A reversal mirror of the responsible subject. Chronicles of Italian mainstream representations of anti-vaxxers

While the number of reasons for not getting vaccinated is hard to list, the word No Vax (anti-vaxxer) has become a central signifier in the Italian mainstream media’s lexicon of the crisis management of the pandemic. Since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, Italian media outlets depicted anti-vaxxers as a unitarian subject. These representations, this paper ventures, articulate implicit discourses on anti-vaxxer specular reflection: the responsible citizen. The snapshot analysis provocatively proposes a discourse-governmental-theoretical analysis of selected journalistic representations of anti-vaxxers as the constitutive other, that is, discursive elements aiming at stabilising governmental practices of COVID crisis management.