Research
Rhetorics of Vaccination Research Projects, Publications, and Groups
“When Patients Question Vaccines: Considering Vaccine Communication through a Material Rhetorical Approach.” Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, 1.1-2 (2018): 161-178.
Abstract: Vaccinations are a notoriously difficult topic to discuss with patients, and efforts to persuade those who are most hesitant often fail. In this persuasion brief, common vaccination concerns and skepticisms are reexamined through the perspectives offered by rhetorical studies. This analysis demonstrates why current counter- arguments to vaccine skepticisms often fall short. As an alternative, this article encourages practitioners to consider how the material qualities of vaccinations contribute to their instability and make them difficult for patients to accept. This perspective suggests relationship-building and coalition-building as routes for improving doctor-patient communication about vaccines.
Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. Heidi Lawrence of George Mason University. http://stars.library.ucf.edu/rhm/vol1/iss1/1/
“Healthy Bodies, Toxic Medicines: Vaccination Beliefs and the Rhetorics of Health, Illness, and the Body.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 87.4 (2014): 423-437. Link to article.
This article examines flu vaccination beliefs and practices produced during a survey of undergraduate students in Spring 2012 (IRB#10-732). This research uses the methods of rhetorical analysis—or the study of persuasive features and arguments used in language—to examine statements respondents made regarding flu and flu vaccine. In these responses, students generated unique categories of arguments about the perceived dangers of flu vaccination, including the assertion that vaccines cause disease (including illnesses and conditions other than flu), that vaccines are toxic medicines, and that vaccines carry unknown, population-wide risks that are inadequately acknowledged. This study provides insight into vaccination beliefs and rationales among a population at risk of flu (college students) and suggests that further study of this population may yield important keys to addressing flu vaccine concerns as expressed by college students. Rhetorical analysis also offers a useful set of methods to understanding vaccination beliefs and practices, adding to existing methods of study and analysis of vaccination practices and beliefs in medicine and public health.
“Reframing Medicine’s Publics: The Local as a Public of Vaccine Refusal.” Journal of the Medical Humanities 35.2 (June 2014): 111-129. With Bernice Hausman and Clare Dannenberg
Medical and public health practitioners aim for very high rates of vaccination to prevent the spread of contagious disease. Parent concerns about vaccination confound doctors and complicate doctor-patient interactions. Antivaccination sentiments have been studied by medical and public health researchers and typologized according to type and content of parent concern, but recommended approaches to dispel vaccination concerns have failed to have long-lasting effects.
Here, we use observations made during a small study in a rural area in a southeastern state to demonstrate how a shift away from analyzing vaccination skepticism as a national issue with a global remedy reveals the nuances in vaccination sentiments based on locality. Instead of seeing antivaccinationists as a distinct public based on statistical commonalities, we argue that examining vaccination beliefs and practices at the local level offers a fuller picture of the contextualized nature of vaccination decisions within the psychosocial spaces of families. A view of vaccination that emphasizes the local public, rather than a globally conceived antivaccination public, enables medical humanists and rhetoricians to offer important contributions to improving communications about vaccinations in clinical settings.
Abstract: Vaccinations are a notoriously difficult topic to discuss with patients, and efforts to persuade those who are most hesitant often fail. In this persuasion brief, common vaccination concerns and skepticisms are reexamined through the perspectives offered by rhetorical studies. This analysis demonstrates why current counter- arguments to vaccine skepticisms often fall short. As an alternative, this article encourages practitioners to consider how the material qualities of vaccinations contribute to their instability and make them difficult for patients to accept. This perspective suggests relationship-building and coalition-building as routes for improving doctor-patient communication about vaccines.
Assistant Editors' Interview with Dr. Heidi Lawrence of George Mason University. http://stars.library.ucf.edu/rhm/vol1/iss1/1/
“Healthy Bodies, Toxic Medicines: Vaccination Beliefs and the Rhetorics of Health, Illness, and the Body.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 87.4 (2014): 423-437. Link to article.
This article examines flu vaccination beliefs and practices produced during a survey of undergraduate students in Spring 2012 (IRB#10-732). This research uses the methods of rhetorical analysis—or the study of persuasive features and arguments used in language—to examine statements respondents made regarding flu and flu vaccine. In these responses, students generated unique categories of arguments about the perceived dangers of flu vaccination, including the assertion that vaccines cause disease (including illnesses and conditions other than flu), that vaccines are toxic medicines, and that vaccines carry unknown, population-wide risks that are inadequately acknowledged. This study provides insight into vaccination beliefs and rationales among a population at risk of flu (college students) and suggests that further study of this population may yield important keys to addressing flu vaccine concerns as expressed by college students. Rhetorical analysis also offers a useful set of methods to understanding vaccination beliefs and practices, adding to existing methods of study and analysis of vaccination practices and beliefs in medicine and public health.
“Reframing Medicine’s Publics: The Local as a Public of Vaccine Refusal.” Journal of the Medical Humanities 35.2 (June 2014): 111-129. With Bernice Hausman and Clare Dannenberg
Medical and public health practitioners aim for very high rates of vaccination to prevent the spread of contagious disease. Parent concerns about vaccination confound doctors and complicate doctor-patient interactions. Antivaccination sentiments have been studied by medical and public health researchers and typologized according to type and content of parent concern, but recommended approaches to dispel vaccination concerns have failed to have long-lasting effects.
Here, we use observations made during a small study in a rural area in a southeastern state to demonstrate how a shift away from analyzing vaccination skepticism as a national issue with a global remedy reveals the nuances in vaccination sentiments based on locality. Instead of seeing antivaccinationists as a distinct public based on statistical commonalities, we argue that examining vaccination beliefs and practices at the local level offers a fuller picture of the contextualized nature of vaccination decisions within the psychosocial spaces of families. A view of vaccination that emphasizes the local public, rather than a globally conceived antivaccination public, enables medical humanists and rhetoricians to offer important contributions to improving communications about vaccinations in clinical settings.
Dissertation: "Conscientious Object-ion: Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Medical Controversy"
Outstanding Dissertation Award (Social Science, Business, Education, and Humanities), Virginia Tech, 2013
Defended: April 25, 2013
Abstract:
Vaccination is power—power to prevent disease, power to shape populations, power to define sickness and health, and power to compel scientific beliefs into the bodies of people around the globe. It is unsurprising, therefore, that vaccinations have garnered centuries of dissent. Specifically, the conscience—the parent or patient’s perceived right to make vaccination decisions based on personal perceptions of acceptable risks—has been used since vaccination’s inception as a rationale for individual rights to refuse vaccines in the face of the very public health goals that vaccinations aim to achieve.
Existing studies of vaccine disputes in medical literature have understood vaccine questions to be a problem of scientific knowledge or literacy, claiming largely that vaccine skepticism arises from a lack of proper comprehension or understanding of the scientific and medical bases for vaccination or statistical evidence proving vaccines are safe and effective. Studies of vaccination controversy in social science, communications, and historical literatures have largely examined the role that alternative notions of risk valuation, sources of trusted health information (such as preferring the advice of friends and neighbors to doctors), or conceptions of uncertainty have played in largely parental decision making about childhood vaccinations. Despite these extensive studies of vaccine sentiment, vaccine skepticism and refusal remains a small, though significant, voice in public debate.
This dissertation examines vaccine discourses as object-oriented rhetorics—as rhetorics shaped and defined by the physicality of the vaccine’s operation—as a way of re-conceptualizing the vaccine debate. Using object-oriented theories from computer programming, philosophy, and rhetoric, this research examines the professional and public voices that make up contemporary vaccine controversy. Through three data sets, including interviews with physicians, parent discourses produced on the Internet, and survey responses from young adults, this dissertation observes that vaccines function as objects that have multiple, coexisting operations for different actors across the medical system. Consequently, vaccination controversy can be conceptualized not as accurate versus inaccurate understandings of science or as a conflict of perspectives, but instead as a by-product of multiple ontologies of vaccines at work under competing disease exigencies.
Outstanding Dissertation Award (Social Science, Business, Education, and Humanities), Virginia Tech, 2013
Defended: April 25, 2013
Abstract:
Vaccination is power—power to prevent disease, power to shape populations, power to define sickness and health, and power to compel scientific beliefs into the bodies of people around the globe. It is unsurprising, therefore, that vaccinations have garnered centuries of dissent. Specifically, the conscience—the parent or patient’s perceived right to make vaccination decisions based on personal perceptions of acceptable risks—has been used since vaccination’s inception as a rationale for individual rights to refuse vaccines in the face of the very public health goals that vaccinations aim to achieve.
Existing studies of vaccine disputes in medical literature have understood vaccine questions to be a problem of scientific knowledge or literacy, claiming largely that vaccine skepticism arises from a lack of proper comprehension or understanding of the scientific and medical bases for vaccination or statistical evidence proving vaccines are safe and effective. Studies of vaccination controversy in social science, communications, and historical literatures have largely examined the role that alternative notions of risk valuation, sources of trusted health information (such as preferring the advice of friends and neighbors to doctors), or conceptions of uncertainty have played in largely parental decision making about childhood vaccinations. Despite these extensive studies of vaccine sentiment, vaccine skepticism and refusal remains a small, though significant, voice in public debate.
This dissertation examines vaccine discourses as object-oriented rhetorics—as rhetorics shaped and defined by the physicality of the vaccine’s operation—as a way of re-conceptualizing the vaccine debate. Using object-oriented theories from computer programming, philosophy, and rhetoric, this research examines the professional and public voices that make up contemporary vaccine controversy. Through three data sets, including interviews with physicians, parent discourses produced on the Internet, and survey responses from young adults, this dissertation observes that vaccines function as objects that have multiple, coexisting operations for different actors across the medical system. Consequently, vaccination controversy can be conceptualized not as accurate versus inaccurate understandings of science or as a conflict of perspectives, but instead as a by-product of multiple ontologies of vaccines at work under competing disease exigencies.
Book Project: Vaccination Controversy in Public and Professional Context
Currently under review, this book project examines vaccination controversy through a material rhetorical lens, arguing that material rhetorics shape and constrain human action in ways that complicate persuasion and facilitate controversy. Vaccination itself is a material practice (involving needles, serums, and related equipment to facilitate their administration), as are the diseases vaccinations protect against, the bodies vaccinations act upon, and the spaces in which vaccinations occur. The work in this book maintains that looking at the controversy not as a series of arguments that keep clashing but instead as series of material with their own rhetorics that create the conditions for discord shifts our understanding of the persuasive options available to human actors who might aim to persuade in this context.
As a result, vaccine controversy offers a unique case for researchers in the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) to consider that allows us to better understand the real-world implications of material rhetorics. The analysis in each chapter examines how material rhetorics impact exigencies across the controversy, the discourses that are produced by actors, and what the possibilities are for persuasion (and for the persuasive tactics rhetoricians of health and medicine might create or recommend) when intervening in a situation so imbued with material.
As a result, vaccine controversy offers a unique case for researchers in the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) to consider that allows us to better understand the real-world implications of material rhetorics. The analysis in each chapter examines how material rhetorics impact exigencies across the controversy, the discourses that are produced by actors, and what the possibilities are for persuasion (and for the persuasive tactics rhetoricians of health and medicine might create or recommend) when intervening in a situation so imbued with material.
Vaccination Research Group
The Vaccination Research Group (VRG) at Virginia Tech is a multi-disciplinary research group that investigates issues into historical and contemporary vaccine debates. I am currently a faculty affiliate member of the VRG at Virginia Tech.
We are currently conducting a study on vaccination practices during a pertussis outbreak in a small, rural community. Please contact me if you would like to learn more or are interested in participating in this project.
We are currently conducting a study on vaccination practices during a pertussis outbreak in a small, rural community. Please contact me if you would like to learn more or are interested in participating in this project.
Selected Presentations
“Vaccination and the Health Belief Model: A Rhetorical Approach to Vaccine Controversy, Polio, and the 1976 National Influenza Immunization Program.” Presented at the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Conference. San Francisco, CA, October 2012. With James Colgrove (Discussant), Robert Johnston, and Elena Conis. Link to paper.
Working out of the Health Belief Model’s concepts of severity and susceptibility, this conference presentation proposes approaching disease from a rhetorical perspective. Using concepts from rhetorical studies, rhetorical situation and rhetorical ecology, this paper examines the discourses circulated about disease during two mass vaccination programs: those in 1955 against polio and the 1976 swine flu vaccination program. I argue that contextual elements, both scientific and social, shaped the materiality of the popular discourses about disease, illuminating the different rates of vaccination receptiveness in these programs. These historical examples offer lessons on the ways that severity and susceptibility may be understood in cultural contexts in future mass vaccination efforts
“The Persuasive Appeal of Vaccine Refusal: The Antivaccination Movement in 21st Century America.” The Sixth Annual Graduate Student Research Forum. Richmond, VA, February 2011. Link to poster.
This poster was presented at the Sixth Annual Graduate Student Research Forum. Intended for a general audience of legislators, legislative aides, and the general public. This poster offers a general outline of the work of the Vaccination Research Group in framing and understanding vaccination controversy in its current iteration in the United States.
Working out of the Health Belief Model’s concepts of severity and susceptibility, this conference presentation proposes approaching disease from a rhetorical perspective. Using concepts from rhetorical studies, rhetorical situation and rhetorical ecology, this paper examines the discourses circulated about disease during two mass vaccination programs: those in 1955 against polio and the 1976 swine flu vaccination program. I argue that contextual elements, both scientific and social, shaped the materiality of the popular discourses about disease, illuminating the different rates of vaccination receptiveness in these programs. These historical examples offer lessons on the ways that severity and susceptibility may be understood in cultural contexts in future mass vaccination efforts
“The Persuasive Appeal of Vaccine Refusal: The Antivaccination Movement in 21st Century America.” The Sixth Annual Graduate Student Research Forum. Richmond, VA, February 2011. Link to poster.
This poster was presented at the Sixth Annual Graduate Student Research Forum. Intended for a general audience of legislators, legislative aides, and the general public. This poster offers a general outline of the work of the Vaccination Research Group in framing and understanding vaccination controversy in its current iteration in the United States.
In my book project (in progress), I examine how vaccination controversy operates as a set of rhetorics in the public sphere. Drawing upon data from interviews with physicians, surveys with parents and young adults, analysis of news and internet publications, and scientific and popular publications written by doctors and vaccine experts, the work in this book examines vaccination as a public issue with multiple, complex facets. In this book, I use intersecting rhetorical concepts of materiality, rhetorical situation, and exigence to build a paradigm for understanding controversy as more than an issue of scientific literacy, and use theories from professional communication to reconcile communicative paths moving forward.
Professional and Technical Communication Research Projects and Groups
In addition to the work I currently do on the rhetoric of science, medicine, and vaccination, I am also actively involved in research and service projects related to professional and technical writing and rhetoric in the public sphere. These current and past research and service projects are outlined below.
Current Research Projects
The Rhetoric of Proposal Writing: Implementation, Ethics, and Ideology in the Technical Communication Classroom.
In this project, I am analyzing how proposal writing is taught in the technical communications classroom. This study of textbooks, research publications, and real-world practices aims to illuminate the current focus of proposal instruction and offer new approaches to proposal instruction in technical communication.
If you are interested in this research or are a proposal writer or manager who would like to participate in an interview, please contact me for more information.
In this project, I am analyzing how proposal writing is taught in the technical communications classroom. This study of textbooks, research publications, and real-world practices aims to illuminate the current focus of proposal instruction and offer new approaches to proposal instruction in technical communication.
If you are interested in this research or are a proposal writer or manager who would like to participate in an interview, please contact me for more information.
Student Groups
Society for Technical Communication (STC), George Mason University Chapter www.stc-gmu.org
In the fall of 2014, I founded a George Mason chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and now serve as the faculty advisor for this group. This group aids in professional development for students and alumni interested in technical communication at George Mason University.
If you are a current student, prospective student, or alum and are interested in joining the George Mason chapter of STC, please contact me for more information.
In the fall of 2014, I founded a George Mason chapter of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and now serve as the faculty advisor for this group. This group aids in professional development for students and alumni interested in technical communication at George Mason University.
If you are a current student, prospective student, or alum and are interested in joining the George Mason chapter of STC, please contact me for more information.
Past Research Projects and Publications
“The Moral Appeal of Environmental Discourses: The Implication of Ethical Rhetorics.” Environmental Communication 6.2 (Summer 2012): 212-232. With Clare J. Dannenberg, Bernice L. Hausman, and Katrina M. Powell. DOI: 10.1080/175242032.2012.668856
Abstract: Environmental sustainability demands civic action through both changes in individual and community behaviors in addition to national and international agreements and cooperation. In moral appeals to the environment, individuals are often called upon to behave in ‘‘good’’ ways—to reduce, reuse, recycle—to ‘‘save the planet.’’ Behavior, and our attitudes about it, is therefore an important component to ongoing sustainability efforts.
This pilot study, conducted in Fall 2009, brings together research methods in sociolinguistics and rhetorical studies to examine the discourses that students produce when describing issues and practices concerning sustainability. In interviews with 15 students in an earth sustainability general education core, our study found that students were knowledgeable about environmental issues and expressed intentions to engage in sustainable behaviors. Yet, students produced accommodating discourses when addressing competing demands on their time and resources. The sociolinguistic analysis of interview data shows a disassociation from environmental issues at the symbolic level of language use. The rhetorical analysis shows that this disassociation manifests as guilt, largely because when choosing between various moral appeals in their social context, students are left without tangible direction for engaging in new sustainable behaviors.
“Emerging Genres in Professional Writing: Corporate Rhetoric and New Media.” May 2007. Link to paper.
My master’s thesis, completed in May 2007, describes the current position and use of New Media texts by corporations, focusing on the use of blogs, podcasts, and online video as a means for engaging audience and attracting consumers. By reconceptualizing these texts as genres and viewing them rhetorically, this thesis argues that increased attention and study within the academic field of Professional Writing could highlight opportunities for Professional Writers to improve these workplace texts and could lead to better preparation for New Media communications in the teaching of professional writers.
A review of existing literature in prominent Professional Writing journals [Journal of Business and Technical Communication (JBTC), Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ)] revealed the absence of New Media genres in present Professional Writing scholarship; discussion of the role of rhetorical analysis for electronic texts argued for the importance of rhetoric in New Media; and a genre analysis of a sample of corporate blogs, podcasts, and online video established the distinct audience relationship each of these texts create.
This thesis was intended as a reference and resource for Professional Writing scholars and academics, to persuade them that the role these genres play in corporate Professional Writing environments is expanding, and therefore deserves increased scholarly attention. Since the completion of this thesis, increased attention to New Media in both Professional Writing scholarship and textbooks as increased substantially, and therefore now functions as a snapshot of the past development of scholarly interest in this subject area.
Abstract: Environmental sustainability demands civic action through both changes in individual and community behaviors in addition to national and international agreements and cooperation. In moral appeals to the environment, individuals are often called upon to behave in ‘‘good’’ ways—to reduce, reuse, recycle—to ‘‘save the planet.’’ Behavior, and our attitudes about it, is therefore an important component to ongoing sustainability efforts.
This pilot study, conducted in Fall 2009, brings together research methods in sociolinguistics and rhetorical studies to examine the discourses that students produce when describing issues and practices concerning sustainability. In interviews with 15 students in an earth sustainability general education core, our study found that students were knowledgeable about environmental issues and expressed intentions to engage in sustainable behaviors. Yet, students produced accommodating discourses when addressing competing demands on their time and resources. The sociolinguistic analysis of interview data shows a disassociation from environmental issues at the symbolic level of language use. The rhetorical analysis shows that this disassociation manifests as guilt, largely because when choosing between various moral appeals in their social context, students are left without tangible direction for engaging in new sustainable behaviors.
“Emerging Genres in Professional Writing: Corporate Rhetoric and New Media.” May 2007. Link to paper.
My master’s thesis, completed in May 2007, describes the current position and use of New Media texts by corporations, focusing on the use of blogs, podcasts, and online video as a means for engaging audience and attracting consumers. By reconceptualizing these texts as genres and viewing them rhetorically, this thesis argues that increased attention and study within the academic field of Professional Writing could highlight opportunities for Professional Writers to improve these workplace texts and could lead to better preparation for New Media communications in the teaching of professional writers.
A review of existing literature in prominent Professional Writing journals [Journal of Business and Technical Communication (JBTC), Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ)] revealed the absence of New Media genres in present Professional Writing scholarship; discussion of the role of rhetorical analysis for electronic texts argued for the importance of rhetoric in New Media; and a genre analysis of a sample of corporate blogs, podcasts, and online video established the distinct audience relationship each of these texts create.
This thesis was intended as a reference and resource for Professional Writing scholars and academics, to persuade them that the role these genres play in corporate Professional Writing environments is expanding, and therefore deserves increased scholarly attention. Since the completion of this thesis, increased attention to New Media in both Professional Writing scholarship and textbooks as increased substantially, and therefore now functions as a snapshot of the past development of scholarly interest in this subject area.