Vax comm part 3: Can we persuade our way out of this pandemic?

TC Talk

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Short answer: Not entirely. But there is still a role for rhetoric. We talk about the book Vaccine Rhetorics by Heidi Lawrence, and how her theory of material exigence might apply to the COVID vaccine situation. We also discuss the potential of gamifying and “pre-bunking” to counteract medical misinformation. Stay to the end for bonus Schwarzenegger and Picard impressions by Benton.

Sources and further reading

Bitzer, L. F. (1992, 1968). The rhetorical situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1–14.
Diresta, R., & Goldberg, B. (2021, August 28). Prebunking Health Misinformation Tropes Can Stop Their Spread. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/story/prebunking-health-misinformation-tropes-can-stop-their-spread/
Inoculation Science—Games—Go Viral! (2021). Inoculation Science. Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://inoculation.science/inoculation-games/go-viral/
Lavin, T. B. (2021, October 5). Apocalypse Now [Substack newsletter]. The Sword and the Sandwich. https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/apocalypse-now
Lawrence, H. Y. (2020). Vaccine Rhetorics. Ohio State University Press.
Survivorship bias. (2021). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Survivorship_bias&oldid=1052247907
The Woolly Mammoth Revival. (n.d.). Retrieved November 4, 2021, from https://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/