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Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance

This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of govern...

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Autores principales: Attwell, Katie, Harper, Tauel, Rizzi, Marco, Taylor, Jeannette, Casigliani, Virginia, Quattrone, Filippo, Lopalco, PierLuigi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8203395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34149101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11077-021-09427-1
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author Attwell, Katie
Harper, Tauel
Rizzi, Marco
Taylor, Jeannette
Casigliani, Virginia
Quattrone, Filippo
Lopalco, PierLuigi
author_facet Attwell, Katie
Harper, Tauel
Rizzi, Marco
Taylor, Jeannette
Casigliani, Virginia
Quattrone, Filippo
Lopalco, PierLuigi
author_sort Attwell, Katie
collection PubMed
description This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country.
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spelling pubmed-82033952021-06-15 Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance Attwell, Katie Harper, Tauel Rizzi, Marco Taylor, Jeannette Casigliani, Virginia Quattrone, Filippo Lopalco, PierLuigi Policy Sci Research Article This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country. Springer US 2021-06-15 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8203395/ /pubmed/34149101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11077-021-09427-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Research Article
Attwell, Katie
Harper, Tauel
Rizzi, Marco
Taylor, Jeannette
Casigliani, Virginia
Quattrone, Filippo
Lopalco, PierLuigi
Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance
title Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance
title_full Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance
title_fullStr Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance
title_full_unstemmed Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance
title_short Inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in Italy’s vaccination governance
title_sort inaction, under-reaction action and incapacity: communication breakdown in italy’s vaccination governance
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8203395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34149101
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11077-021-09427-1
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