My research has demonstrated that, in contrast to other studies and approaches, concerns about vaccinations and autism only make up a small portion of what parents are actually concerned about. Parents are worried about the long-term effectiveness of vaccines, the health impacts of obtaining multiple vaccinations at once, the timing of vaccines, and the relative risks associated with some diseases versus the benefits of vaccination. If these parents are going to be convinced to vaccinate or have their concerns more effectively addressed, those who work with them must possess a better understanding of what contributes to their worries. We know this because of rhetoric’s basic precept—the art of seeing the available means of persuasion requires that the speaker understand, fully, what an audience’s concerns are so that those concerns can be modified. In this case, the Nyhan study showed that evidence about vaccines and autism did nothing to address skepticisms about vaccines, and when we consider that, perhaps those skepticisms were unrelated to autism in the first place. Moreover, adult patients have concerns about vaccines too—in 2010, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) expanded its guidance for flu vaccination to officially recommend flu vaccine for everyone over the age of 6 months old, including otherwise healthy adults. Adding this new population to vaccination requirements has given rise to new arguments about vaccine efficacy among adults, the logistics required to vaccinate adults who do not have easy access to health systems, and the ethics of possible penalties associated with adult voluntary nonvaccination. In talking to and working with doctors as well, there is wide variability in their motivations and main reasons for encouraging vaccinations among their patients, which can inform communications tactics and shape vaccination rates in a variety of ways. These findings have offered new forms of understanding about why vaccines remain the source of controversy for some members of the public, even though there is substantial science to prove that vaccines are not linked to autism. As this issue continues to grow and shift, rhetorical research can uniquely investigate and account for changes to the issue through its attention to understanding various perspectives and using language to modify situations.
T H E R H E T O R I C O F C A M P U S S E X U A L A S S A U LT In a new project I began this year with Dr. Bonnie Stabile in the School for Policy, Government, and International Affairs (SPGIA) and Lourdes Fernandez (with the assistance of a Provost’s Multidisciplinary Research Grant awarded in August 2015), we are working to apply the same principles of rhetoric to examine another complex social issue: the problem of campus sexual assault. Campus sexual assault is yet another problem that defies easy solutions and impacts many facets of the public; despite evidence that sexual assault is widespread on many campuses, some members of the public continue to dispute the scope and nature of the problem. Possible solutions appear difficult to define and nearly impossible to implement, and various actors—from student activists to campus administrators, to policy-makers at the Federal level—are all trying to improve the situation by using a wide range of tactics, each with varying degrees of success.
14 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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