Vaccine Media Coverage Dominates, But Which Vaccine?

Around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has consumed headlines and taken its toll. However, most recently it’s the vaccines that have become equally important as the disease they are used to inoculate against. We’ve put together a dashboard compiling all the media coverage related to the Covid-19 vaccines to analyze everything from their share of voice, sentiment, and trends. 

Since the beginning of our collection of articles, in October of 2020, the Pfizer vaccine has dominated coverage. That continues to be the case in the past few weeks of January. This could be due to the fact that Pfizer has been in the headlines recently due to issues with delayed deliveries to Canada and shortages across Europe. In addition to the fact that Pfizer is one of the main vaccine purchases to the Unite States.

However, on a more granular look at the trends section, we can see what vaccines have gained in mention during a particular period. Just yesterday, Johnson & Johnson’s share of voice shot up a whopping 221%, placing just second to Covid-19 in article mentions. Unsurprising as the world waits with bated breath for its vaccine to conclude its clinical trial and release the results next week.   

While it may be easy to expect any announcement regarding a vaccine clinical trial result to get massive media coverage given how dominant the pandemic is in the news, that’s not entirely the case. If we look at density of media coverage over time from November 2020 to January 2021, there’s a clear and visible spike in late-November for the Moderna vaccine. Far greater than the spike for Pfizer only a week earlier. These spikes correspond to the dates when each respective company released findings for the effectiveness of their vaccines. 

What contributed to such a difference in coverage for equally positive news? Maybe Moderna’s PR team didn’t rest so much on the belief that any clinical findings release would generate coverage on its own. Whatever the reason, as long as Covid-19 is paralyzing the globe, the vaccines will continue to make headlines to varying degrees.

To keep up to date with all vaccine related coverage make sure to visit our Vaccine Dashboard insights here.

Photo by Hakan Nural on Unsplash