"Wake up and think of the children!": The ambivalent relationship between motherhood, femininity and anti-vaccination

Anti-vaccination sentiments have grown strong in public discourse in recent decades, as online environment has proved to be fertile setting for spreading conspiracy theories and false news. The study sheds light onto a pressing problem of tackling false news on social media, providing valuable insights into the arguments, fears, emotions, and views of people, especially mothers, struggling to link seemingly conflicting concepts of “good mothering”, anti-vaccination and properly “doing gender” online. Research employing discourse analysis and netnography approach to Facebook threads that are discussing arguments concerning vaccination of children reveals a strong anti-vaccination discourse on social media targeting mothers using notions of traditional femininity, idealized motherhood, and visions of ‘natural’ immunity to paint vaccination as a poor choice for a responsible mother.