Vaccines and Publics: A Variety of Engaging Experiences

This chapter is about some of the sites and scenes where members of the public are exposed to (and engage in) vaccination discourse. To preview, after a brief introduction, we begin with messaging models of communication, followed by the move from messaging to engagement. Next, case examples of public engagement with vaccines are introduced, from pandemic influenza preparedness in the U.S., to polio eradication initiatives in India, and then to COVID-19 public engagement events in England. Situations where publics engage with in vaccine discourse are noted, including online, in churches and museums. Then, there’s a section about communication and public participation, seen as either idealist or cynical. The conclusion lists themes that emerged including how hypodermic metaphors delimit conceptions of dialogue, and how influential communication process models are nonchalant about truth and falsity. The implications for vaccine misinformation leads to coining a neologism, “the layisphere,” of unqualified opinions online. Another theme is information-deficit models such as health and scientific literacy. Scholarship critical of deficit models advances the idea of public engagement as offering a more interactive alternative. Websites, online videos, opinion polls, faith-based settings, and science centers are viewed as sites where the non-specialist public engage in vaccination communication. Questions of ecological validity arise when public engagement is initiated from without by engagement experts seeking to control outcomes. This editorial survey of vaccines and the public uses global examples and covers an eclectic variety of reporting and scholarship [224 words].