Issue Attention and Semantic Overlap in Vaccination Coverage Within Switzerland's Hybrid Media System

Abstract

Despite broad scientific support, vaccination is traditionally a contested issue among the public. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the issue of vaccination received widespread attention in news media and on social media. Although we know that public debates on such disputed issues evolve over time in hybrid media systems, there is still little knowledge about the extent to which news media and social media align or differ in their issue attention dynamics and semantics. Furthermore, empirical studies, particularly on social media data, tend to focus on periods of high issue attention, often missing relevant reference points before or after such phases. Focusing on the issue of vaccination in Switzerland, we examine 77,798 news articles by 20 Swiss online newspapers and 929,431 posts by 22,672 Swiss Twitter (now X) users to investigate the similarities and differences between the two spheres through a time series analysis between April 1, 2019, and June 30, 2022. The findings show how vaccination gained vastly in issue attention - measured as the share of total coverage and tweet volume, respectively - during the Covid-19 pandemic. Twitter and news media were closely aligned during the crisis in terms of issue attention and semantics, but less so before and after the pandemic. These findings substantiate previous works on issue agendas in hybrid media systems that converge toward a dominant issue in times of crisis.