Covid-19 Vaccine and Aristotle’s Persuasion Model in the Algerian Newspapers Echourouk and Ennahar

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has a serious impact on people’s health and lives. Governments worldwide adopted preventive measures and pharmaceutical companies developed vaccines in a record time to control the spread of COVID-19. Although the governments succeeded to implement some preventive measures, vaccines against COVID-19 were received with hesitancy. To overcome people’s skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines, the media played a crucial role to encourage the vaccination campaign. This study discusses the rhetorical strategies used in the Algerian print media to persuade people to get vaccinated. Using Aristotle’s persuasion model based on the logical, the ethical and the pathetic appeals, two Algerian online daily newspapers Ennaharand Echourouk were used in this study. 109 articles were assembled and analyzed from January to March 2021. Findings revealed that Echourouk newspaper used more persuasion strategies than Ennahar newspaper to encourage the vaccine uptake. The logical appeal was the strategy used most by both newspapers.. Findings suggest that the selected newspapers provided a discursive support to the Algerian vaccine management policy by encouraging people to get vaccinated.