This essay also considers whether inoculation could expand the scope of conventional image repair efforts, a way to not only repair a challenge, post-hoc, but also to confer resistance to future challenges, preemptively. 

Josh COMPTON

Benoit’s image repair typology outlines reactive approaches to attacks; McGuire’s inoculation theory lays out a proactive strategy. This essay explores the potential of combining image repair with inoculation theory to design preemptive image protection that features the nuance of the image repair typology and inoculation theory’s established preemptive efficacy. A distinction is made between image repair and image prepare. Image prepare acknowledges the chronology of rhetorical attacks and, by definition, encompasses a strategy that occurs before an attack is launched. Further, this essay clarifies boundary conditions of image prepare; modeling boundary conditions of inoculation theory, image prepare assumes that a positive image perception is in place prior to the messaging strategy and prior to the strong attack against an image. This essay also explores how features of inoculation (the addition of threat in general and a specific forewarning in particular) interact with conventional image repair strategies (e.g., denial, bolstering). Finally, future research directions are suggested to test propositions advanced in this essay. 

Compton, J. (2012, November). Image prepare: Image repair, inoculation theory, and anticipated attacks [paper presentation]. National Communication Association, Orlando, FL, United States.