Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management

What can distinguish inoculation theory as it relates to character assassination is, foremost, its timing. Conventional inoculation is a preemptive strategy, a way to prepare for an attack before it occurs. Research into preemptive measures to thwart the attack – the would-be assassination – is an important part of character assassination and reputation management scholarship, and inoculation theory is, I argue here, a particularly promising theory to guide such work.

Josh Compton

https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315150178

Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management

This chapter offers a concentrated look at inoculation theory and character assassination, with special attention to 1) how inoculation messaging might be used to protect against character assassination and 2) how inoculation messaging might function as character assassination – both implicitly (i.e., source derogation effects of conventional inoculation treatments) and explicitly (i.e., inoculation messages as character attacks). This chapter also offers image prepare – a synthesis of image repair and inoculation theories – as a way to protect against character assassination, drawing on the proactive timing of inoculation and the argumentation strategies and tactics of image repair.

Compton, J. (2020). Inoculation against/as character assassination. In S.A. Samoilenko, M. Icks, J. Keohane, & E. Shiraev. (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of character assassination (pp. 25-35). London, New York, NY: Routledge.