Blocked Shot: Contextualizing Knowledge Structures of Vaccine Hesitancy
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Date
2024-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the prevalence of medical misinformations, especially those related to vaccines, has been forefronted in public and institutional discourse. Indeed, much has been written on the subject in medical journals, establishing correlates, studying public health implications, and suggesting outreach strategies. However, such publications almost univocally build their foundations on positions relative to their own structures of knowledge - that is, that those who believe and spread misinformation around vaccination are malicious actors lying for personal benefit, those fooled by said malicious actors, or simply those too ignorant to understand the science. This paper is by no means an endorsement of anti-vaccine ideology; however, I make the argument that it is important - perhaps as a means to quash, but also so that such movements can be located historically and ideologically - to understand these strains of thought on their own terms, and as coherent, self-consistent knowledge structures in their own right. In looking at a number of instances, in time and space, of iterations of this ideology - after all, it is important to note that this thinking takes many forms - and incorporating the work of scholars of knowledge such as Bruno Latour, I intend to investigate how knowledge is structured in communities of misinformation, and to contextualize its existence historically, politically, and structurally - and, in turn, investigate how medical science fails to engage with this.
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Keywords
Vaccination, Vaccine Hesitancy, Knowledge Structure, Science and Technology Studies, STS