Here, an argument was advanced that taking a long historical view—in this case, considering satirical health messaging of the late 19th century—offered potential insight into modern health messaging, and used the classic theory of resistance to influence, inoculation theory, to explicate what strategies were (and were not) reflected in the work.
JOSH COMPTON & BRIAN KAYLOR
Abstract: “The Devil and Vaccination,” a satirical take on Samuel Coleridge and Robert Southey’s poem, “The Devil’s Thoughts,” appeared in the July 1879 issue of The Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review—a publication that published vaccine-skeptical writings. The poem told the story of the Devil visiting a prison, encountering several people including a father imprisoned for refusing to have one of his children vaccinated. In the present rhetorical analysis, “The Devil and Vaccination” was viewed through the lens of inoculation theory—a theory more commonly used to guide a social scientific approach to the study of resistance to influence (i.e., experimentally tested messaging effects). In this unique conglomeration of religious and health rhetoric, the poem seemed to reject both inoculation as a medical strategy and inoculation as a rhetorical strategy.
Compton, J., & Kaylor, B. (2022). The Devil and Vaccination and inoculation theory: Health communication, parody, and anti-vaccination rhetorical strategy. Journal of Communication and Religion 45(3), 37-51.
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