Organizing Doubt: The Organizational, Financial, and Cultural Foundations of Vaccine Criticism

• In Event: Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 12: Trust, Mistrust, and Distrust

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy is often explained through individual mistrust or macro-level crises of scientific authority, yet these accounts overlook the organizational infrastructures that sustain vaccine-critical claims over time. This project develops an organizational and cultural analysis of vaccine criticism, asking who produces vaccine-critical knowledge, how they are organized, and what financial and discursive resources enable their influence. Drawing on longitudinal data on advocacy groups, think tanks, donors, and alternative health networks since the 1980s, the study maps inter-organizational ties, funding flows, and cultural frames within vaccine-critical mobilization. By shifting attention from individual attitudes to meso-level infrastructures of doubt, the project offers a new account of how skepticism toward vaccines is institutionally produced and sustained.

Author

• Danyang Li, UC Berkeley