Press releases of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers : a critical view on promotion techniques

Press releases dedicated to the creation of a new vaccine draw on a complex weave of information and promotion, including at times also elements of manipulation. This discourse-analytical study explores the recurrent motifs and arguments in a corpus of English-language press releases of three leading vaccine-manufacturers - AstraZeneca, Moderna and Gamaleya-RDIF in the period directly preceding the launch of active vaccination campaigns. The study applies the framework of (critical) discourse analysis with insights from argumentation theory and rhetoric. Two moves of the press release are compared: boilerplate descriptions, performing a mixed informative-promotional function, and citations, to which an explicitly promotional role is attributed. The findings identify a number of common leitmotifs with a partial overlap between boilerplates and citations, especially concerning the safety issue. The latter is explicitly mentioned only in citations, i.e. with reduced accountability for the company. Boilerplates explore enthymemes for persuasive and argumentative purposes to convince the audience of the vaccine validity. Moderna and AstraZeneca use convergent techniques of persuasive argumentation, whereas RDIF at times glides towards argumentative fallacies and manipulative strategies.