The reception of public health messages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding the reception of public health messages in public-facing communications is of key importance to health agencies in managing crises, pandemics, and other health threats. Established public health communications strategies including self-efficacy messaging, fear appeals, and moralising messaging were all used during the Coronavirus pandemic. We explore the reception of public health messages to understand the efficacy of these established messaging strategies in the COVID-19 context. Taking a community-focussed approach, we combine a corpus linguistic analysis with methods of wider engagement, namely, a public survey and interactions with a Public Involvement Panel to analyse this type of real-world public health discourse. Our findings indicate that effective health messaging content provides manageable instructions, which inspire public confidence that following the guidance is worthwhile. Messaging that appeals to the audience's morals or fears in order to provide a rationale for compliance can be polarising and divisive, producing a strongly negative emotional response from the public and potentially undermining social cohesion. Provenance of the messaging alongside text-external political factors also have an influence on messaging uptake. In addition, our findings highlight key differences in messaging uptake by audience age, which demonstrates the importance of tailored communications and the need to seek public feedback to test the efficacy of messaging with the relevant demographics. Our study illustrates the value of corpus linguistics to public health agencies and health communications professionals, and we share our recommendations for improving the public health messaging both in the context of the ongoing pandemic and for future novel and re-emerging infectious disease outbreaks.

The language of vaccination campaigns during COVID-19.

Understanding what makes communication effective when designing public health messages is of key importance. This applies in particular to vaccination campaigns, which aim to encourage vaccine uptake and respond to vaccine hesitancy and dispel any myth or misinformation. This paper explores the ways in which the governments of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) promoted COVID-19 vaccination as a first-line strategy and studies health message effectiveness by examining the language of official vaccination campaigns, vaccine uptake across the different nations and the health message preferences of unvaccinated and vaccine sceptic individuals. The study considers communications beginning at the first lockdown until the point when daily COVID-19 updates ended for each nation. A corpus linguistic analysis of official government COVID-19 updates is combined with a qualitative examination of the expression of evaluation in governmental discourses, feedback from a Public Involvement Panel and insights from a nationally representative survey of adults in Great Britain to explore message production and reception. Fully vaccinated, unvaccinated and sceptic respondents showed similar health messaging preferences and perceptions of health communication efficacy, but unvaccinated and sceptic participants reported lower levels of compliance for all health messages considered. These results suggest that issues in health communication are not limited to vaccination hesitancy, and that in the future, successful vaccination campaigns need to address the determining factors of public attitudes and beliefs besides communication strategies.

Analysing voice quality and pitch in interactions of emergency care simulation.

Background/aims: In emergency care, healthcare professionals (HCPs) interact with both a patient and their colleagues at the same time. How HCPs regulate the two distinct interactions is our central interest. Focusing on HCPs' use of their voice quality and pitch, a multimodal analysis of the interaction in a simulation training session was conducted. Our aims are (1) to compare the use of HCPs' voice quality and pitch in HCP-patient and HCP-HCP interactions, (2) to examine how different voice quality and pitch function in interaction, and (3) to develop the research methodology so as to integrate multimodal features in emergency care interaction for analysis. Methods: Three HCPs performed a scripted acute care scenario (chest pain) at the simulation centre. The multimodal corpus-based approach was applied to analyse the varying voice pitch and quality of the HCPs, in interactions with a simulated patient (SP) and with two other HCPs, in emergency care training. Results: The HCPs tended to use a clear voice when they talk to an SP and a 'shattered' voice to colleagues in the team. The pitch was raised to talk to an SP, by Helen (a nurse) and Mike (a doctor). Conclusion: This indicates that the HCPs strategically change their voice quality and pitch according to the addressees, regulating the interaction.

Simulated patients versus manikins in acute-care scenarios.

BACKGROUND: Manikins and simulated patients (SPs) are commonly used in health care education and assessment. SPs appear to offer a more realistic experience for learners than 'plastic' manikins, and might be expected to engender interactions that approximate real clinical practice more closely. The analyses of linguistic patterns and touch are methodologies that could be used to explore this hypothesis. Our research aims were: (1) to compare verbal interactions and the use of procedural touch by health care workers (HCWs) in scenarios with SPs and with manikins; and (2) to evaluate the methodologies used to inform a large-scale study. METHODS: We conducted a pilot preliminary comparative study on conversations and touch in two scenarios in emergency care training, each performed using an SP and a high-fidelity manikin. The setting was a simulation centre. Two scripted acute-care scenarios (chest pain and acute breathlessness) were performed using both an SP and a high-fidelity manikin. Audiovisual recordings were subsequently analysed. Two teams comprising a clinician (medical student), a senior nurse and a clinical support worker took part in the study. The linguistics research methodology integrated a multimodal corpus-based approach and discourse analysis. Simulated patients appear to offer a more realistic experience for learners than 'plastic' manikins RESULTS: Overall, HCWs had far more interactions with the SPs than with the manikins, and the utterances and behaviours were more akin to what one would expect in real clinical practice. HCWs used procedural touch without the patient's permission much more frequently with the manikin. DISCUSSION: These methodologies offer opportunities for further research projects studying interactions with SPs, manikins and real clinical practice.

'Am I anorexic?' Weight, eating and discourses of the body in online adolescent health communication.

This article explores the communicative choices of adolescents seeking advice from an internet-based health forum run by medical professionals. Techniques from the disciplines of sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics are integrated to examine the strategies used in adolescents' health questions. We focus on the emergent theme of Weight and Eating, a concern which features prominently in adolescents' requests to medical practitioners. The majority of advice requests are authored by adolescent girls, with queries peaking at age 12. A combined quantitative and qualitative analysis provides detailed insights into adolescents' communicative strategies. Examinations of question types, register and a discourse-based analysis draw attention to dominant discourses of the body, including a 'discourse of slenderness' and a 'discourse of normality', which exercise negative influences on adolescents' dietary behaviours. The findings are of applied linguistic relevance to health practitioners and educators, as they provide them with access to adolescents' health queries in their own language.