From Curated Co-Production and into the Wild West: Mass and Social Media in the Immunisation Social Order

Matters of health and medicine are commonly represented in the pages and screentime of mass news media and are hotly discussed in the realm of social media. As an intervention encouraged by the institutions that underlie the immunisation social order, and as an intervention that regularly draws controversy and dispute, vaccines are well-represented in medical coverage on both mass media and social media. Understanding how vaccines become social objects through the cultural representations created for the purposes of mass media exposition and through the dialogic and engagement-driven worlds of social media can inform our understanding of how aspects of the immunisation social order are perceived and culturally (re)shaped through various media. We uniquely centre the practices and platforms of traditional and social media within the maintenance of the immunisation social order rather than in relation to the consequences of media coverage or social media use relating to vaccine hesitancy, refusal or resistance. This chapter begins to unpack these elements first by examining through the conceptual lens of biomediatisation how we come to know and understand vaccines through mass media and how journalistic practices reshape and safeguard the immunisation social order. Following this, the role of social media and the growing field of social media analytics for the maintenance of the immunisation social order are examined, with attention given to the new possibilities that social media provides for social research and some of the challenges and limitations that are yet to be overcome in the field.