Morality, Epistemology, and Activism: How Antivaccination Advocates on Twitter Construct a Rhetoric of Alternative Immunity
Abstract
Though it is a centuries old practice, anti-vaccination has become a growing trend since the rise of the internet. Anti-vaccination rhetoric complicates neoliberal beliefs about public health and systems of medical knowledge-making. This study follows 100 Twitter accounts which advance anti-vaccination beliefs. Studying these accounts reveals that anti-vaccination is part of a larger moral and epistemological universe of belief. Anti-vaccination advocates on Twitter use a digital activist identity to create affective networks which draw from epistemologies of conspiracy theory and connect to current political events. Anti-vaccination advocates on Twitter are not uninformed. Rather, they ascribe to their own process of information legitimization. Antivaccination advocates on Twitter draw from their complex epistemologies and affective networks to build an alternative immunology which focuses on maintaining the purity of the individual body as a metaphor for protection of the state and of humanity.
Degree
M.A.
Advisors
Rickert, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Immunology|Political science|Rhetoric and Composition|Sociology|Web Studies
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.