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CONTROVÉRSIAS SOBRE AS VACINAS E A VACINAÇÃO CONTRA COVID-19 NO MEIO JORNALÍSTICO
CONTROVERSIES ABOUT COVID-19 VACCINES AND VACCINATION IN THE JOURNALISTIC MEDIA

Bruna Aparecida Gonçalves
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo (USP)
E-mail: brunaapgonc@gmail.com
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3578-3132

Renata Fortes Itagyba
Departamento de Medicina Preventiva, Faculdade de Medicina, USP
E-mail: renataitagyba@gmail.com
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7446-839X

Camila Carvalho de Souza Amorim Matos
Programa de Pós-Graduação em Saúde Coletiva, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de São Paulo (USP); Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (UFSC)
E-mail: camilacarvalhoamorim@gmail.com
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8395-4875

Marcia Thereza Couto
Departamento de Medicina Preventiva, Faculdade de Medicina, USP
E-mail: marthet@usp.br
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5233-4190

Resumo
No contexto da COVID-19, controvérsias relacionadas às vacinas e à vacinação ganharam proeminência nos veículos de comunicação, atravessadas por debates sobre segurança, eficácia e efeitos colaterais. Este estudo analisou os posicionamentos a favor e contrários às vacinas e à vacinação contra a COVID-19 nos jornais Folha de S.Paulo (FSP) e Brasil Sem Medo (BSM). Trata-se de uma pesquisa qualitativa, realizada por meio da análise documental, partindo da perspectiva teórica-metodológica da Teoria Ator-Rede de Bruno Latour. Sobre as vacinas, o BSM apresentou argumentos questionando o desenvolvimento destas vacinas, preocupação com eventos adversos, ineficácia das vacinas, imunidade natural superior à das vacinas e rumores sobre a composição das vacinas. A FSP argumentou em defesa da segurança e eficácia das vacinas. Sobre a vacinação, o BSM criticou as restrições impostas aos não vacinados e defendeu a liberdade individual. A FSP criticou os discursos do presidente na época, Jair Bolsonaro, sobre a vacinação e defendeu a imunização em massa. O estudo evidencia que os jornais difundem perspectivas polarizadas sobre as vacinas/vacinação contra a COVID-19. A controvérsia sobre as vacinas/vacinação está relacionada à crise da expertise no âmbito da tomada de decisões sanitárias.
Palavras-chave: Vacinas contra COVID-19; Hesitação Vacinal; Desinformação; Meios de Comunicação

Abstract
In the context of COVID-19, controversies about vaccines and vaccination have gained prominence in the media, stirring debates about safety, efficacy and side effects. This study analysed the positioning in favor and against COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination in the Brazilian newspapers Folha de S.Paulo (FSP) and Brasil Sem Medo (BSM). This qualitative research was carried out through documentary analysis of 16 news stories selected from FSP and 12 from BSM, based on the theoretical-methodological perspective of Bruno Latour\'s Actor-Network Theory. Regarding COVID-19 vaccines, BSM presented arguments questioning the development of these vaccines, concerns about adverse side effects, ineffectiveness of vaccines, natural immunity superior to that acquired by vaccines and rumors about the composition of the vaccines. FSP argued in defense of the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. Regarding vaccination, BSM criticized the restrictions imposed on unvaccinated citizens and defended individual freedom. FSP criticized the former president Bolsonaro\'s position on vaccination and defended mass immunization. The study shows that the newspapers disseminate polarized perspectives on COVID-19 vaccines/vaccination. The controversy about vaccines/vaccination is related to the crisis of expertise in health decision-making.
Keywords: COVID-19 Vaccines; Vaccine Hesitancy; Disinformation; Communications Media

Introduction

In Brazil, the COVID-19 pandemic was responsible, up to September 2023, for around 37 million cases and 700,000 deaths, placing the country second in number of deaths and making its confrontation a major challenge in the field of public health 1.
The development of vaccines and the vaccination strategies adopted by governments became one of the main measures to contain the spread of the pandemic. Vaccine clinical trials were adapted to reduce development time given the public health emergency, representing an unprecedented challenge and milestone involving the scientific community, research institutes, pharmaceutical industries, governments and international health organizations 2,3.
The hesitancy to vaccinate was already a concern for international organizations and governments before the pandemic, so the WHO included it in a list of the ten threats to be combated in 2019 4. The COVID-19 pandemic, as a political and social issue 5, caused an infodemic, referred to by the WHO as an exaggerated increase in the volume of information about COVID-19 and the risk of such excess information being transformed into rumors and fake news 6.
Thus, topics related to vaccines and vaccination, which until then had been given little attention in media coverage, began to gain prominence due to the fact that they were accompanied by debates about safety, efficacy and side effects, especially in the case of vaccines against COVID-19 7.
The news media can be considered an important means of disseminating information about vaccines, which can contribute to increased public awareness of well-informed decisions regarding health 8–10 and fact-checking 10. On the other hand, COVID-19 posed new challenges for newspapers, including the difficulty for journalists to understand scientific terms and translate them for readers 11.
Studies on the journalistic approach to COVID-19 vaccines reveal repercussions among readers of anxiety and fear 11,12. In addition to this, the disclosure of adverse vaccine occurrences may also be a factor that influenced vaccine hesitancy 11, such as the discussion about mandatory vaccination and the political and ideological battle involving vaccination 7.
In this scenario, information disorder, a term used to designate the dissemination of information that is either false or intended to cause harm 13, is related to the decrease of citizens\' trust in democratic institutions and consequently to the decline in the credibility of official information in the news and the search for alternative sources of information 14.
The COVID-19 pandemic can be considered a critical moment in which certainties are replaced by unpredictability in the social and political areas 5. In this study, the positions of newspapers on vaccines and COVID-19 vaccination were analyzed through the prism of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of Latour, one of the main authors in the field of Science Technology and Society (STS) 15 and the Critical Sociology of Boltanski and Thevenót 16. These authors belong to the school of French pragmatic sociology, which offers a constructivist analysis of social life, i.e. how groups and social phenomena are formed, act and interact. Both consider the actor and the experience to be central elements of the analysis, especially in situations of disagreement or dissent 17. Latour analyzed the reality of scientific studies by following scientists in action, through a meticulous description of how science is constructed by human and non-human actors 18. For Boltanski and Thevenót, the actors mobilize repertoires of criticism and justification in moments of crisis. The actors\' justification becomes legitimate when they generalize their discourse 16,19. In short, these references were chosen because they emphasize moments of rupture, in which there is a heightening of situations of disagreement between actors.
Controversies are situations in which there is disagreement between the actors, beginning when the actors realize that they can no longer ignore each other and ending when they reach a firm agreement 20. The written media can be considered a locus in which controversies gain visibility, as newspapers seek to emphasize them to make the topic interesting 21,22. In the area of health, controversies can be related to the politicization of health issues in the media. This occurs at three moments: when these issues are covered in the news to emphasize political conflicts; the political context may be embedded in the news and the conflict over the issue is treated in a political dimension. As a result, the public could interpret the issue from a partisan and polarized viewpoint 21. It is known that vaccines/vaccination have been controversial throughout history, especially the relationship between the individual, the group and society, contradicting the reductionist, triumphalist and universalist views on the subject 23. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyze the positions for and against vaccines and COVID-19 vaccination, in the context of the pandemic, in two newspapers: Folha de S.Paulo (FSP) and Brasil Sem Medo (BSM).

Methodology
This is a qualitative study, which uses the technique of documentary analysis of news data from FSP and BSM available on the newspapers\' websites, from April 27, 2021, when the COVID-19 CPI (Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry) was set up, until October 26, 2021, when the final report was voted upon. The time frame represents an important political and social moment for investigating the actions and omissions of the Federal Government in dealing with the pandemic, including those related to the vaccines and vaccination of the population 24.
Documentary analysis makes it possible to explore the positions and transformations of actors, groups, knowledge, concepts and practices 25. The form and content of the documents are important characteristics in the analysis, considering the modes of inscription in the materials, the performative dimension and the effects of the documents 26. Documents can be considered mediators, as they “transform, translate, distort and modify the meaning or the elements they supposedly convey” 15.
These newspapers were chosen as documentary sources because the FSP is considered one of the newspapers with the widest circulation in Brazil and the BSM, which describes itself on its website as the leading conservative newspaper in the country, makes it possible to observe opposing positions in the public debate. The FSP, founded in 1921, belongs to one of the largest media conglomerates in the country, Grupo Folha 27. During the military dictatorship, its editorials were subjected to internal and external control and restrictions 28. During the Bolsonaro government, the FSP proved to be one of the outlets denouncing and opposing the government\'s management of COVID-19 29. The BSM was created in 2019 by editor-in-chief Paulo Briguet, who in his social networks identifies himself as a conservative in the political spectrum. The newspaper is a new version of Mídia sem Máscara, founded by Olavo de Carvalho, known for his ideological influence on the Bolsonaro family and extreme right-wing sectors 30. The BSM describes itself as conservative, opposed to “leftism”, anti-system and with an aversion to the traditional Brazilian media 30.
The documentary corpus of news was subjected first to a preliminary and then to a critical analysis 25, based on the theoretical perspective of the ANT (actor-network theory), in which the actors must be followed in order to understand their definitions and the associations they make 15,18.
The preliminary analysis considered the pandemic context in which the material was produced, identification of the authors, authenticity of the text, identification of key concepts and understanding of the semantics of the text, through the following stages: 1. Search and selection of news. The search field on the FSP website used the keywords “vaccine hesitancy”, “antivaccine” combined with “COVID-19”. The result was 115 news items. The BSM was searched using the same descriptors, but no results were obtained. Therefore, the search on BSM was adapted with the words “vaccines” and “COVID-19”, “antivaccine”, “vaccine refusal”, totaling 12 news items. The news was selected by reading the titles, identifying the central theme as long as it was related to vaccine hesitancy and the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2. Preliminary reading of the selected news items and systematization of information (title, date of publication, section, authorship, identification of the actors mentioned in the text, arguments used) in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. At this stage, 99 news items from the FSP were excluded because they did not deal with the topic, and texts from the \'Opinion\', \'Columns and blogs\' and \'Editorial\' sections were chosen, as they contained opinion pieces which expressed their position on a given topic 31, making a total of 16. From the BSM newspaper, 12 news items were selected for the corpus of analysis. The BSM is not divided into sections. 3. Identification of social actors and their positions on vaccines and vaccination against COVID-19.
At the critical analysis stage, the ANT 15,18 theoretical-methodological referential was used. These assumptions include analyzing the controversy while it is still a grey box, i.e. a consensus has not been reached (black box); the transformations that a statement undergoes according to the actors; following the various sides of the controversy; in an accusation of irrationality, observing the directions taken by the network; examining how the inscriptions are combined, interconnected and their return 18. Based on an in-depth reading of the material, with emphasis on the analysis of the actors\' arguments and the resources used to legitimize them, it was sought to establish the categories of arguments that stood out most in the controversies identified. Finally, the findings were discussed using the literature on the subject and the perspective of ANT.

Results
The list of news items selected from the FSP and BSM is available in Tables 1 and 2 respectively. Regarding the recurring spokespersons in the news, the BSM gave space to political representatives (41.6%), health institutions (41.6%), researchers (33.3%) and health professionals (25%). The FSP featured speeches by researchers / university professors (43.75%), journalists (50%), newspaper editorials (12.5%), health professionals (12.5%), universities (8.3%) and university students (8.3%).
In the following analysis, the newspapers\' statements were examined from two points of view: vaccines against COVID-19 as immunizers and vaccination against COVID-19 as a health measure aimed at the population.

Vaccines against COVID-19: questions and defenses regarding immunizers
In relation to COVID-19 vaccines as immunobiological, the categories of arguments found in the BSM were questions about the development of vaccines (66.6%), concern about adverse reactions (33.3%), natural immunity considered superior to that provided by vaccines (25%), vaccines considered “gene therapy” (16.6%) and the ineffectiveness of vaccines (16.6%). The FSP mentioned the effectiveness and safety of the vaccine in 37.5% of its news items.
The BSM commentators seek to cast doubt on the safety of the vaccine, as in this article: “Some experts even state that certain Covid-19 vaccines are not vaccines at all, but genetic therapy not yet tested on animals [...]. Nanotechnology specialist Giovanna Lara points to the risks of more dangerous adverse reactions in the long term” 32. The alarmist tone creates a sense of fear in the reader when stating the possibility of “more dangerous adverse reactions in the long term”.
Another point made by the BSM newspaper, in several articles, is the justification that natural immunity is superior to that of the vaccine. In defense of this idea, the newspaper cites a study, without referring to the research institution or scientific publication in question: “An Israeli study published in August 2021 compares natural immunization from Covid-19 with immunization from the vaccine and states that naïve vaccinees (who have not had contact with the disease) have a 13.06 times greater risk of being infected with the Delta variant compared to those who have already had the disease. In other words: having had the disease is the best vaccine there is” 33.
In the article “Viruses, variants and vaccines: what the academics say”, the BSM questions the effectiveness of Coronavac, in the words of scientist Fernando Kreutz: “We submitted an article to ‘Nature’ magazine about the sample we have [...]. Only 55% of the total reach the expected level of immune response on receiving Coronavac. What happens? [...] We have patients who simply don\'t generate antibodies” 34.
Adverse events related to vaccines, particularly the Pfizer vaccine, are also prominently reported in the BSM. The article “CDC recommends vaccine to pregnant women even after registering 1,464 miscarriages after vaccination” suggests an association between this vaccine and the rate of miscarriages among vaccinated pregnant women, citing data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 35. In support of its argument, the article resorts to the opinion of an expert: “According to pathologist Ryan Cole [...] it is the manufacturers who need to prove that their vaccines have not caused the deaths, adverse events and miscarriages reported in the CDC system” 35.
In contrast to the arguments put forward by the BSM, the FSP sought to affirm the safety and efficacy of the vaccines, and the statements in its publications emphatically criticize the actors who attack the COVID-19 vaccines.
In response to President Jair Bolsonaro\'s statements on vaccines, FSP columnist Bruno Boghossian argues that the vaccines are safe since they are registered with a regulatory body: “[...] the president said that restrictions cannot be adopted because ‘the vaccines, for the most part, are still of an emergency nature’. That is a lie. The Pfizer and AstraZeneca immunizers are definitively registered with Anvisa and account for 66% of the doses administered in Brazil” 36. The columnist also refers to a scientific study stating that the vaccine is effective in reducing transmission of the virus: “That\'s not quite true: a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that immunization can reduce transmission by around 50%” 36.

Views on vaccination as a health measure
On vaccination, the BSM ran articles criticizing sanctions for the unvaccinated (58.3%) and defending individual freedom (41.6%). The FSP criticized Bolsonaro\'s actions and statements on vaccination (81.25%), criticized groups opposed to vaccines (62.5%) and defended mass vaccination (50%).
The BSM newspaper used expressions such as “health passport”, “eugenic passport” and “health apartheid” to criticize the measures to check vaccination certificates in public or private places with restricted access in order to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. BSM gives voice to jurist and writer Vitor Honesko in the article “Health passport: an affront to the law and science” to lend substance to the criticism of Bill 1.674/2021, which refers to the National Certificate of Immunization and Health Security (CSS): “Among all the abuses committed by the ruling elites since the beginning of the pandemic, the greatest and most serious is certainly the creation of the health passport. Vaccine apartheid openly defies natural law, the Constitution, human rights and scientific logic itself” 33.
The argument of individual freedom is used in the text “Israel promises to lock up the non-vaccinated in their homes; “science is clear””. The newspaper criticizes the position of Israel\'s Prime Minister, Naftali Bennet, in imposing restrictions on those who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The article states that these measures conflict with individual freedom and criticizes the “authority of science”: “The country built by the historic victims of the Holocaust had no qualms about proposing controversial discrimination in a harsh attack on individual freedom, invoking the authority of science” 37.
Regarding the perception of vaccination as a health measure, the FSP columnists used arguments in defense of vaccination and the Brazilian immunization program.
Scientific writer Átila Iamarino stresses the importance of vaccination in reducing the number of deaths from COVID-19: “We recently surpassed 100 million Brazilians fully immunized against Covid-19. [...] we will soon reach the 50% immunization mark. The result, measured on a daily basis, shows that the number of deaths continues to fall." 38
Following the same line of reasoning, the infectologist, researcher and professor at USP\'s School of Medicine, Esper Kallás, reiterates the notion of the “culture of immunization” in Brazil: “The construction of efficient and responsible vaccination policies by the National Immunization Program (PNI) has achieved the important task of protecting its citizens against multiple infectious diseases. [...] Brazilians have also contributed enormously in the elaboration of plans and actions for the eradication of smallpox by vaccine, achievements formally recognized by the WHO” 39.
At the same time, columnist Hélio Schwartsman criticizes vaccine hesitancy as human stupidity: ““Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. But when it comes to the universe, I\'m still not absolutely sure”. Albert Einstein\'s phrase captures the essence of so-called vaccine hesitancy” 40.
The FSP columnists frequently endorse their criticism of the Bolsonaro government and its relationship with vaccination. Regarding the political influence on the decision to get vaccinated, science writer Átila Iamarino says that the provisional measure (MP) on “freedom of expression” on social media issued by Bolsonaro would have consequences for people\'s perception of vaccines: “The “MP on freedom of expression” prevents social networks from blocking or limiting the extent of lies and misinformation. To understand the consequences of these lies in times of pandemic, just look at the Covid-19 situation in the United States” 41.
In an Editorial, the FSP labels President Bolsonaro a denier for his statements on vaccines: “The denier Jair Bolsonaro, who has been sabotaging the efforts of the authorities in the front line of the fight against the coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, has never rested in his macabre offensive to undermine the population\'s confidence in immunizations and health measures” 42.
In addition, the same Editorial commemorates the progress of vaccination against COVID-19: “With more than 100 million inhabitants fully immunized against Covid-19, Brazil reached on Wednesday (13) a mark that seemed unattainable at the beginning of the year and deserves to be celebrated” 42. As a criticism of the delay in obtaining access to vaccines, the FSP states: “The first doses of Coronavac were administered in the country in January. It took months to regularize the delivery of the vaccines contracted by the Ministry of Health\'s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation with AstraZeneca. Only later were Brazilians able to access vaccines from Pfizer and Janssen. The government wasted precious time, which would have cost even more lives were it not for the structure and recognized experience of the SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde – the Brazilian Public Health System) in immunization campaigns” 42.
In opposition to the idea of individual freedom defended by anti-vaccine groups and the BSM newspaper, journalist Michael Kepp, an American living in Brazil, recounts a personal experience of an e-mail discussion with a friend who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and had voted for Donald Trump 37. From Kepp\'s perspective: “I tried to explain to him that we are dealing here with a moral issue, rather than a freedom issue, as many in the anti-vaccine movement argue. [...] I, who refuse to follow \'Gérson\'s law\', argued that no one has the freedom to refuse to be vaccinated thereby putting the lives of others at risk” 43.

Discussion
Analysis of the news items shows that there are opposing viewpoints between the FSP and the BSM on vaccines/vaccination against COVID-19, resulting in a series of controversies. This concept permeates the ANT, in which society is understood by the heterogeneity and complexity of the elements, human and non-human actors that make up the network 15. Considering the definition of actor-network as a “moving target of a wide range of entities that swarm towards it” 15, the FSP and BSM mobilize their spokespeople, forming actor-networks. The FSP features the discourses of researchers and journalists for the most part, and BSM builds its network with the statements of politicians, health institutions and researchers.
At the FSP, the shift in the positioning of its network of spokespeople moves with greater emphasis towards criticizing groups opposed to vaccines, the statements made by Bolsonaro and his government\'s measures regarding vaccination. BSM\'s position shifts from attacking not only the effectiveness and safety of vaccines but also vaccination policies and sanctions against the unvaccinated. Both defend their positions on vaccination through the generalization of their discourses, resorting to the field of science. This process of generalization turns criticism and justification into legitimate operations 19.
In order to give support and legitimacy to its justification for defending vaccines, the FSP uses the argument “vaccines save lives” jointly with the actions of the SUS and the PNI, based on the notion of a “culture of immunization”, i.e. the Brazilian population\'s adherence to immunization programs 44. The FSP also expresses its criticism of the Bolsonaro government and the then president\'s statements against vaccines. To challenge them, it carries out fact-checking to determine whether a statement made by him or other actors against vaccines is false.
The BSM, on the other hand, uses arguments referring to the world of science and politics to back up its criticism of COVID-19 vaccines. For example, the BSM states that “some experts” have claimed that the vaccines constitute “gene therapy not yet tested on animals” 32. In this way, the actor seeks to use sources of experts who rely on their credentials to question established scientific consensus in areas in which they have no expertise, in order to question this consensus and oppose authorities who are recognized as producers of knowledge 45. The BSM discourses refer to the idea that subjective truth, based on emotion or personal belief, is more important than objective facts 46. These elements to which BSM resorts can boost negationism in the public debate.
Both the newspapers under analysis use the same individualized modus operandi of attributing blame for the consequences of (non)vaccination and generating fear, something that has already been observed in the media coverage of other epidemics 47. This occurs especially in the discourse that associates “non-vaccination” with “negligence” or “stupidity”, as found in the FSP.
The debate on vaccines/vaccination against COVID-19 can thus be considered a public problem of collective relevance, since the actors for and against vaccines form communities linked by common concerns about the issue 48. The controversy develops from the formation of opposing groups that create a web of analysis of the relations in dispute 16. The groups associate, debate, criticize and seek allies to give voice to their positions, delimiting their problem of public scope 19,48, such as the FSP and BSM. Like most health issues that emerge in the public sphere, the pandemic constituted a scenario of discursive competition between opposing sides 21. This is because the discursive disputes surrounding the pandemic scenario transcend the issue of health and sanitary measures: they represent disputes between world views regarding human relations, politics, organization of society and the economy 5.
Another aspect to consider is that newspapers are part of the “world of opinion”, in which people have the possibility of “attributing order among human beings and achieving a just agreement taking into account only the opinions of others” 16, and their relationship of greatness is the identification of the public with their interlocutor. In this way, we can see that the FSP and BSM are trying to reach readers whose political and social perceptions are similar to their own. By using the discourse of specialists, which is distinguished by the visibility of its persuasive and informative nature, the newspapers position themselves as opinion formers 16.
Considering that society is not predetermined, but can be traced through its modification by network actors 15 and that these actors have the reflexivity and critical capacity to analyze the situation in which they live 16, the FSP constructs its ideal of society based on solidarity by promoting discourses that value the reliable press and science, and the need for vaccines for all 5. The marks left by the BSM, on the other hand, lead to the conflict between individual freedom and the regulations implemented by health institutions and the state in relation to the vaccine/vaccination binomial 5,30. What is at stake here is not the liberal defense of individual rights, related to the recognition of otherness and inequalities, but a right-wing libertarianism, that is, a freedom without constraints and sanctions, in the direction of “freedom of expression” 30. In this respect, it is clear that the discussion on vaccination against COVID-19 revisits the conflict between the individual and the community 49.
In this study, it was noted that the controversy involves expertise in decision-making on vaccines/vaccination to combat COVID-19. In this regard, scientists are under pressure to make decisions on technical issues without scientific consensus being established for decision-making 50,51, as in the case of the development of vaccines against COVID-19 and vaccination campaigns. In addition, attacks on science focus on “regulatory science”, areas that make policy recommendations 51.
As well as being considered a natural occurrence, the pandemic is also a social and political phenomenon, which is why it opens up space for the unforeseen, disrupting the patterns that govern the world 5. Moments of crisis, such as the pandemic situation, rekindle populism, which can have reactionary or progressive characteristics. As well as arising in situations where the demands of the population are not met, populism arises from political-discursive practices that evoke an antagonism between them (the elites) and us (the dominated/the people). This antagonism shows the extreme positions of society, which are targets of contestation and difficult to stabilize. The “denialist” discourse sought to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic and defend the sustainability of the economy, while the “scientific” discourse used arguments in defense of health and the sustainability of life 5.
It must be considered that the pandemic crisis occurred at a time of democratic crisis. In 2013, the country went through a political and economic crisis, and in 2018, Bolsonaro was elected president with an anti-systemic and conservative discourse, as well as opposing coalitions and democratic politics 52. These moments have further contributed to the media promoting polarized perspectives on science and health, with the result that individuals begin to identify controversial scientific issues as politically polarized, culminating in disbelief in expertise, as in the case of the COVID-19 vaccine 53.
In short, it may be concluded that although the expertise used by the FSP and BSM shows consensus in accordance with the respective positions of each newspaper, the controversies over vaccines/vaccination against COVID-19 occur in opposition to the discourse of these two media outlets. Although the focus of this study is on the discursive disputes of the newspapers, the publicizing of the debate may have contributed to shaping the public\'s perspective on the configuration of the State and society in relation to the health measures to combat COVID-19.
The limitations of this research are related to the methodological stage and the time frame chosen. Although the choice to restrict the selection of FSP news to the \'Opinion\', \'Columns and blogs\' and \'Editorial\' sections was intentional, texts from other sections that could be relevant to the analysis were not incorporated into the analytical corpus. The choice to restrict the selection to news published during the period of the CPI was due to the fact that this was the period in which the vaccine/vaccination debate became visible in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Final considerations
The news media is considered a means by which controversies are publicized and given prominence 21,22. On the topic of COVID-19 vaccines/vaccination, the politicization of the debate in the FSP and BSM is present in the arguments and speeches of their spokespeople. The pandemic outbreak concomitantly with the democratic crisis highlighted the antagonism of conflicting discourses on political and health decisions involving COVID-19 from diametrically opposed political and ideological positions. The increase in inequality and the unregulated spread of information drive the extreme right within a perspective of neoliberal freedom. In this respect, the actors feel they have permission to claim the power to elaborate their own truths 46.
In this study, it was observed that the controversy surrounding COVID-19 vaccines/vaccination was related to the dissension among network actors about the production of artifacts and statements by scientists and experts. Stabilizing this controversy in a black box is something that may be difficult to achieve, since the juncture between science and the legal and political spheres leads to conflict between the time it takes for science to produce its artifacts and the time needed to take regulatory decisions 50,51, such as those relating to public health.

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