News coverage of vaccination in Malaysia: comparing between Malay and English newspaper

• Main Author: Mohd Nasir, Nur Shakira
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English; English; English; English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: P87 Communication. Mass media
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/90426/1/Wapor%20Slide.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/90426/2/Shakira%20Programme%20Book%20WAPOR%20Asia%202020.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/90426/13/ID-43-Nur%20Shakira%20Mohd%20Nasir.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/90426/14/CERT.jpg; http://irep.iium.edu.my/90426/

Media has the power to set a nation’s agenda to bring public attention to public health issues such as the importance of vaccination. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared vaccine hesitancy as one of the global health threats. The return of vaccine-preventable diseases such as polio, mumps, and measles shows the success of the anti-vaccine movements in propagating their ideas and sentiments to reject vaccines. Therefore, effective news coverage that highlights the importance of vaccination is needed to counter the misconception that is widely available on social media. This study attempts to discover whether news media play their role by providing salient information on vaccine-related issues in the daily newspapers. This study explored vaccine coverage in two daily Malaysian Newspapers; Berita Harian and The Star. A quantitative framing analysis was conducted on a total of 146 vaccine-related news collected for nine months from January to September 2019. The news was studied to ascertain the extent of coverage, types of frames, and sources used in reporting vaccine-related issues. The findings revealed some differences in the number of news and the ways the two dailies covered vaccine issues. Despite the distinction, the study found a lack of emphasis on vaccine-related issues given by both newspapers. Vaccine issues are mostly seen as news to be objectively reported downplaying the need for in-depth and comprehensive reporting. Therefore, with current public health realities, both newspapers should play significant roles to promote the importance of vaccination among the public and to demystify myths about vaccines, and thus driving the public discussion on health matters.