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In this paper, we compare the governmental and public framings of expertise in the Dutch Covid-19 vaccination campaign in the period between January 1st and April 30th, 2021. Specifically, we collected all statements regarding vaccination on three interrelated stages: (1) the official press conferences; (2) Twitter, for responses to government policies; and (3) political motions that were put forward by Members of Parliament in the days following the press conferences. We combine an interactional framing approach with a discursive psychological perspective to get insights into how framings between stages modify, contest, or build upon each other. We argue that the press conferences show a persistent technocratic framing, in the sense that a direct line between science and policy is assumed and promoted. Unlike the first period of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, experts are not often quoted initially, but key political actors themselves act as responsible for the message that there is light at the end of the tunnel, if only citizens will get vaccinated. Once the AstraZeneca vaccine comes under fire, however, experts are again held accountable for the policy message. Throughout, governmental policies are disputed on Twitter and in Parliament, albeit in different ways, by making hidden moralities relevant, such as the government's assumed complacency, rigidity, and inability to explain policies with the available evidence.

The corona crisis of 2020 took many by surprise. Quite suddenly, politicians had to make drastic decisions to guarantee public health, affecting basic civil liberties. In justifying their decisions, politicians internationally reverted back to a direct staging of experts to legitimize their proposals for what internationally became known as the "lockdown". In this article we analyze the performance of the Dutch government that, early on, labeled its approach to COVID-19 as an "intelligent lockdown". Our analysis examines the dramaturgy of expertise during this period. We selected two interrelated "stages": the official press conferences, fully controlled by the government, and the responses on Twitter, as focal channel for critique from the general public, but also from opposition parties and (alleged) experts. 26 press conferences of the Dutch Prime Minister were analyzed and a search for the most popular posts on Twitter referring to the press conference(s) was carried out covering the period between March 6th and May 29th, 2020. The results show that the technocratic framing of expertise remained stable during the sampling period, regarding the undisputed status of expertise as the clear-cut basis for decision-making in uncertain times. Framing on Twitter challenged the omnipotence of the experts advising the government in various ways, namely, by referring to dissenting opinions of other experts, by questioning the underlying motives of experts' advice or by pointing out that the policies were clearly contrary to everyday experience. We argue that it is not so much the facts themselves that are at stake here but hidden moralities, which include the government's alleged complacency while asking citizens to blindly trust, its unpredictable behavior in the light of the promised straight line between scientific evidence and policy making, and its motivated behavior while claiming that the facts speak for themselves.

The corona crisis of 2020 took many by surprise. Quite suddenly, politicians had to make drastic decisions to guarantee public health, affecting basic civil liberties. In justifying their decisions, politicians internationally reverted back to a direct staging of experts to legitimize their proposals for what internationally became known as the "lockdown". In this article we analyze the performance of the Dutch government that, early on, labeled its approach to COVID-19 as an "intelligent lockdown". Our analysis examines the dramaturgy of expertise during this period. We selected two interrelated "stages": the official press conferences, fully controlled by the government, and the responses on Twitter, as focal channel for critique from the general public, but also from opposition parties and (alleged) experts. 26 press conferences of the Dutch Prime Minister were analyzed and a search for the most popular posts on Twitter referring to the press conference(s) was carried out covering the period between March 6th and May 29th, 2020. The results show that the technocratic framing of expertise remained stable during the sampling period, regarding the undisputed status of expertise as the clear-cut basis for decision-making in uncertain times. Framing on Twitter challenged the omnipotence of the experts advising the government in various ways, namely, by referring to dissenting opinions of other experts, by questioning the underlying motives of experts' advice or by pointing out that the policies were clearly contrary to everyday experience. We argue that it is not so much the facts themselves that are at stake here but hidden moralities, which include the government's alleged complacency while asking citizens to blindly trust, its unpredictable behavior in the light of the promised straight line between scientific evidence and policy making, and its motivated behavior while claiming that the facts speak for themselves.