THE EUROPEAN DISCOURSE ON MEASLES-MUMPS-RUBELLA (MMR) VACCINATION
THE EUROPEAN DISCOURSE ON MEASLES-MUMPS-RUBELLA (MMR) VACCINATION

Summary/Abstract: At the end of 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced mistrust in vaccines being among the ten biggest world health threats for 2019 and compared to the previous year. A 300% worldwide increase in measles cases was estimated. Following these premises, the present study has covered the online issues of three important publications in the U.K, France, and Romania, countries in different stages of measles epidemics. The research method was content analysis and included all the articles published in The Guardian (U.K.), Le Figaro (France), and Adevărul (Romania) in 2019, with the primary objective of identifying the approach each party had regarding MMR vaccination. The results have shown a clear difference between the Western countries (France and the U.K.) and the Eastern one (Romania) concerning the orientation on international aspects versus local ones, but with a consensus in a pro-vaccination attitude. An important finding was the lack of representation of specific topics and countries where the measles outbreaks are present, each country showing their geographic interest by the representation in the news of different parts of the world. News about the side effects of measles came to balance the constant unproved association between MMR vaccine and autism, but unfortunately not in all countries.

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