Polio

This chapter is a case study of newspaper reportage of polio and polio vaccination programmes in the UK in the period 1955–1960. The chapter uses digitalised archive data and compares the utility of semantic network analysis and qualitative discourse analysis to understanding how the topic came to be framed in the UK press. The chapter argues that vaccination at this period in the UK became tied up with issues around social and political restructuring within the UK regions on the one hand and post-war fears for the future of the UK on a global economic stage on the other. The chapter traces the impact of polio and the fear it engendered on reportage and argues that vaccine hesitancy at this period exhibits a significantly different modality to that of previous and subsequent ‘crisis points’.