Expert construction during the Italian vaccination campaign against COVID-19: positional, reputational, and communicational spheres in comparison

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to understand what mechanism leads specific actors of the scientific community to assume the central role of experts during the COVID-19 pandemic vaccination campaign. Thanks to the understandingof the world of narratives and self-constructed representations we will try to understand if the figure of the expert is influenced by the institutional role they play, the network of collaborations and the academic network as a proxy of their reputation and, finally, what figure emerges instead from the mainstream media such as the press and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter