News Corp Australia recently initiated a campaign to pressure the Australian government to amend its childhood vaccination policies. In 2015, the government legislated amendments in accord with the campaign’s demands despite criticism from experts in children’s health and vaccine advocacy, research and surveillance. A narrative review was conducted of newsprint articles which featured during the media campaign between 2013 and 2015. Findings indicate that the campaign focused on moral attributes that stigmatised conscientious objector parents as ‘anti-vaxers’, baby-killers, and hippies and loons. The decision to change vaccination legislation is compatible with the creation of a media-manufactured moral panic concerning conscientious objector parents. When deconstructing moral panics, a careful analysis of the roles of different media sectors is important. The alliance between News Corp Australia and Australian politicians to introduce new vaccination legislation represents an innovation in health policy formation which illustrates how expert opinion on public health policies can be sidelined.

PAGES
137 – 154
DOI
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Issues
Also in this issue:
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Agnes Horvath, Magic and the Will to Science: A Political Anthropology of Liminal Technicality
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Gibson Burrell, Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, Geoff Lightfoot, Simon Lilley and Friends, Shaping for Mediocrity: The Cancellation of Critical Thinking at our Universities
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Bas de Boer, How Scientific Instruments Speak: Postphenomenology and Technological Mediations in Neuroscientific Practice
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Bjørn Lomborg, False Alarm
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How does innovation arise in the bicycle sector? The users’ role and their betrayal in the case of the ‘gravel bike’