COVID19 VACCINE RELATED
NEWS PRESENTED BY TOP 25 MEDIA OUTLETS ACROSS WB
This
map presents the percentage of Covid19 related news in all the published
content by top 25 most engaging outlets in each country across Western Balkans.
TOP
150 media outlets from WB published 422,693
NEWS in January 2022, including political, economy, social, entertainment,
sport, opinions, culture, regional and global news.
Top
25 performing outlets in these countries create 93 news every day (on average),
where five articles are related to Covid19 vaccine.
The
highest percentage of Covid19 vaccine related news is noted in Macedonia (8.1%
from 51,558 articles), and the lowest is noted in Serbia (4% from 133,603
articles).
AUDIENCE REACTIONS
The
volume of published content varies for each of the analyzed countries; another
comparable aspect through countries is the relationship between the NEWS about
“Covid-19 vaccine” and ENGAGEMENTS by their audience.
This
relationship gives us the average number
of reactions (likes, comments shares and emotions) in a
particular country. It provides an
additional perspective of the public interest and reactions to the analyzed
topic.
The
following table presents the number Covid-19 vaccine NEWS and their engagements
for each WB country in January 2022.
From
the presented data, it is clear that Serbia has disproportionately higher
number of audience engagement compared to other countries in the region.
Further investigation revealed that “Djokovic
- Australia Open incident” profoundly affected the social media engagement about
“Covid-19 vaccine” in Serbia.
In
January, the average number of audience reactions per “Covid-19 vaccine”
article, was 4.9 times higher in Serbia (64), than in Albania (13).
Further,
we analyzed the changes in Social media
engagements about “Covid-19 vaccine” and the Vaccination
Rates (official
data) between
December 2021 and January 2022.
Results
show noticeable variation where Vaccination news obviously influence
vaccination rates. The following chart shows the changes in Jan 22 compared to
Dec 21. Each country has a different ratio of changes in news engagements
vis-à-vis vaccination rates.
This
analysis reveals some visible disparity in Serbia and Montenegro, where high surge of “Covid-19 vaccine” social engagement (compared to
December), is followed by drop in
the monthly vaccination levels.
At
the beginning of vaccination rollout in 2021, Serbia was one of the leading
courtiers in the region by the percentage of vaccinated population. Serbia in
that period even donated vaccines to other neighboring countries. In the
beginning of December 2021, vaccination rates in Serbia were around 20.000
vaccines delivered daily, slowly decreasing to 11.000 by the end of that month.
However,
in January sharp reduction in vaccination is evident in Serbia, during the media saga “Novak Djokovic - Australian Open” (between the 05th
and 17th of January).
During
this period, Covid-19 vaccine related social engagements increased by 3.5 times, reaching a peak of
more than 30k audience activity on 10th of January when Djokovic was
released from the detention hotel.
At
the same period, the daily vaccination
rates dropped to the historically lowest numbers and marked an average of 72% decrease compared to the December’s
average rates in Serbia.
