Movimentos por vacinas contra COVID-19 para mães e crianças no Brasil: explorando propiciamentos da comunicação mediada por computador

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a widespread impact on Brazilian society, affecting health, education, the job market, and various other areas of people’s lives. During the public health emergency of international concern, virus containment and prevention protocols included social distancing and isolation, which also altered the ways people interacted. The predominance of remote and hybrid forms of education in schools and universities, and of home office in the job market, is an example of these changes. Another example is the rise of maternal cyberactivism, which grew during the pandemic due to the impacts of COVID-19 on Brazilian mothers and children in various aspects of their lives. This activism took place through social media in online platforms, through Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). This study follows the netnographic method proposed by Kozinets (2014) to observe how Brazilian communities of mothers organized movements advocating for COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant, postpartum, and breastfeeding mothers, as well as for babies and children. The research aims to analyze the CMC affordances that were explored by these communities in their movements, which were organized online in a context of many in-person restrictions. To achieve this, a bibliographic, documentary and netnographic research was conducted, resulting in a historical account of the movements advocating for COVID-19 vaccines for mothers and children and their cyberactivism and cyberfeminism through CMC. Afterwards, seven CMC affordances were identified and selected based on the implications of Gibson’s (1986) concept of "affordance" for the research. They were analyzed one by one,empirically and qualitatively. These affordances are: social distancing, scientific dissemination, flood, social inclusion, virtual mamaço, networking, and tagging. Social distancing is the possibility to maintain physical distance between CMC users. Scientific dissemination is the possibility to share scientific data, information, and research through CMC. Flooding is the possibility to send mass messages on the internet. Social inclusion is the possibility that CMC facilitates social interactions and the participation of minority groups in various sectors of society. Virtual mamaço is a mamaço (a political demonstration through collective public breastfeeding) conducted in the online digital environment. Networking is the possibility to form contact and relationship networks that facilitate the exchange of information, ideas, and/or support through CMC. Tagging is the possibility to interact through computer mediated communication by tagging electronic accounts or keywords. It was concluded that these affordances were fundamental to the articulation of maternal movements in activism for vaccines against COVID-19. Besides having the potential to indicate paths of action and political participation through CMC, the reflections may also contribute to feminist debates on parenting,and/or theoretical discussions in various fields of knowledge involved in the research.