Paper short abstract:

Between governmental measures for managing the COVID-19 pandemic and Constitutional Court’s decisions delegitimizing such measures in Romania, discursive strategies of anti-vaxx actors aim to instill resistance to medical expertise and political decisions.

Paper long abstract:

The late modern society has placed a great emphasis on predictability and the power it gave us to cope with risks. However, recent events caused by the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted social life and undermined our reliance on predictability, leaving us prey to the uncertainty. Health risks are increasingly pressing, and predictions regarding the availability of an anti-coronavirus vaccine are rather discouraging. Under these circumstances, anti-vaccination actors denounce experts’ manipulation of information, governmental policies of surveillance and control, and the politically and commercially profitable haste of the current process of developing the vaccine. Through a content analysis of Facebook posts from a Romanian anti-vaccination page, I discuss the role of imagined futures in justifying anti-vaccination stances. As opposing mandatory vaccination in particular and official medical expertise in general are positioned both as an individual act and a political act, its meaning is sustained in a narrative that links past, present, and plausible futures. I observe a shift in discursive strategies made by users during 2020, after the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the governmental measures for managing the pandemic. I discuss the role of this shift in anti-vaccination and anti-coronavirus instigations and also in valuing the political efficacy of resistance to official medical expertise.