Mark McGlashan

@markmcglashan.com

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Senior Lecturer in English Language & Linguistics University of Liverpool @liverpooluni.bsky.social @livunienglish.bsky.social 🌐 www.MarkMcGlashan.com

First page of journal article entitled "COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories, discourses of liberty, and “the new normal” on social media" in the journal Linguistics Vanguard Abstract Public distrust in government, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professions, and medical science and technology has been consistently linked with vaccine rejection. Policymakers, therefore, want to better understand links between distrust of institutions and vaccine refusal. This paper reports on a case study of posts (tweets) to the social media platform Twitter (now X) collected as part of the TRAC:COVID (Trust and Communication: A Coronavirus Online Visual Dashboard) project. The TRAC:COVID dashboard combines methods from corpus linguistics with various visualization techniques to enable users to explore approximately 84 million posts containing reference to COVID-19 published between 1 January 2020 and 30 April 2021 (encompassing the dates of UK coronavirus lockdowns). The dashboard and all sampling considerations (including an overview of the detailed search query used) are available at https://www.traccovid.com. Specifically, the paper analyses a subsample of posts that make reference to vaccines and contain at least one hashtag relating to various categories of dis/misinformation. By employing keyword co-occurrence analysis – a method for examining statistically significant keywords using multiple correspondence analysis – we find that these posts draw on various “discourses of liberty” to protest against perceived infringements on “health freedoms” through the imposition of new norms of behaviour (e.g., mask-wearing).
The cover of a book entitled Toxic Masculinity: Men, Meaning, and Digital Media. The cover features a modern design with abstract geometric shapes in orange, blue, and white, as well as an artistic depiction of a male figure in a dynamic pose. The book is edited by Mark McGlashan and John Mercer, and it is part of the Routledge series 'Masculinity, Sex, and Popular Culture'.
Cover image of The Routledge Handbook of Discourse and Disinformation. It features a minimalist, textured illustration of a figure wearing a suit and a bowler hat, with the face replaced by a sky with clouds. The upper left corner displays the Routledge logo and the text "ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOKS" in white on a red background. Below the title, the editors' names are listed: Stefania Maci, Massimiliano Demata, Mark McGlashan, and Philip Seargeant. The design gives a slightly abstract and intellectual impression, resonating with the theme of discourse and disinformation.