Communicating care : the contradictions of HPV vaccination campaigns

In Communicating Care: The Contradictions of HPV Vaccination Campaigns, Lisa Lindén examines three state-funded human papillomavirus (HPV) campaigns in Sweden. She shows that they include and articulate a range of different forms of care that are not limited to just asking people to "take care of themselves" or "care for others". Care is instead approached as a multilayered, contextual and contingent phenomenon with a heterogeneity of human and nonhuman components.

In the study we encounter county council professionals, who try to communicate care to girls and their relatives, as well as material devices, such as an "HPV app", a Facebook campaign site and a vaccination trailer. Campaign media, interviews, and textual cancer narratives are analyzed using a feminist science and technology studies (STS) approach. The study gives new insights and a nuanced appreciation of the shifting and contradictory forms of care involved in public health and HPV vaccination campaigns.

Lisa Lindén is a researcher at the Department of Thematic Studies - Technology and Social Change at Linköping University in Sweden. This is her PhD thesis.