Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered: The Allure of Misinformation in a Postmodern Healthcare Age

Misinformation is publicized as the next big public health crisis. Its exploitative nature allows it to both embed in seemingly legitimate facets of public discourse and disrupt public health initiatives. It collectively influences individual health decisions through a strategy of personal, message-oriented and emotional narrative. Utilizing the lens of vaccines, specifically the controversy surrounding the HPV vaccine in North Carolina, this study illuminates on health misinformation as an instigator of public conversation, vaccine hesitancy, and its subversion of evidence-based authority. This study provides a comparative analysis of both public and legislative perspectives, revealing a mismatch between the information needs of the public and the information written into state vaccine law. The findings offer a preliminary step towards understanding how misinformation persists in the public sphere and affords insights into how public health can evolve to better encourage autonomous health decision-making, minimizing the influence misinformation holds over its audience.