The Eye of the Beholder: Participation and Impact in Telecommunications De(Regulation)

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) addressed both pricing deregulation and universal service in telecommunications during the last decade. Both decisions had a similar cast of characters and similarly elaborate processes. In relation to price deregulation, the utilities\u27 positions were accepted on every issue addressed; in relation to universal service, consumer organizations’ positions were accepted in about 60 percent of the issues. This article tells the story of how those decisions were made and examines the reasons for the difference in impact. The article examines and rejects an explanation of capture, accepts in part a focus on the influence of the commissioner in charge of the decision, and suggests that the most important factor in determining impact was the perceptions and expectations of CPUC commissioners and staff. This reminds us of the importance of agency personal and their profound impact on regulatory result

The COVID-19 Vaccine Dilemma

COVID-19 continues to lead to large numbers of deaths, harms, and financial costs. Without an effective vaccine, those will continue. The pressure to find a vaccine is high; and that pressure places a risk on the safeguards in place to assure that vaccines are safe and effective will be ignored. The United States has an extensive apparatus to oversee vaccine safety before and after licensing, including multiple federal committees and several monitoring systems, and that apparatus gave us, in 2020, an extraordinarily safe vaccine supply. This Article explains the different pressures that push for and against using the same apparatus for COVID-19 vaccines, including the extensive harms from the disease on one side and the need for a vaccine that is, in fact, safe and effective on the other. It examines the options for speeding up the process without sacrificing too much oversight. It examines which “shortcuts” are reasonable, which may be challenging, and which are bad ideas. Finally, it addresses three messaging challenges—overselling, under-sharing, and responding to misinformation—and suggests how to handle them

MISINFORMATION AND COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on our world cannot be overstated. One of its noticeable features was the prominence of misinformation generally, and anti-vaccine misinformation more specifically. This article provides a breakdown of the five major themes of antivaccine misinformation and the way they were used to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about COVID- 19 vaccines. Long before the pandemic, anti-vaccine activists argued using a five-part playbook. They argued that (1) vaccine preventable diseases were not really dangerous, (2) vaccines were dangerous and ineffective, (3) there were alternative treatments that were better than (dangerous and ineffective) vaccines, (4) there was a conspiracy to hide this information, and (5) the real issue is one of civil rights, not science. Their claims were based on misinformation before COVID-19, and anti-vaccine activists continued using the same themes, also based on misinformation, in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic created a moment of vulnerability that allowed anti-vaccine activists’ claims to have broader impact. By setting out the themes and tactics used by anti-vaccine activists and spelling out the factors that led to the moment of vulnerability during the pandemic, this article aims to arm legal actors—judges, lawyers, and scholars—with tools that would help identify anti-vaccine claims and tactics, and hopes to protect them from being misled

Law in the Service of Misinformation: How Anti-Vaccine Groups Use the Law to Help Spin a False Narrative

Social movements use legal tools to create narratives. Those narratives support social agendas which certain movements leverage to mislead their followers and potential followers. In this Article, we examine one influential anti-vaccine organization, the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), that uses its far-reaching platform to create false narratives around legal action. Again and again, this anti-vaccine group misrepresented both the legal and the factual meanings of court decisions, settlements, and other legal actions to create a narrative to galvanize its followers and influence newcomers. ICAN filed lawsuits that make anti-vaccine arguments—even when the legal framework did not fit doing so—and misrepresented the results. Most commonly in this category, while FOIA requests can only ask for documents and cannot ask queries, ICAN framed its frequent FOIA requests and subsequent lawsuits as if they were asking the agency to answer questions, rather than provide records. The group then presented the results to support one of its narratives—that vaccines cause autism—when the results did not, in fact, support such a narrative. This Article shows how legal tools advance disinformation and misinformation, creating a misleading, alternative reality

When Are Vaccine Mandates Appropriate?

Vaccine refusal is a serious public health problem, especially in the context of diseases with potential to spark global pandemics, such as Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This article examines whether and when compelling vaccination through mandates and criminalization, for example, are appropriate. It argues that some legal approaches are ethical when they preserve social stability, trust in government, therapeutic research opportunities, or when they diminish disease severity

Digging the Rabbit Hole, COVID-19 Edition: Anti-Vaccine Themes and the Discourse Around COVID-19

This article draws on a broadcast popular among the anti-vaccine community to map out six themes used by the broadcast to mislead viewers about COVID-19. The themes are the claim that “they” e government and pharma e are lying to you, claims that COVID-19 is an excuse to remove civil liberties, viewing everyone as an expert, claiming that science cannot save us, skewing the science, and a claim that “they” are out to harm the viewers. The article points out that similar themes are used to mislead followers with anti-vaccine information. It highlights the concern that these themes will not only mislead people who are already anti-vaccine about the pandemic, but may draw in people who are not anti-vaccine but are seeking information about COVID-19, and suggests some options for dealing with the misinformation. Scientists benefit from understanding these claims, as we are often tasked with ttals to this misinformation