School of Public Health, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
The Health and Risk Communication Lab, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Front Public Health. 2022 Apr 12;10:887579. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.887579. eCollection 2022.
The internet has become a major resource in information transfer during COVID-19, and traditional means of communication are digitized and accessible online to the public at large.
This study seeks to examine how Israel's two main television news channels (Channel 12 and Channel 13) covered the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, compared to how the Ministry of Health ran the campaign.
A qualitative study based on triangulation of online content analyses from three different sources: advertising campaigns, social media posts and reports on television news channels. The research sample included 252 reports from the newsrooms of Channel 13 ( = 151) and Channel N12 ( = 101), Israel's two leading news channels, all broadcast between December 1, 2020 and November 30, 2021. The sample also included posts from Israel Ministry of Health Facebook page and advertising campaigns from the Facebook page of the Israel Government Advertising Agency (LAPAM), which constructs advertising campaigns for the MOH (113 items).
The research findings reveal congruence between the way the MOH framed its vaccination campaign and news coverage of the vaccination issue. The vaccination campaign used three primary framing strategies: (1) positive framing (emphasizing the vaccine's advantages and stressing that the vaccine is safe and effective based on cost-benefit calculations and public health perspectives); (2) fear appeal strategy (conveying persuasive messages that seek to arouse fear through threats of impending danger or harm); (3) attribution of responsibility strategy (blaming the unvaccinated and targeting all those who criticized Israel's generic vaccination policy).
As the watchdog of democracy, the news should function as a professional and objective source that criticizes government systems if necessary and strives to uncover the truth throughout the crisis. Public trust, which is so essential during such a crisis, can be achieved only if the news channels provide reports and meaningful journalistic investigations that challenge the system. By doing so, they can help fight conflicts of interest that divert management of the crisis from the professional health field to the political-economic arena.
互联网已成为 COVID-19 期间信息传递的主要资源，传统的沟通方式已数字化并可供公众在线访问。
本研究旨在探讨以色列两家主要电视频道（第 12 频道和第 13 频道）如何报道 COVID-19 疫苗接种活动，以及卫生部如何开展该活动。
一项基于三个不同来源的在线内容分析的定性研究：广告活动、社交媒体帖子和电视频道新闻报道。研究样本包括来自以色列两家主要新闻频道第 13 频道（=151）和第 12 频道（=101）新闻编辑室的 252 份报告，所有报告均于 2020 年 12 月 1 日至 2021 年 11 月 30 日播出。样本还包括以色列卫生部 Facebook 页面上的帖子和以色列政府广告代理机构（LAPAM）Facebook 页面上的广告活动，该机构为卫生部构建广告活动（113 项）。
研究结果表明，卫生部制定疫苗接种活动框架的方式与新闻报道疫苗接种问题的方式之间存在一致性。疫苗接种活动使用了三种主要的框架策略：（1）积极框架（强调疫苗的优势，并基于成本效益计算和公共卫生观点强调疫苗是安全有效的）；（2）恐惧诉求策略（传达有说服力的信息，试图通过对即将到来的危险或伤害的威胁引起恐惧）；（3）责任归因策略（指责未接种疫苗的人，并针对所有批评以色列通用疫苗接种政策的人）。
作为民主的监督者，新闻应该在必要时充当专业和客观的来源，在整个危机期间努力揭露真相。只有当新闻频道提供有意义的新闻报道和新闻调查来挑战该系统时，才能在这样的危机中建立公众信任。通过这样做，他们可以帮助解决利益冲突，使危机管理从专业卫生领域转移到政治经济领域。
