Drawing on reception studies and multimodality, this study examines how Romanian users assessed the European Commission’s Representation in Romania (ECRR) cartoons about Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination. Employing computer-assisted qualitative and quantitative analysis of public comments in MAXQDA, this study focused on comment sections as sites of reception. The findings showed a prevalence of multimodal elements as an affective mode of reception. The main topics identified in the comments were: vaccine skepticism and mistrust, social division and political polarization, and irony, sarcasm, and humor as social critique. Vaccination was not framed as a public-health measure but as a terrain of social and political contestation. The findings highlighted the use of irony, sarcasm, and humor as discursive tools for social critique, while comment thread analysis revealed hostile discourse marked by dehumanization through name-calling and animal-related metaphors. A final finding showed that the users’ evaluations of vaccination cartoons are shaped by socio-cultural context, particularly trust in authorities.
Camelia Cmeciu (Wed,) studied this question.