This article investigates how evidence of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is enacted in news media via a focus on the temporality of vaccine development. We argue that time constitutes a crucial object of and mechanism for knowledge production in such media and investigate how time comes to matter in vaccine evidence-making communication practices. In science communication on vaccine development, the vaccine object (along with the practices through which it is produced) undergoes a material-discursive shift from an imagined “rushed” product to being many years in the making and uninhibited by unnecessarily lengthy processes. In both these enactments of vaccine development, time itself is constituted as evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. This article traces how time (performed as both calendar time and as a series of relational events) is materialized as an affective and epistemic object of evidence within public science communication by analyzing the material-discursive techniques through which temporality is enacted within news media focused on the timeline of COVID-19 vaccine development. We contend that time (as evidence) is remade through these techniques as an ontopolitical concern within the COVID-19 vaccine assemblage. We furthermore argue that science communication itself is an important actor in the hinterland of public health practices with performative effects and vital evidence-making capacities.

本文通过关注疫苗开发的时间性，调查了新闻媒体如何发布 COVID-19 疫苗安全性和有效性的证据。我们认为时间构成了此类媒体中知识生产的关键对象和机制，并研究了时间在疫苗证据制作传播实践中的重要性。在关于疫苗开发的科学交流中，疫苗对象（以及生产它的实践）经历了从想象中的“匆忙”产品到多年制造并且不受不必要的冗长过程限制的物质话语转变。在疫苗开发的这两个法规中，时间本身就是疫苗功效和安全性的证据。本文追溯了时间（作为日历时间和一系列相关事件）如何在公共科学传播中被物化为证据的情感和认知对象，通过分析在新闻媒体中制定时间性的材料话语技术，重点关注COVID-19 疫苗开发的时间表。我们认为，时间（作为证据）通过这些技术被重新塑造为 COVID-19 疫苗组合中的一个本体政治问题。我们进一步认为，科学传播本身是公共卫生实践腹地的重要参与者，具有表演效果和重要的证据制作能力。