Research
Methodology: policy valuography
Using what we refer to as multisited policy valuography, we investigate practices on five sites that are of particular relevance to vaccination. We study these sites in individual work packages (i) official policy settings (WP PROGRAM), (ii) primary care (WP CARE), (iii) pharmaceutical industry (WP PHARMA), (iv) scientific research (WP RESEARCH) and (v) social media (WP DIGITAL). We will thus examine a comprehensive range of valuation perspectives and associated forms of governance: those of policy officials, parents, pediatricians, industry actors, scientists, and participants in online debates.
WP Program
WP Program investigates how vaccines and vaccination are valued and evaluated in policymaking. We conduct interviews with representatives of Austrian ministries and public health institutions including the social security institutions. Furthermore, we analyze documents to learn more about how different evidence is assessed and different interests are aligned. We are particularly interested to learn how social or ethical values come to matter when vaccines are made into a valuable public good.
WP Research
WP research investigates what constitutes valuable scientific research and knowledge to researchers involved in the development of vaccines and related technologies. Drawing on interviews with researchers, funding bodies, university administrators as well as documents, we investigate what motivates their research and what role other governance actors play in this context.
WP Care
In WP Care, we are concerned with the role of values in parents’ decision-making regarding childhood vaccination. To understand what drives parents’ decisions, we draw on ethnographic observations in primary care settings and interviews with health care professionals and parents. Specifically, we focus on vaccines offered free of charge in the framework of the Austrian national immunization program. In this work package, Nora Hansl will be undertaking her PhD research at the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences.
WP Pharma
WP Pharma focuses on the valuation of vaccines by members of the pharmaceutical industry. First, we seek to investigate how pharmaceutical companies evaluate the worth of vaccines from a business perspective, as well as how they calculate, account for, and capitalize (on) the resulting values. More specifically, it asks how a vaccine — as a material entity with a finite usable life, as a patentable technology, and as a public good, — can be made into capital, that is, a legal property yielding calculable future income.
Second, since valuations change over time, it is important to address their history. For this purpose, WP PHARMA also looks at the emergence of “immunization economics” and the codification of an economic argument in favor of vaccination after World War II. By looking at the origins of the idea that “health is wealth”, we contribute to a better understanding of the role of economic expertise in this policy arena, and of the powerful appeal economic reasoning enjoys in contemporary political debates. Empirically, this project is based on a set of qualitative interviews and archival research.
WP Digital
In this work package, we use a range of digital methods to understand the role of social media and other digital spaces in vaccination practices. We will first delineate the discursive contours of the German language debate on vaccination quantitatively as well as qualitatively to better understand the perspectives of different communities (e.g. provaccine, antivaccine, neutral, inasmuch as these are distinguishable). Second, we examine parents’ discussions on the value of vaccination in online forums using qualitative analysis. In this workpackage, we collaborate with Sam Martin and Sam Vanderslott of the Oxford Vaccine Group.