Examining the impact of newspaper framing of COVID-19 vaccination controversies as the cause of vaccine hesitancy in Enugu State, Nigeria

This study aimed to ascertain the impact of newspaper framing of COVID-19 vaccination controversies as the cause of vaccine hesitancy in Enugu State. It was a mixed design of content analysis and cross-sectional survey methods, anchored on the frameworks of media framing, information processing and vaccine hesitancy theories. Multistage sampling was employed. Purposive sampling was used to select Daily Trust, Punch, The Sun and Vanguard newspapers published within the study period. In the survey, two LGAs were randomly selected from the seventeen LGAs that make up Enugu State. Cochran’s formula was employed to get a representative sample size of 384 of which 305 copies of the questionnaire were returned for the analysis. Data generated were presented quantitatively in tables of frequency and percentage, and qualitatively in thematic representations. Chi-square and logistic regression were employed for the inferential analysis. At p<=0.05, the null hypothesis could not be rejected as there was no relationship between COVID-19 vaccine controversies framing and hesitancy. The study therefore concluded that newspaper framing of COVID-19 vaccination controversies did not influence public hesitancy towards the vaccines in the study area.