697) to be investigated in detail, we highlighted sections and determined simple codes. We developed three main categories: “Pro-vaccination”, “Neutral”, and “Anti-vaccination”. For each main category, we then used certain sub-codes: “Pro-vaccination”: (cure for infectious diseases/heal non-infectious diseases/national vaccines/ halal vaccines); “Neutral”: (respectful/hesitant); “Anti-vaccination”: (unsafe/ dangerous). (see Table).
In the following step of the analysis, these codes were used to generate common themes that were finally used to describe the newspaper reports.
TCA of the Newspaper Reports
As it is shown in Table no.1, n=697 vaccination related news reports from the seven searched newspapers were first categorized as “Pro-vaccination”, “Neutral,” and “Anti-vaccination”. Then, sub-categories such as “cure for infectious diseases”, “heal non-infectious diseases”, “national vaccines”, “halal vaccines” for the “Pro-Vaccination” category; “respectful” and “hesitant” for the “Neutral” category; and “unsafe” and “dangerous” for the “Anti-vaccination” category were created.
Table 1 Thematic Content Analysis of Seven Newspapers About Vaccination Years Between 2015-2019
17 With a percentage of 92, the overwhelming majority of the newspaper reports, (n=639) fell under the “Pro-Vaccination” category, which in general considered vaccination as necessary and good for human and public health. From those 639 reports, (n= 505) 72% were underlining that vaccines were “the cure for infectious diseases”. These reports were identifying vaccines as essential medication to protect humans from infectious diseases and to prevent their spread in public. In other words, two third of positive pro-vaccination reports were mentioning the importance of vaccines as a solution to infectious diseases that used to cause high mortality rates.
The second sub-category “heal non-infectious diseases” consisted of 88 reports (14%), which mentioned that vaccines could also heal non-infectious diseases such as cancer and migraine.
The third sub-category “the national vaccines” was in line with the country’s left and right-nationalist political tendencies, that were not objecting to vaccines as they are, but objecting to the country’s medicine and vaccine industries’ surrender to the “international/imperialist” conglomerates. Most of the reports in this subcategory were promoting the re-opening and strengthening of the country’s own vaccine producing institution “Refik Saydam Hıfzıssıhha Enstitüsü” which was closed by the government on Nov 2, 2011. Under this sub-category, 32 reports (5%) were found.
Finally, there is an Islamist ideological line, which is pro-vaccine with the condition of having “halal” (adheres to Islamic law as defined in the Koran) ingredients. Only 2 reports were found under the “halal vaccines” sub-category, which were concerned about the absence of halal versions of vaccines, and they were in the religious newspapers.
The second main category of “Neutral” had 7 reports in total (1%), which we sub-categorized as “respectful” and “hesitant”. The “Neutral” category included people/reports, which were confused and undecided if they were for or against vaccination. 5 of those reports were expressing respect to the free will of people rejecting vaccines, while 2 were hesitant towards them.
The third main category consisted of “Anti-vaccination” reports. In total, there were 51 reports (7 %) with negative content about human vaccinations. 38 of those were stating that vaccination was “unsafe” and 13 of them were declaring the vaccines as not only unsafe but also “dangerous”.
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Discussion
While analysing the vaccine reports in the selected 7 national newspapers, we wanted to see if the political orientations of these newspapers made any difference in their reporting of vaccines and vaccination, assuming that “secular/opposition” papers had a more radical pro-vaccination position. Daily BirGün, the socialist-leftist of the “Secular/Opposition” category, had a total of 104 reports about human vaccines. 101 of these reports, which meant 97 %, were pro-vaccine stressing the necessity of vaccination.
The Daily had no “Neutral” reports but had 3 reports categorized in the “unsafe” sub-category of the “Anti-Vaccination” category. Those were reports taken from international news agencies, such the ‘truth about thimerosal’ in vaccines and whether it led to autism or not (BirGün, 2019).
89 (86%) reports of BirGün emphasized that vaccines were a solution for infectious diseases, and 10 (10%) reports stated that they could heal non-infectious illnesses such as migraine. BirGün had no report with nationalistic or religious discourses on immunization, mentioning national or halal vaccines. The centre-left newspaper Cumhuriyet, which could be defined as the strongest advocate of secularism in the country, had 86 vaccine-related reports, and 76 (88%) of them were positive, pro-vaccination. 61 (71%) of those reports were in favour of vaccines, defining them as crucial in preventing infectious diseases. 13 (15%) of the reports mentioned that vaccines could also help to heal non-infectious diseases. Although there were no reports about halal vaccines, 2 reports were referring to the importance of having national vaccines.
Cumhuriyet had no “Neutral” reports but had 10 (12%) reports categorized as “Anti-vaccination”. One of those reports, all of which were under the “unsafe” sub-category, was about 40 students who were hospitalized with some negative reactions in the Turkish province of Antalya after being vaccinated in school (Cumhuriyet, 2018). Another report was talking about Dutch citizens who claimed to develop narcolepsy after getting the H1N1 vaccine and that the state would be paying them millions of Euros compensation (Özkan, 2018). In daily Sözcü, which was defined as a secular-nationalist opposition paper, there were 48 reports about vaccines, and 42 (88%) of them were “Pro-vaccination”. 6 (13%) “Anti-vaccination” reports were seen in Sözcü, and 5 (10%) of those were categorized as “unsafe,” while 1 (2%) was sub-categorized as “dangerous”. As it was the case for BirGün and Cumhuriyet,
19 there were no “Neutral” reports in Sözcü. 36 (75%) of the “Pro-vaccination” reports were underlining the necessity of vaccination to prevent infectious diseases. 2 (4%) reports argued that vaccines could also be a cure for non-infectious diseases. The daily had 1 report about “halal vaccines” and 3 (6%) about “national vaccine”, which stressed the importance of having a national medicine and vaccine industry independent of international companies. Daily Hürriyet, which used to be the leading mainstream daily of the country, had a critical approach towards the Justice and Development Party (AKP) when it came to power in 2002. The group, which owned the paper, was put under pressure by the government due to its tax debts to the state. Gradually it became more and more tolerant towards the government and AKP, and this shift of political line became more obvious after AKP’s victory in the November 1st, 2015 election. Finally, the paper, together with the other media of its owner Aydın Doğan was sold to a pro-AKP business group named Demirören in March 2018. Then it sided totally with the conservative Islamist AKP and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and lost tens of thousands of readers. Yet, the daily kept a secular line (Ayan, 2019; Tılıç, 2009).
On the other hand, secular mainstream daily Sabah was already sold to an Islamist pro-AKP business group back in 2007 and since then has been militantly backing AKP leader President Erdoğan’s policies while preserving its general secularist outlook (Ayan, 2019; Tılıç, 2009).
Thus, we categorized these two mainstream dailies as “secular/pro-government”.
In Hürriyet, we found 243 vaccination-related reports, and 228 (94%) of them, more than in the secular-opposition papers, had pro-vaccination content. 187 (77%) of those pro-vaccination reports were stating that vaccines are essential for immunization, and 31 (13%) of them were underlining that they are also crucial for curing non-infectious diseases. There were 10 (4%) reports that heralded the vaccines produced by Turkey, which we categorized under “national vaccine” sub-category. No “halal vaccine” report was found in Hürriyet.
The number of “Anti-vaccination” reports by Hürriyet were 14 (6%), and 12 (5%) implied that they were “unsafe,” while 2 (1%) defined them as “dangerous”. 1 of those “unsafe” reports was about elderly vaccinated against flu in elderly care houses in France who died of flu despite being vaccinated (Hürriyet, 2017).
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Only 1 “Neutral” report in Hürriyet was simply “respectful” to the decisions of those who did not want to be vaccinated.
Secular/pro-government mainstream daily Sabah, which had only 1 “Neutral” report, had more pro-vaccination reports than the secular opposition papers. From the total of 133 news reports, 126 (95%) were pro-vaccination. 99 (74%) reports had the message that vaccines were reliable and good against infectious diseases. 17 (13%) reports were saying that vaccines were also useful against non-infectious diseases. No “halal vaccine” report was seen in Sabah, but it had 10 (8%) “national vaccine” reports underlining the importance of having national vaccines.
Sabah had 6 (5%) “Anti-vaccination” reports questioning the trustworthiness of the vaccines and talking about negative side effects of some vaccines, for example, the Hepatitis C vaccine, which was listed to have over 10 negative side effects (Sabah, 2015).
We searched the religious, pro-government dailies Yeni Şafak and Yeni Akit, assuming that they would have a more “Anti-vaccination” attitude and a strong stress on “halal” vaccines.
This assumption turned out to be totally wrong in the case of Yeni Şafak, which had 38 reports about vaccination. 35 (92%) of them were “Pro-vaccination”, 3 (8%) were “Neutral”, and there was no “Anti-vaccination” report. As far as the “Anti-vaccination” reports were concerned, Yeni Şafak was the only one without such reports.
16 (42%) “Pro-vaccination” reports of the Daily were stressing that vaccines prevented infectious diseases, while 14 (37%) others stated that they could also be a “cure for non-infectious diseases”. Yeni Şafak had 5 (13%) “national vaccine” reports but no “halal vaccine” report at all.
On the other hand, religious pro-government Yeni Akit was supporting our assumption to an extent, with the highest percentage of “Anti-vaccination” reports. The daily had 45 reports about vaccines in total, and 10 (%22) of them had an “Anti-vaccination” content. All these “Anti-vaccination” reports were defining vaccines as “dangerous,” while 3 of them argued that Western powers were trying to reduce the fertility rates of Muslim societies (Alpay, 2017). One of the “Anti-vaccination” reports was stressing that the vaccines were not halal and could not be used by Muslim believers, while 6 of them were building a relationship between autism and vaccination (Yeni Akit, 2017).
21 However, the majority of the reports of Yeni Akit (n=33/73%) were also
“Pro-vaccination”, while 2 were “neutral”. 16 (36%) “Pro-vaccination” reports were stating that vaccines were preventing infectious diseases. Additionally, 14 (31%) of the news stories mention that vaccines could also cure non-infectious diseases. There were 2 “Pro-Vaccination” (4%) reports favouring “national vaccines”, and one story favouring “halal vaccines” (Yeni Akit, 2019).
It can be concluded, that the overwhelming majority of vaccine reports in the Turkish press were “Pro-vaccination” (92%). The religious pro-government daily Yeni Akit, within the 7 newspapers, had fewer “Pro-vaccination reports” still reaching 73%. In comparison, the socialist left secular daily BirGün and secular pro-government daily Sabah published the most “Pro-vaccination” reports with 97% and respectively 95%. The difference among the percentages of “Pro” and “Anti” vaccination reports in 6 of the 7 newspapers was of no importance, except Yeni Akit.
There was an obvious difference in the total number of vaccine reports among the selected papers: Hürriyet (n=243), Sabah (n=133), BirGün (n=104), Cumhuriyet (n=86), Sözcü (n=48), Yeni Şafak (n=38), Yeni Akit (n=33). Sözcü, Yeni Şafak and Yeni Akit had fewer vaccine reports when compared to the other newspapers, but this may be due to some editorial choice which cannot be linked to the ideological lines of the papers, since Sözcü is in the secular papers category while Yeni Şafak and Yeni Akit are religious.
“Neutral” reports in all of the studied papers could also be ignored because 3 of them had no neutral report at all, and the others had only 1, 2, and 3 percent. We conclude that the ideological line of the studied Turkish papers did not make much difference in their predominantly “Pro-vaccination” coverage. Yeni Akit, which can be defined as more “radical religious” than the religious pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak, partly deviates from this general line with a minimum positive (73 %) and maximum negative (22 %) coverage about vaccination.
Taking the vaccine coverage of the 7 newspapers into consideration, we can comfortably say: Turkish press in general does not disseminate “vaccination” ideas and does not support ““vaccination” attitudes. Anti-vaccination ideas presented in the press, when there are, seem to be very much related to the newspaper’s ideological stand such as being Islamist or nationalist.
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Conclusions
Since the mid-1990s, the number of health reports in the Turkish media has increased enormously. This increase has also resulted in an increase in complaints about reports which included exaggerated cures, contradictions, and patently misleading information. The literature on the practice of reporting about health and diseases in the Turkish media, especially since the mid-1990s, following the emergence of private/commercial media, concluded that health reporting did more harm than good and dealt with more aesthetic, cosmetic, diet and nutrition issues than other problems (Karavuş et al., 1997; Kuru/Tılıç, 2003; Şahinoğlu/Baykara, 2011; Taylan/Ünal, 2017). However, our research on vaccination reports in newspapers showed that Turkish print media has quite a “responsible” attitude in reporting about vaccination.
The content analysis of the Turkish newspaper reports demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of vaccination-related reports (92 %) were “Pro-vaccination”. With this result, it is not possible to build a relationship between Turkish newspaper coverage of vaccination and the growing anti-vaccination movement in the country. One may doubt the quality of vaccination reports in general and the quality of pro-vaccination reports, since most of them were not written by journalists who specialized in health or science reporting. The quality of these vaccine reports can be investigated in future studies. As Catalan-Matamoros and Penafiel-Saiz (2019b) stressed, “speciality matters” and Turkish media needs journalists specializing in health and science reporting. The conclusion of Catalan-Matamoros and Penafiel-Saiz (2019c: 42) that “Public health officials who deal with vaccines should develop a close collaboration with the media to improve public communication on vaccines” is also valid for Turkey.
Our study found no relationship between press reports on vaccination and the increase of anti-vaccination movement. The numbers of “Anti-vaccination” reports were very few (7%), and “neutral” news could be omitted. Most of the newspaper reports were warning that there was a relationship between growing anti-vaccination attitudes and the increasing number of once disappeared diseases such as measles (Çam, 2020).
It was also not possible to build a clear relationship between the ideological lines of the newspapers and their attitude towards vaccination. No matter which political/ideological orientation they had, all Turkish dailies had a “Pro-vaccination” position. However, in the case of daily Yeni Akit, which is defined as a more radical religious paper compared to the other religious daily Yeni Şafak, one could observe a stronger “Anti-vaccination” attitude.
23 As in other Muslim countries (Engku et al., 2017), in Turkey too, there are Islamic researchers and writers challenging the religious anti-vaccination arguments with reference to Islamic legal maxims. “When there is a disease, to get cured is a must in Islam” and “Don’t throw yourself into danger by your own hands, God orders in the Koran” (Soybaş, 2020). The newspapers, which differ from digital social media with their editorial control, seem to care more for the views of authorities and Islamist newspapers have much less anti-vaccination news because they cannot ignore Islamic authorities.
Based on the findings of this research, we can argue that anti-vaccine discourses are threefold. Firstly, reports that include “rumours” that vaccines could cause the risk of autism were in all newspapers. This so-called scientific autism-vaccine relationship, against which also Turkish medical circles are campaigning (Karakaya, 2018), is an argument often used by secular postmodernist anti-vaxxers.
Secondly, there are reports questioning the pharmaceutical industry as a critique of capitalism. Both secular and religious sides have claimed that the capitalist pharmaceutical industry is only aimed at profit oriented constant production of vaccines/medicines while not caring for public health. Conspiracy-style thinking, which has quite a high prevalence among the general Turkish public, is most common in this group. Along with the conspiracy theories, the traces of nationalist, racist, and religious ideologies could also be followed. Those who were “pro-vaccination” with the precondition of the vaccines being “national” may also form an intersection set with this group.
Thirdly, there is a line of religious rejection of vaccines, which was relatively more obvious in daily Yeni Akit reports. When one goes through the vaccination reports in social media, it is more clearly seen that conspiracy-style thinking is also here mostly in the form of presenting vaccines as a plan of the West and capitalist medicine aiming to lead to infertility in Muslim societies. Not to interfere with God’s decisions and vaccines having ingredients forbidden by Islam (haram) such as materials from pigs, were two other common arguments of this group.
It is not possible to say that the Turkish newspapers were major sources of disseminating “anti-vaccination” ideas. We assume that anti-vaccination groups form their own communities (gemeinschaft) with their own communication and interaction networks. As there was a considerable increase in rejection of vaccines because some diseases reemerged after they had been
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eradicated through the use of vaccines, we conclude that opinion leaders such as some medical doctors, religious sheiks, secular investigative journalists have enabled the rise of the anti-vaccination movement. Further research is needed to determine the anti-vaccination communities, their communication The focus of this study was Turkish newspapers’ coverage of vaccine-related issues, but we were aware of the literature demonstrating that digital social media, online information, and communication were a larger platform in the spreading of anti-vaccination sentiments (Davies et al., 2002, Kata 2010, 2012). In the case of Turkey, we agree with the conclusion of Bean (2011: 1874) that “Anti-vaccination websites appeal to persons searching the Internet for vaccine information that reinforces their prediction to avoid vaccination for themselves and their children.” As it is the case in several countries (Catalan-Bean 2011; Sak et al., 2016; Love et al., 2013; Mitra et al., 2016), it can be assumed that in Turkey too, social media served as an “effective hub of distributing anti-vaccination information designed to encourage grassroots resistance” (Smith/ Graham, 2019: 1323). We can say that researches on digital social media are needed to follow the traces of anti-vaccination movement in Turkey.
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