BibTeX

@article{hammarlin-etal-2023-covid-329784,
	title        = {COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Matters of Life and Death.},
	abstract     = {In this article, hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccinations is investigated as a phenomenon  touching  upon  existential  questions.  We  argue  that  it encompasses  ideas  of  illness  and  health,  and  also  of  dying  and  fear  of suffering. Building on a specific strand within anti-vaccination studies, we conjecture that vaccine hesitancy is, to some extent, reasonable, and that this scepticism should be studied with compassion. Through a mixed methods approach, vaccine hesitancy, as it is being expressed in a Swedish digital open forum, is investigated and understood as, on the one hand, a perceived need of protecting one’s body from techno-scientific experiments, and thus the risk of becoming a victim of medicine itself. On the other hand, the community members  express  what  we  call  a  tacit  belief  in  modern  medicine by demonstrating their own “expert” pandemic knowledge. The analysis also shows how the COVID-19 pandemic triggers memories of another pandemic, namely the swine flu in 2009–2010, and what we term a medical crisis that occurred then, due to a vaccine thatcaused a rare but severe side effect in Sweden and elsewhere.},
	journal      = {Journal of Digital Social Research (JDSR)},
	author       = {Hammarlin, MIa-Marie and Kokkinakis, Dimitrios and Borin, Lars},
	year         = {2023},
	volume       = {5},
	number       = {4},
	pages        = {31--61},
}