Background Social media platforms have long been recognised as major disseminators of health misinformation. Many previous studies have found a negative association between health-protective behaviours and belief in the specific form of misinformation popularly known as ‘conspiracy theory’. Concerns have arisen regarding the spread of COVID-19 conspiracy theories on social media. Methods Three questionnaire surveys of social media use, conspiracy beliefs and health-protective behaviours with regard to COVID-19 among UK residents were carried out online, one using a self-selecting sample (N = 949) and two using stratified random samples from a recruited panel (N = 2250, N = 2254). Results All three studies found a negative relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 health-protective behaviours, and a positive relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and use of social media as a source of information about COVID-19. Studies 2 and 3 also found a negative relationship between COVID-19 health-protective behaviours and use of social media as a source of information, and Study 3 found a positive relationship between health-protective behaviours and use of broadcast media as a source of information. Conclusions When used as an information source, unregulated social media may present a health risk that is partly but not wholly reducible to their role as disseminators of health-related conspiracy beliefs.

BackgroundVaccine hesitancy presents an obstacle to the campaign to control COVID-19. It has previously been found to be associated with youth, female gender, low income, low education, low medical trust, minority ethnic group membership, low perceived risk from COVID-19, use of certain social media platforms, and conspiracy beliefs. However, it is unclear which of these predictors might explain variance associated with others. MethodsAn online survey was conducted with a representative sample of 4343 UK residents, aged 18 to 75, between 21 Nov and 21 Dec 2020. Predictors of vaccine hesitancy were assessed using linear rank-order models. ResultsCoronavirus vaccine hesitancy is associated with youth, female gender, low income, low education, high informational reliance on social media, low informational reliance on print and broadcast media, membership of other than white ethnic groups, low perceived risk from COVID-19, and low trust in scientists and medics, as well as (to a much lesser extent) low trust in government. Coronavirus conspiracy suspicions and general vaccine attitudes appear uniquely predictive, jointly explaining 35% of variance. Following controls for these variables, effects associated with trust, ethnicity, and social media reliance largely or completely disappear, while the effect associated with education is reversed. ConclusionsStrengthening positive attitudes to vaccination and reducing conspiracy suspicions with regard to the coronavirus may have a positive effect on vaccine uptake, especially among ethnic groups with heightened vaccine hesitancy. However, vaccine hesitancy associated with age and gender does not appear to be explained by other predictor variables tested here. This is an Accepted Manuscript for Psychological Medicine as part of the Cambridge Coronavirus Collection. Subject to change during the editing and production process.

This article analyses discourse arising in reading group discussions as an instance of a real-world literary reading practice; it arises from and reports on the AHRC-funded Discourse of Reading Groups project. This naturalistic, observational approach to literary reading is contrasted with experimental approaches. Excerpts from the total dataset in which the language of literary texts is discussed are here subjected to two forms of analysis: software-assisted qualitative analysis suggests that where participants appear to make reference to their subjective responses to texts, this often has the function of presenting evaluations of those texts in mitigated form; interactional sociolinguistic analysis shows the sequential emergence of ‘language’ as a discussion topic, how discussion of language is co-constructed between participants and how such literary activity is culturally, interactionally and interpersonally contingent. ‘Face’ emerges as a key explanatory concept in both analyses.

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This article first discusses ‘the reader’ as generally conceived within literary studies (including stylistics), grounding its claims with an empirical analysis of articles published in Language and Literature from 2004 to 2008. It then surveys the many ways in which real readers have been empirically investigated within cultural studies, the history of reading, and cultural sociology. Lastly, it introduces the remaining papers in this special issue as contributions to the study of language and literature.

This article was published in Psychological Medicine with some errors regarding table 5. The first version of this article incorrectly described the models in table 5 as logistic regression models, when in fact they are linear probability models.

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The effect of social media consumption on perceptions of the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic, attitudes to public health requirements, and intentions towards a future Covid-19 vaccine are of live public health interest. There are also public health and security concerns that the pandemic has been accompanied and arguably further amplified by an ‘infodemic’ spreading misinformation. Tests of the effect of social media consumption on future Covid-19 vaccine intentions using population samples have been relatively few to date. This study contributes to the evidence base by examining social media consumption and vaccine intentions using British and US population samples.Methods: Data were gathered on 1,663 GB adults and 1,198 US adults from an online panel on attitudes towards a future vaccine alongside self-reported social and legacy broadcast and print media consumption. Ordered and binomial logit models were used to assess reported intentions regarding a future Covid-19 vaccine, testing the effects of media consumption type. Respondents were categorised in terms of their media consumption using a fourfold typology, as less frequent social, less frequent legacy media consumers (low-low); high social, low legacy media consumers (high-low); low social, high legacy (low-high); and high social, high legacy (high-high).Results: In the British sample, regression results indicate that those who receive Covid-19 updates more frequently via legacy media (low-high), and those being updated more than daily via both online and legacy media consumers, tend to provide significantly less Covid-19 vaccine-hesitant responses than low-low consumers. There is no significant difference between high social, low legacy media consumers and low-low consumers. In the US sample, membership of the low-high group is associated with lower Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy compared with low-low consumers. However, respondents consuming both social and legacy media several times daily exhibit similar vaccine intentions on average to those consuming social media daily and legacy media less often, providing a contrast with the UK sample. We also identify differences in Covid-19 vaccine intentions relating to demographics and political values.Conclusions: Differences in vaccine attentions are associated with the extent and balance of consumption of news relating to Covid-19 and its source. Political values and ethnic identity also appear to structure attitudes to a putative future Covid-19 vaccine.