Coronavirus Discourses: Linguistic Evidence For Effective Public Health Messaging
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Nottingham
Department Name: School of English
Abstract
Developed in partnership with Public Health England, Public Health Wales and NHS Education for Scotland, this bid addresses key challenges that the coronavirus pandemic presents in relation to understanding the flow and impact of public health messages as reflected in public and private discourses. Our collaborators above who are charged with constructing effective public health messages have identified two particular challenges: messaging around geographical borders (e.g. between England and Wales, and in local lockdowns) and messaging aimed at BAME populations. These areas will be the focus of our research, and we will deliver benefits to our collaborators in the form of initial analytical results and discussion from month 2 onwards.
As human behaviour is shaped by the reception and production of discourse, and by the reasoning about different sources of information, we propose a new approach to track the trajectories of public health messages once they are released to the public. Moving beyond corpus linguistic approaches that focus on language production, we will investigate the complex relationship between the production and the reception of discourses relating to specific types of public health messages, focusing on linguistic patterns (in particular modality and stance markers). Drawing on our track record in the construction and analysis of heterogenous corpora and our ongoing work on privacy enhancing technologies, we propose to carry out the first large scale analysis of the trajectories of public health messages relating to the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
As human behaviour is shaped by the reception and production of discourse, and by the reasoning about different sources of information, we propose a new approach to track the trajectories of public health messages once they are released to the public. Moving beyond corpus linguistic approaches that focus on language production, we will investigate the complex relationship between the production and the reception of discourses relating to specific types of public health messages, focusing on linguistic patterns (in particular modality and stance markers). Drawing on our track record in the construction and analysis of heterogenous corpora and our ongoing work on privacy enhancing technologies, we propose to carry out the first large scale analysis of the trajectories of public health messages relating to the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
| Description | The Coronavirus Discourses project addressed key challenges presented by the Coronavirus pandemic in relation to understanding the flow and impact of public health messages in public and private communications. The project used a linguistic approach to examine the reception, persuasiveness, and inclusivity of Coronavirus public health messaging. Feedback was provided to public health agencies (UK Health Security Agency, Public Health Wales, and NHS Education for Scotland) in real time as the pandemic progressed. The research found that a tailored approach to public health messaging is most effective. Messaging should acknowledge individual differences, the social values of different communities, and audience diversity. Age was the most important indicator of compliance with health messaging. Overall, messaging that encourages personal responsibility without promoting guilt or fear as motivations for compliance with health measures are most engaging. Community-specific engagement at all stages of the conception, design, and evaluation of a messaging campaign is essential for gathering feedback in real time. We developed a set of guiding principles for carrying out linguistic research in a way that preserves the privacy of those contributing the data. A linguistic approach ensures that feedback can be gathered efficiently on a scale that is meaningful for public health agencies and collaborative partnerships with the public will increase trust in the message source and improve the accessibility and effectiveness of public health messaging. A set of guidelines for message writers is available on the project website https://c19comms.wp.horizon.ac.uk |
| Exploitation Route | Healthcare (message writers): A set of guidelines for message writers contains the full findings and recommendations for public health message development has been shared with project partners and their networks. Implementation of these findings can be taken forward in the development of future public health messaging to support positive health outcomes for different communities (through the promotion of health seeking behaviours etc.). These guidelines will also be made more widely available via our project website: https://c19comms.wp.horizon.ac.uk Software/academic: The browser plug-in for privacy preserving corpus linguistics is available online (https://github.com/horizon-institute/PriPA) and is being developed for further research into privacy-preserving detection of online misinformation by academics at the University of Nottingham. This can also be accessed and developed by software engineers. Academic: Partnerships developed through this award have been taken forward into new health communications research. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Healthcare |
| URL | https://c19comms.wp.horizon.ac.uk |
| Description | Menstrual Health Discourses |
| Amount | £12,386 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University of Nottingham |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2022 |
| End | 06/2022 |
| Title | PriPA |
| Description | The PriPA (Privacy Preserving Analytics) Extension is a digital tool designed for anyone to use on their personal computer. It safely retrieves information about individual language use for analysis. The advantage of this browser extension is that users have full control over what information they want to share. Research carried out on the Coronavirus Discourses project using the PriPA extension will improve understanding of the trajectories of public health messages. Our work will further inform our investigation of the reception and evaluation of public health messaging and related measures which are of key concerns to our project partners Public Health England, Public Health Wales, and NHS Education for Scotland. In the future, the PriPA extension can be used as the basis for other studies investigating a whole range of topics that would benefit from gathering insights from browsing activities and private communications in a privacy-preserving way. |
| Type Of Technology | Webtool/Application |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Open Source License? | Yes |
| Impact | In the future, the PriPA extension can be used as the basis for other studies investigating a whole range of topics that would benefit from gathering insights from browsing activities and private communications in a privacy-preserving way. |
| URL | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pripa-extension/kcccmdfllakdocilcmbaldgmmniapmgc |
| Description | Advances in Privacy-Preserving Analysis of Online Communication Data for Health Message Designers: Coronavirus Discourses in the UK (July 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Nichele, E., Adolphs, S., Knight, D., McClaughlin, E., Clos, J., McAuley, D., Barnard, P., & Lang, A. Advances in Privacy-Preserving Analysis of Online Communication Data for Health Message Designers: Coronavirus Discourses in the UK. Presented at the 20th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Communication, Medicine and Ethics (COMET 2022). Online from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China. 15th July 2022. The presentation was delivered by Elena Nichele, who received positive feedback after the presentation. One message said: "I'm really interested in seeing the results you referred to around what type of messages provoke what type of responses. On the ground, I construct health messaging and would really like to use what you've learned in your research and apply it in my messaging." Another attendee wrote: "I am very excited to hear what the Notts team is doing". Several attendees asked for the project website, as they were interested in reading outputs. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Advances in Privacy-Preserving Analysis of Online Communication Data for Health Message Designers: Coronavirus Discourses in the UK. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Nichele, E., Adolphs, S., Knight, D., McClaughlin, E., Clos, J., McAuley, D., Barnard, P., & Lang, A. Advances in Privacy-Preserving Analysis of Online Communication Data for Health Message Designers: Coronavirus Discourses in the UK. Presented at the 20th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Communication, Medicine and Ethics (COMET 2022). Online from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China. 15th July 2022. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.polyu.edu.hk/engl/event/COMET2022/index/ |
| Description | Borders in coronavirus discourses: feedback on UK public health messages from readers of online news presentation (March 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | McClaughlin, E., Adolphs, S., Knight, D., Nichele, E., Barnard, P., Clos, J., Lang, A., & McAuley, D. Borders in coronavirus discourses: feedback on UK public health messages from readers of online news. Presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference. Pittsburgh, USA. 22nd March 2022. Interest has been shown by a few attendees who asked questions both in the Q&A session and after the talk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Borders in coronavirus discourses: feedback on UK public health messages from readers of online news. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | McClaughlin, E., Adolphs, S., Knight, D., Nichele, E., Barnard, P., Clos, J., Lang, A., & McAuley, D. Borders in coronavirus discourses: feedback on UK public health messages from readers of online news. Presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference. Pittsburgh, USA. 22nd March 2022. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.aaal.org/events/2022-aaal-conference |
| Description | C19Comms Twitter account |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | C19Comms Twitter account, which has over 60 followers actively engaging with the content posted. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://t.co/B8QXT2OFx6 |
| Description | C19Comms website |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | C19Comms Coronavirus Discourses project website, which has been asked about by several conference attendees (at the different events, where team members presented) as a source of further information about the project. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://c19comms.wp.horizon.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Coronavirus Discourses Advisory Group |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | An Advisory Group was selected at the beginning of the project and has continued to input to the design of studies and activity. Group members reported increased recognition of points raised during meetings and contributed towards plans future activity. Some members showed an interest in joining other PIP groups/new projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.horizon.ac.uk/project/coronavirus-discourses-linguistic-evidence-for-effective-public-he... |
| Description | Coronavirus Discourses final blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The blog provided an overview of the project and included information on findings |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.horizon.ac.uk/coronavirus-discourses-evaluation-event-and-final-blog/ |
| Description | Coronavirus Discourses: linguistic evidence for effective public health messaging |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A project website was created to support raising awareness and dissemination activity. Other outputs (Reports) form this project have been published on the website to make them freely available to a wide audience. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://c19comms.wp.horizon.ac.uk/ |
| Description | Corpus Linguistics for Healthcare Communications. Thrive Agency, 18th November 2021. Interactive workshop for professionals. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Corpus Linguistics for Healthcare Communications. Thrive Agency, 18th November 2021. Interactive workshop for professionals. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Corpus applications in Healthcare Settings. Public Health Wales, 1st December 2021. Training session for professionals. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Corpus applications in Healthcare Settings. Public Health Wales, 1st December 2021. Training session for professionals. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Health Inequalities and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Populations: Insights from the Coronavirus Discourses Project (September 2021) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | McClaughlin, E., Nichele, E., Adolphs, S., Barnard, P., Clos, J., Knight, D., McAuley, D., & Lang, A. Health Inequalities and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Populations: Insights from the Coronavirus Discourses Project. Presented at the Public Health Wales Research and Evaluation Conference 2021. Online. 23rd September 2021. The presented poster was awarded the "Best use of innovative methods Prize". |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Live workshop - Coronavirus Discourses: linguistic evidence for effective public health messaging |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Knowledge-exchange workshop: Pandemic and Beyond - Public Health, Communication and Healthcare Presentation delivered at the Public Health, Communication and Healthcare Knowledge Exchange workshop held by the Pandemic and Beyond project at Exeter University (bringing together 72 Covid-19 AHRC projects under the same umbrella). We presented an overview of the Coronavirus Discourses project during the workshop which was an opportunity to connect with other AHRC Covid-19 research teams working in adjacent areas. The workshop facilitated knowledge exchange and collaboration between teams, leading to strengthened communication and impact strategies that will benefit individual project teams as well as ultimately boosting the profile of Arts and Humanities research, and its vital role in Covid-19 response and recovery. This workshop brought together projects from two subgroups - Media, Communication and Public Health Messaging, and Healthcare and Managing Covid-19. Projects within the first group had strong connections in a focus on public health messaging, journalism, and the media, and were connected by an interest in how information and misinformation about the pandemic is spread. There was also a strong interest in communication in the second group, especially between healthcare services and those who use them. Projects in this group have strong links in a focus on design, and on examining issues impacting healthcare professionals and the NHS. Information about the projects in the group can be found below. In this workshop, we had the opportunity to present our project and hear about other related projects; think about and share strategies for effective ways of engaging with different communities and stakeholders to effect change and create impact; think about and share strategies for effective, innovative and creative ways of communicating research; informally connect and network with other researchers; and feedback and provide input into the ongoing work of the Pandemic and Beyond team. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Pepi Barnard, Research Associate presentation at AAAL2022 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Policymakers/politicians |
| Results and Impact | Pepi attended the American Association of Applied Linguistics conference (AAAL2022) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania whilst on a networking tour of USA promoting the work of both Horizon and the TAS Hub. She presented a paper on March 21st for the Coronavirus Discourses project (C19COMMS). The paper, titled "Public Health Messaging for At-risk Populations: a UK-based case study", was very well received and her talk generated a great deal of discussion and interest from other researchers, including interest to collaborate in the future. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.aaal.org/events/2022-aaal-conference |
| Description | Presentation reported in Public Discourses of Dementia Blog |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Write-up by audience member in attendance at Emma McClaughlin's conference presentation at the British Association of Applied Linguistics Conference, Belfast 2022. Published by Lancaster University, Discourses of Dementia blog |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/public-discourses-of-dementia/2022/09/22/what-matters-in-applied-linguistics-... |
| Description | PriPA: a tool for privacy-preserving analytics of linguistic data |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Clos, J., Adolphs, S., McClaughlin, E., Barnard, P., Nichele, E., Knight, D., & McAuley, D. PriPA: a tool for privacy-preserving analytics of linguistic data. Presented at: Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Language Technologies 2022. Marseille, France. 24th June 2022 |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://legal2022.mobileds.de/ |
| Description | PriPA: a tool for privacy-preserving analytics of linguistic data presentation (June 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Clos, J., Adolphs, S. McClaughlin, E., Barnard, P., Nichele, E., Knight, D., & McAuley, D. (2022). PriPA: a tool for privacy-preserving analytics of linguistic data. Presented at: Legal and Ethical Issues in Human Language Technologies 2022. Marseille, France. 24th June 2022. Proceedings available online shortly. A few attendees asked questions about the presentation after the talk |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Public Involvement Panel: Communicating Research with the Public (18th November 2021) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public Involvement Panel: Communicating Research with the Public (18th November 2021). 14 people (PIP members and researchers) attended the meeting. They demonstrated interest in the work by getting actively involved in the discussion and asking for further information to computer scientists about the tool. Some of the PIP members also agreed to test the tool. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Public Involvement Panel: Privacy Preserving Corpus Linguistic Analysis for COVID-19 (9th June 22) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public Involvement Panel: Privacy Preserving Corpus Linguistic Analysis for COVID-19 (9th June 22). 14 people (PIP members and researchers) attended the meeting. They demonstrated interest in the work by asking about the recent conference presentations delivered at the American Association of Applied Linguistics. They also commented that the tool about to be designed was useful. One PIP member wrote: "This discussion has been very engaging and I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the policy making process! :)" |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Public Involvement Panel: Privacy-preserving technologies (27th January 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public Involvement Panel: Privacy-preserving technologies (27th January 2022). 14 people (PIP members and researchers) attended the meeting. PIP members showed interest and engagement in the work through their comments and direct involvement in the activities proposed during the meeting. This included a Jamboard activity about effective messages they said they especially enjoyed and appreciated. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Public Involvement Panel: Public Health Messaging (27th July 2021) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public Involvement Panel: Public Health Messaging (27th July 2021). PIP members discussed how they interpreted and how clear they found different health messages. They showed their interest by actively participating in the discussion and responding to further information requests (completing a task). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Public Involvement Panel:1st C19Comms (8th June 2021) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public Involvement Panel:1st C19Comms PIP meeting (8th June 2021). 14 people (PIP members and researchers) attended the meeting. The discussion was defined enjoyable by several of the PIP members. This motivated them to take part in the following meetings. One of the PIP members wrote "very interesting and pleased to meet you all" at the conclusion of the meeting. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Public Involvement Panel:2nd C19Comms PIP meeting (29th June 2021) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Public Involvement Panel: 2nd C19Comms PIP meeting (29th June 2021). 17 people attended the meeting (PIP members and researchers) and declared interest in being involved in the project further. One participant said that "The June report was really good as a feedback mechanism [...] I really, really liked it [...]. PIP members were interested in seeing our output and results. One PIP member wrote they had enjoyed the discussion. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Public health messaging for at-risk populations: a UK-based case study presentation (March 2022) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Barnard, P., Adolphs, S., Knight, D., McClaughlin, E., Nichele, E., Lang, A., Clos, J., McAuley D. Public health messaging for at-risk populations: a UK-based case study. Presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference. Pittsburgh, USA. 21st March 2022. Interest has been shown by a few attendees who asked questions both in the Q&A session and after the talk. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Public health messaging for at-risk populations: a UK-based case study. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Barnard, P., Adolphs, S., Knight, D., McClaughlin, E., Nichele, E., Lang, A., Clos, J., & McAuley, D. Public health messaging for at-risk populations: a UK-based case study. Presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Conference. Pittsburgh, USA. 21st March 2022. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.aaal.org/events/2022-aaal-conference |
| Description | Video-recorded presentation - Community-focused approaches: linguistic evidence for effective public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Delivery of the presentation: Community-focused approaches: linguistic evidence for effective public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dissemination of findings from the Coronavirus Discourse project at a dedicated research and development conference for public health professionals on the topic of 'where next for public health research?' |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://healthandcareresearchwales.org/about/events/public-health-wales-research-and-evaluation-conf... |