Free choice in the making: Vaccine-related activism as an alternative form of citizenship during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The paper analyzes how free vax communities reframe health emergency during Covid-19 pandemic. We examined, through a digital ethnography on the main Italian free-vax online communities - Comilva, Corvelva and Movimento 3V – the public contestation of anti-Covid health policies by comparing their different styles of vaccine-related activism. Contesting health policy during pandemic was not just a matter of misinformation or related to the spreading of fake news, but actions and claims of free vax communities were based on specific processes of knowledge-making and biopolitics. The Science and Technology Studies (STS) framework, adopted throughout the analysis, provides the opportunity to review the vaccination controversies debate, by focusing on free vax public activities, aimed at counteracting mainstream knowledge and health policies adopted by the government to face the Covid-19 emergency. The analysis offers an entry point for understanding the nexus among the claims of free vax communities and the emerging idea of citizenship related to health, individual rights, and public participation in contemporary society

Free choice in the making: Vaccine-related activism as an alternative form of citizenship during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The paper analyzes how free vax communities reframe health emergency during Covid-19 pandemic. We examined, through a digital ethnography on the main Italian free-vax online communities - Comilva, Corvelva and Movimento 3V – the public contestation of anti-Covid health policies by comparing their different styles of vaccine-related activism. Contesting health policy during pandemic was not just a matter of misinformation or related to the spreading of fake news, but actions and claims of free vax communities were based on specific processes of knowledge-making and biopolitics. The Science and Technology Studies (STS) framework, adopted throughout the analysis, provides the opportunity to review the vaccination controversies debate, by focusing on free vax public activities, aimed at counteracting mainstream knowledge and health policies adopted by the government to face the Covid-19 emergency. The analysis offers an entry point for understanding the nexus among the claims of free vax communities and the emerging idea of citizenship related to health, individual rights, and public participation in contemporary society

You definitely need a mastectomy if you are mutated! Experiencing breast cancer among genetic responsibilities and risk-reducing practices

Genetics and predictive tests are changing breast cancer prevention, both in terms of subjective experience and risk reducing practices. The aim of the article is to address two main research questions: What does the genetic information mean for subjects? How does prevention and risk-reducing practice change in relation to genetic information? Through qualitative research on breast cancer experience conducted in Italy at the National Cancer Institute of Rome, it was possible to answer these questions by including women who received a genetic response for the BRCA mutation. What emerges is that the genetic information shapes riskreducing practice, fostering genetic responsibilities within the family. This seems to encourage woman to perceive radical risk-reducing strategies such, as a mastectomy or oophorectomy, as the main – and often mandatory – solution to face breast cancer risk thereby underestimating the health risks and psychological burden involved in preventive surgery