Discursive strategies of Instituto Butantan on Twitter in promoting vaccination against COVID-19

• Grant number: 21/09235-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): November 01, 2021
• Effective date (End): January 31, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Fabiana Cristina Komesu
• Grantee: Augusto Vinicius de Oliveira Dordan
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

From a theoretical-methodological perspective that privileges critical literacy and multiliteracies studies, in relation to French-line Discourse Analysis studies, this research project aims to study discursive strategies on vaccination against COVID-19 in Brazil, presented by the profile of the Instituto Butantan on the social network Twitter. The starting hypothesis is that, in a socio-historical context marked by disinformation about the disease and vaccination, institutions acting on public health seek to play a social role as a digital influencer, through discursive strategies that critically "drive" to false or misleading information. The set of material consists of 659 tweets published by the profile "@butantanoficial" in the period from 01/18/2021 to 7/31/2021, available for public access. The specific objectives are: (i) to study the object types of agreement (facts, truths, values, places of quality, places of quantity); (ii) when mentioning places of quality and quantity, analyze the main sources used and/or institutions cited by the institutional public profile; (iii) characterize the production of verbal and verbal-visual tweets in the layout composition; (iv) evaluate which of these tweets had the highest number of retweets and likes, using hashtags, which permit assessing the audience's engagement with what is propagated by the institution and its visibility in digital media. It seeks, therefore, to contribute to the studies of literacy and discourse, with regard to the recognition of discursive strategies for quality information on vaccination against COVID-19, in a specific way; and in the recognition of quality arguments that can be adopted in the formation of readers of multimodal texts, in a broad way.