“All manner of ills”: The features of serious diseases attributed to vaccination (original) (raw)

Vaccination panic in Australia

In 2009 in Australia, a citizens’ campaign was launched to silence public criticism of vaccination. This campaign involved an extraordinary variety of techniques to denigrate, harass and censor public vaccine critics. It was unlike anything seen in other scientific controversies, involving everything from alleging beliefs in conspiracy theories to rewriting Wikipedia entries. Vaccination Panic in Australia analyses this campaign from the point of view of free speech. Brian Martin describes the techniques used in the attack, assesses different ways of defending and offers wider perspectives for understanding the struggle. The book will be of interest to readers interested in the vaccination debate and in struggles over free speech and citizen participation in decision-making.

Misinformation on the Internet?: A Study of Vaccine Safety Beliefs

2015

Author(s): Doty, Colin | Advisor(s): Lievrouw, Leah A | Abstract: Concerns about misinformation on the Internet usually focus on the amount of misinformation available, the ease of retrieving it, the speed with which it spreads, or the lack of editorial oversight. Yet none of these would be cause for concern if no one was misinformed. Indeed, what constitutes misinformation is often determined by who believes it. Hence the most important consideration may be a focus on why people believe. To explore this, this study reports results from a qualitative content analysis of online information about vaccine safety—with a particular focus on user comments—supplemented by exploratory interviews. The study examines how people on all sides of the debate use evidence to support their beliefs about vaccine safety. It also reflects upon the relationship between the Internet and those beliefs. The most common beliefs about vaccine safety are beliefs about toxicity, beliefs about the cumulative e...

The Media Environment and Anti-Vaccination Movements

European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 2013

The newest media (e.g. the internet) allow the spread of conspiracy theories, entirely or partially fictional information at an unprecedented rate. Anti-vaccination movements across the globe currently use the most modern available communications technology to promote their ideology, to attack the public and to attack systematic solutions that individual governments use as parts of their national vaccination programs. This paper wishes to focus on the issue of freedom of information, yet at the same time point out a rift that exists between factual data and factually incorrect reports that are being spread via the internet, a rift that may be the cause of serious public health issues.

Vaccine-criticism on the internet: New insights based on French-speaking websites

Vaccine, 2015

The internet is playing an increasingly important part in fueling vaccine related controversies and in generating vaccine hesitant behaviors. English language Antivaccination websites have been thoroughly analyzed, however, little is known of the arguments presented in other languages on the internet. This study presents three types of results: (1) Authors apply a time tested content analysis methodology to describe the information diffused by French language vaccine critical websites in comparison with English speaking websites. The contents of French language vaccine critical websites are very similar to those of English language websites except for the relative absence of moral and religious arguments. (2) Authors evaluate the likelihood that internet users will find those websites through vaccine-related queries on a variety of French-language versions of google. Queries on controversial vaccines generated many more vaccine critical websites than queries on vaccination in general. (3) Authors propose a typology of vaccine critical websites. Authors distinguish between (a) websites that criticize all vaccines ("antivaccine" websites) and websites that criticize only some vaccines ("vaccine-selective" websites), and between (b) websites that focus on vaccines ("vaccine-focused" websites) and those for which vaccines were only a secondary topic of interest ("generalist" websites). The differences in stances by groups and websites affect the likelihood that they will be believed and by whom. This study therefore helps understand the different information landscapes that may contribute to the variety of forms of vaccine hesitancy. Public authorities should have better awareness and understanding of these stances to bring appropriate answers to the different controversies about vaccination.

Debating vaccination: understanding the attack on the Australian Vaccination Network

The Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), a citizen group advocating parental choice in whether children should be vaccinated, has come under an extraordinary attack by advocates of vaccination. Controversies over vaccination involve both disagreements about scientific matters, such as the effectiveness of vaccination to prevent disease, and clashes of values, including compulsion versus free choice. To help understand the attack on the AVN, I give an overview of the nature of scientific controversies, including the roles of evidence, vested interests, solutions, paradigms and methods of debate. I analyse a formal complaint against the AVN to highlight the assumptions underlying the anti-AVN position. I describe some of the methods used to attack the AVN: unsupported claims, formal complaints, and harassment. Finally, I discuss tactics for opposing the attack.

BELIEVING THE INTERNET: USER COMMENTS ABOUT VACCINE SAFETY

An attempt to understand misinformation, and particularly the role the Internet might play in it, suggests an emphasis on how individual Internet users decide what to believe. It has been argued that certain characteristics of the Internet seem to alter the experience of evidence evaluation. A content analysis of user comments about vaccine safety reveals that the risk-benefit negotiation at the heart of vaccine safety is attributed to a process of reasoning that is mediated by the Internet’s technologies of enhanced user participation. Especially prominent on the Internet are personal testimonials and emotional appeals that complicate traditional notions of evidence. In particular, many users—provided with the ease of linking, clicking and searching—exalt the enabling of their “own research” in ways that challenge established knowledge hierarchies in favor of personal knowledge networks, implying new truths unobscured because of the Internet.

Vaccine criticism on the internet: propositions for future research

Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 2016

Research on vaccine criticism on the Internet is now at a crossroads, with an already important body of knowledge published on the subject but also a continuous and even growing interest in the scientific community. In this commentary, we reflect on the published literature from the standpoint of sociologists interested in social movements and their activists and the influence they can have on vaccination behaviors. We suggest several avenues of research for future studies of vaccine criticism on the Internet: 1) paying more attention to the actors who publish vaccine critical contents and to their use of the Internet in relationship to the other means through which they try to mobilize the population - the production of vaccine critical information on the Internet, and not only its nature and its reception, should therefore become one of the main objects of this strand of research - ; 2) paying closer attention to what distinguishes the different strands of vaccine criticism regard...

Antivaccination activists on the world wide web

Archives of Disease in Childhood, 2002

Aims: To determine the likelihood of finding an antivaccination site on the world wide web and to characterise their explicit claims and rhetorical appeals.Methods: Using “vaccination” and “immunisation”, examining the first 10 sites displayed on seven leading search engines. Detailed examination of content of 100 antivaccination sites found on Google.Results: 43% of websites were antivaccination (all of the first 10