Vaccine Opposition at the Age of the Web 2.0: A Study on Virtual Communities, On-line Participation and the Cultural Perception of Risk

我的研究集中在Web2.0背景下的反疫苗交流，纳入了风险感知和政策制定的更广泛领域的研究。特别是，我想调查在线参与如何影响个人身份的形成，并有助于个人风险认知和公共卫生政策的形成。换句话说，我的研究问的是，参与虚拟网络社区是否会导致对风险的估计偏离科学界通过官方沟通渠道提供的风险，以及这可能产生什么社会法律影响。我计划依靠一个不同的理论框架，包括克里斯托弗·凯尔蒂对“递归公众”的分析，认为互联网中介环境可能允许交流以最高效率在整个社会传播，使新的关系网络的出现成为可能，其关键特征反映了支撑其发展的技术负担。我还建议，反疫苗接种可被解释为一种社会制度，其本身由一系列通讯组成，这些通讯的存在不一定取决于相关通讯代码的内在有效性。这一点很重要，以便了解地理上分散的社区是如何与我们在社会背景下感知自己身份的方式一起发展的。

My research focuses on anti-vaccine communication in the context of Web 2.0, incorporating the broader area of studies on risk perception and policymaking. In particular, I would like to investigate how on-line participation may influence the making of personal identities and contribute to the shaping of individual risk perceptions and public health policy. Put differently, my research asks whether taking part in a virtual networked community may lead to estimations of risk that stray from those provided by the scientific community through official channels of communication, and what the socio-legal repercussions of this may be.I plan to rely on a diverse theoretical framework, including Christopher Kelty's analysis of 'recursive publics' to suggest that an Internet-mediated environment may allow the spreading of communication throughout society with the utmost efficiency, enabling the emergence of new relationship networks whose key features reflect the technological affordances that underpin their development. I will also suggest that anti-vaccinationism may be interpreted as a social system in its own merit, consisting of a set of communications whose existence does not necessarily depend on the inherent validity of the relevant communication code. This is important in order to understand how geographically diffused communities are co-developing alongside the way we perceive our identities in a social context.