Paper long abstract:

In a pink trailer with the phrase "I love me" written on it, girls can get vaccinated against HPV in Sweden. By downloading an app, they can learn about HPV vaccination by doing a quiz. On Facebook they can ventilate HPV vaccine concerns at a campaign site. In my ongoing PhD project I use feminist STS studies to discuss how these different technological objects and girl subjects are a part of how county councils enact HPV vaccination. I am doing so by analyzing interview conversations with county council staff as well as health promotion campaign material, which includes textual, visual and technological components.

By discussing HPV vaccination as a "matter of care" (Puig de la Bellacasa 2011) I show how county councils care for certain girl subjectivities and technologies. In this context, care as a doing enacts relations between girls and technologies such as the trailer, the app, Facebook and HPV vaccines, in what I discuss as an "intimate way". My presentation zooms in on two different HPV vaccination health promotion campaigns aiming at activating and empowering girls. This approach enables me to discuss how risk management, contagion control, empowerment, responsibility and bodies are made through intimate care work. In doing so, I discuss how HPV vaccination is balanced, managed and enacted by the county councils as a "care for the self" and a "care for the herd" (cf. Singleton 2012) - and what the consequences of these versions of HPV vaccination may be.