Covid-19 anti-vaccine discourses on the French internet. Specificities and reconfigurations regarding "classical" vaccine hesitancy / "antivax" mobilizations (original) (raw)

Covid-19 anti-vaccine discourses on the French internet. Specificities and reconfigurations regarding "classical" vaccine hesitancy / "antivax" mobilizations

2021, Natural States: Environment, Politics, and Tradition, 133rd annual meeting of the American Folklore Society

While it is now firmly acknowledged that the rejection of vaccines is as ancient as vaccines themselves, until the mid-1990 and the “Wakefield affair” antivaccinism remained a fringe phenomenon in France. Since then, the situation has changed, and many transformations happened in the French antivax movements and discourses. Among those reasons, the rise of the 2.0 Internet and the disintermediation of the news circulation played, first, as an echo chamber that allow to some extend the mainstreamization of fringe positions and “stigmatized knowledge”. Second, some windows of opportunity such as the “Buzyn law”, i.e. a 2018 bill than make mandatory 11 vaccines for the French children caught the attention of the media and the public through the development of purported “altruistic” counter-discourses that claim to warn the People against the so-called dissimulated dangers of vaccines. Thirdly, cranks like the Professor Henri Joyeux or Serge Rader played an important part in the legitimization of pseudo scientific positions on vaccines in the eyes of the public. Finally, genuine mediated health scandals, among others the “Mediator affair”, the “PIP breath implants”, etc., have contributed to public distrust toward pharmaceutical companies (“Big Pharma”), medical knowledge, mostly about vaccines efficiency, and healthcare institutions. So that, in this presentation, I aim to carry out an in-depth analysis of the contemporary French online antivax movement and discourses in the time of Covid-19. Who are the French Covid-19 antivaxers: moral entrepreneurs, cranks, prominent conspiracy theorists, citizen sleuths, (web) celebrities, victims of vaccines or their families, etc.? How do they differ from traditional antivaxers such as the " National League for Freedom of Vaccination"? How and in which digital spheres they manage to spread their positions? Which arguments and rhetorical tools about both real and purported vaccine incidents are used to convince the public? How conspiratorial thinking managed to marginalize traditional political/philosophical antivaccinism? Do, finally, Covid-19 antivaxers have affinities with far right activists, or new age movements for instance?