Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Give Me A Choice: Perceptions Of Freedom And The Anti-Vax Movement In Maine, Louisa Goldman

Honors Theses

While vaccination has proven to be an incredibly effective method of disease prevention, the growing ‘anti-vax’ movement threatens the population-level benefits conferred by widespread immunization. Recent findings indicate that anti-vax beliefs are not, as had been previously assumed, necessarily the result of scientific illiteracy but rather, are likely produced by intertwining social and situational contexts. With these considerations in mind, the goal of this study was to identify potential motivations underlying anti-vax behavior by performing a deep examination of anti-vax rhetoric, coupled with demographic and situational analyses. I focused specifically on the anti-vax community in Maine, with a special interest …