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Law In The Service Of Misinformation: How Anti-Vaccine Groups Use The Law To Help Spin A False Narrative, Dorit R. Reiss, Viridiana Ordonez
Law In The Service Of Misinformation: How Anti-Vaccine Groups Use The Law To Help Spin A False Narrative, Dorit R. Reiss, Viridiana Ordonez
Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy
Social movements use legal tools to create narratives. Those narratives support social agendas which certain movements leverage to mislead their followers and potential followers. In this Article, we examine one influential anti-vaccine organization, the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), that uses its far-reaching platform to create false narratives around legal action. Again and again, this anti-vaccine group misrepresented both the legal and the factual meanings of court decisions, settlements, and other legal actions to create a narrative to galvanize its followers and influence newcomers. ICAN filed lawsuits that make anti-vaccine arguments—even when the legal framework did not fit doing so—and …