HPV Vaccination Discourse Online: A Corpus Linguistic Approach(Routledge Focus on Applied Linguistics)

This concise volume spotlights an innovative computer-aided approach to linguistic analyses of HPV vaccination discourse on Twitter. The book features a new corpus linguistic technique, developed by the lead author, to studying patterns of language use in large datasets over time, otherwise known as Keyword Co-Occurrence Analysis. The authors explore the potential of social media platforms as rich areas of study for health communication and vaccination discourse, with this particular methodology allowing for detailed analysis of over half a million tweets from nearly 15 years of data. Given the increasingly influential role of social media platforms such as Twitter in shaping vaccine hesitancy, the volume offers readers a more nuanced understanding of their influence on attitudes around important health issues and a valuable resource in facilitating increased vaccine uptake. This book will be key reading for students, scholars, and policymakers interested in the intersection of language and health, in such areas as corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, health communication, and applied linguistics.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction, 2. Keyword Co-occurrence Analysis: Our methodology and data, 3. Discourses of HPV vaccination over time, 4. Summary of findings and implications, 5. Concluding remarks, References, Index

About the Author :
Isobelle Clarke is a Lecturer in Security and Protection Science and UKRI Future Leader Fellow in the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University, UK. Elena Semino is Distinguished Professor in Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University, UK, and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science. Zsófia Demjén is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics. Tara Coltman-Patel is a former Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University. She is a Research Consultant at the digital consumer intelligence and social listening firm, Brandwatch. William Dance is a former Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science at Lancaster University. Richard Gleave is a part-time Senior Associate Tutor and D Phil student at Oxford University, UK, and the Director of Science Strategy at the UK Health Security Agency.