Spatiotemporal framing of uncertainty in Czech Media vaccination debates before and during COVID-19

Uncertainty represents one of the principal aspects of public debates concerning health issues, and it has been particularly prominent in the context of epidemics and pandemics. The mass media play an important role in shaping public perceptions, decision-making, and behaviour. This study examines how mass media in Czechia constructed and navigated uncertainties before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on spatiotemporality. Through qualitative content analysis of 437 articles published in three online media, we move beyond research that typically treats uncertainty as a single, undifferentiated category, and systematically analyse distinct uncertainty frames and the spatiotemporal strategies through which journalists constructed, mitigated, or amplified uncertainty over time. Our analysis shows that journalistic accounts addressed uncertainties in both expert-knowledge and socio-economic domains. Moreover, we identify four key frames used in the journalistic accounts to construct and navigate uncertainty: marginalisation of uncertainty, recognition of uncertainty, management of uncertainty, and amplification of uncertainty. Our study has implications for studying vaccine hesitancy or health crises, as well as for further exploration of media framing of health-related uncertainty more broadly.