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Paper short abstract:

This paper provides the methodological reflection on the research of individual's vaccine hesitancy in China, departing from an online ethnography of the Chinese public's reactions to the promotion of vaccination programmes in the state's strictly controlled mainstream social media.

Paper long abstract:

Departing from an online ethnography of China's promotion of vaccination programmes, this paper reflects on the effects of adopting ethnographical methods in a strictly controlled speech environment, in which the ethics and data of the research face significant challenges. The ethnographical research examined in this paper collects the discourse materials and the audiences' reactions from the beginning of China's official propagation of its vaccine development to the further promotion of massive vaccination programmes. Such data mainly comes from China's mainstream social media platforms. Compared with ethnography in practical contexts, the online ethnography of China's vaccination programme finds a relevantly 'open' environment for people to express their potential mistrust, anxiety and vaccine hesitancy through the informal discussions and comments in online environments. This method helps to reveal the public's contradictory reactions to the state's promotion of vaccination programmes when the target of 'vaccinating the whole population' becomes a political agenda. However, the expressions of adverse reactions still face limitations. The cyber police's surveillance and the massive communication of 'positive', supportive public opinions on the vaccine programmes in online environments could define the vaccine hesitancy as the negative, detrimental attitude to the society, making people hesitant to disclose their vaccine hesitancy. Meanwhile, because of the authoritarian mode of policy implementation in China and the derived practice of biological citizenship, people with vaccine hesitancy would still get forced to take the vaccine. In this context, data collection is not all-inclusive, and protecting participants' privacy becomes vital and challenging.