Conspiracy Theories about Covid-19 Vaccines on a Slovak Politician’s Facebook Accounts

Abstract

The paper discusses the dissemination of conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccines in the Slovak political discourse. The paper analyses the posts of selected Slovak political actors on Facebook. It aims to determine which political actors most often spread conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 vaccines, what image of vaccines these theories create, and whom they present as enemies. The content analysis method is used to achieve these aims; this method helps obtain quantitative and qualitative information about the research sample. During the research, the CrowdTangle application is used. The application monitors and gathers data about selected politicians’ public communication from Facebook. The research shows that in their Facebook posts, conspiracy theories about vaccines are most often used by politicians we can classify as far-right or far-left. Conspiracy theories negatively portray the vaccines and their manufacturers (except for the Sputnik V vaccine). This may ultimately affect people’s willingness to get vaccinated against Covid-19.