Vaccin eller ej? : En litteraturstudie

Ever since vaccinations were discovered in the 19th century there have been those who have opposed them and have argued that they are either ineffective or actually more detrimental than the epidemics they allegedly remedy. Sometimes these anti-vaccine campaigns have been quite successful. Approximately 4% of all Swedes claim that they have little, or hardly any, confidence at all in scientists and, approximately, 20% claimed that they had no plan what so ever to get a vaccine against the swine-flu during 2009. The purpose with this thesis was to study how media, risk perception, religion, conspiracy theories and education affects the perceptions and the beliefs regarding vaccines through a literary study. The results showed that a biased, and sometimes false, perception of risks and side-effects of vaccines occurs as a consequence of anecdotal case studies being spread by media. It was also shown that the attempts from society to convince people to take the vaccine by means of providing facts, had very little to do with whether the individuals would be persuaded or not. What, however, seemed to be important in order to persuade individuals to vaccinate, or not, was whether they experience that they are treated with respect, openness, and objectivity.Nyckelord: vaccine, conspiracy theory, risk communication, mental vaccine, knowledge, trustValiderat; 20110114 (anonymous