+Title: Scepticism or conspiracy?

A discourse analysis of anti-lockdown comments to online

newspaper articles

Abstract

This paper addresses responses to news about the imposing of a local lockdown in a UK city.
The opposition to the measure shows it to be controversial as does the associated rejection of
the grounds for taking action against covid more generally, which comes alongside the
devaluing of expertise, resistance to public health responses, a proliferation of conspiracy
theories and misinformation and the harm that can be caused by focussing on non-adherence
to covid measure. The research question for this analysis is therefore: how are arguments
about the local lockdown discursively formulated in online discussions? Discursive analysis
of online discussions following four newspaper articles identified sixeven arguments used
that range from scepticism to conspiratorial: scepticism over (1) the prevalence and; (2)
severity of covid; (3) lockdowns generally do not work and (4) the specific city lockdown
will not work; (5) lockdowns are overly risk averse; and (6) there are hidden political motives
for lockdowns. The discussion shows how both the ‘conspiratorial’ and non-conspiratorial
arguments are potentially harmful from a public health perspective.

Key words: Scepticism; conspiracy; lockdown; discourse analysis; discursive psychology;

public health
Introduction

This paper addresses responses to news about the imposing of a local lockdown in the UK
city of Leicester, implemented as a public health measure to reduce the spread of Covid-19.
Opposition to the measure shows it to be controversial, as does the associated rejection of the
grounds for containing covid. It therefore becomes necessary to investigate the ways in which
public health measures are understood and dealt with by members of the public who are
asked to change their behaviour.

Amongst measures to reduce the spread of covid-19, ‘lockdowns’ are perhaps the most
impactful, on people as they are obliged people to stay home and avoid contact with others,
representing a serious loss of personal freedom. In the UK, a nationwide “lockdown” came
into effect on 26th March 2020, with non-essential work suspended and public venues,
transport and non-essential shops closed. Measures were lifted on 10th May, and. Oon 4th July
In England, following the lifting of a national lockdown, Leicester, a large city in the East
Midlands region, was the first place to experience a local city-wide lockdown, with similar
measures within the city boundaries. As such, the imposition of t This lockdown attracted
widespread coverage in the national press. The system of local lockdowns, and the use of
lockdown more generally were controversial public health measures.

Literature review

Addressing the role of expertise in scientific messages, Coen et al (2021) addressed the role
of expertise in scientific messages and argue that debates about what counts as expertise
become possible because scientific credentials are no longer seen as straightforward markers
of expertise. Focusing on climate change, they show that when the issue debated is complex
and a full understanding requires expertise from across different disciplines, who can be seen
as an expert (and therefore who should be listened to) becomes difficult to ascertain. This is
also the case with covid, with necessary expertise coming from medical experts such as
virologists and immunologists but also behavioural experts such as social and health
psychologists (Bavel et al, 2020). Coen et al (2021) show how media practices have worked
to obscure scientific consensus, further damaging the influence of experts and allowing
further discussion about who is an expert and whose recommendations should be followed.

In contemporary society, power is reproduced through language and the ways that subjects of
discourse are framed and positioned (KhosraviNik, 2009, Wodak & KhosraviNik, 2013).
This may be enacted through political discourses, which in turn may be taken up in lay
discourses. KhosraviNik (2009) reports that how others are represented in newspaper reports
may depend upon the proximity of the event to the general populace, how dramatic the events
being reported are, and the ideological positions taken by the newspaper itself. For example,
discourses may provide justifications for readers as to why the in-group behaviour is
acceptable, and the out-group behaviour is unacceptable. This may involve either
reproducing traditional patters or prejudicial reporting, or generating novel ways of
displaying prejudice (KhosraviNik, 2015).
Online newspapers provide a forum where these discourses may be enacted, allowing both
the reproduction of political sentiments through the reportage constructed by the newspaper,
and by also allowing readers of the newspaper space to provide comments on the articles
published.

This erosion of acceptance of expert advice can be seen in debates about the efficacy of
vaccinations. Vayreda and Antaki (2011) looked atstudied online discussions about
vaccinations for the ‘swine flu,’ and showed that what counted as acceptable comments could
bewere determined by the identity of discussion contributors – with those seen as having
financial interests, such as associated with the pharmaceutical industry, being rejected. This
did not happen to those with ‘scientific’ interests. More recently, Toth (2020) found that
scientific concerns could also be rejected in an analysis of anti-vaccination arguments in
Romania. He identified four repertoires used by those opposing or rejecting vaccination: (1)
distrust repertoires, (2) rejecting risks to children, (3) vaccine ineffectiveness and (4)
‘immunity is a limited resource that should not be forced’ which worked to undermine the
Romanian authorities while offering moral alternatives that made the rejection of the
vaccination a more acceptable option because it could be presented in a positive and
supposedly healthier light than accepting them.

Reicher and Drury (2021) found general adherence to covid restrictions in the UK, such as
social distancing and lockdowns, was generally very high, with over 90% adhering. This is
despite many practical difficulties associated with adhering and the enduring idea of
‘pandemic fatigue,’ which suggests that people are less ableunable to engage long-term with
covid restrictions. They further argue that media reporting overstates the level of non-
adherence, which may encourage higher rates of non-adherence.

Covid and misinformation

The covid pandemic has fed an increase in conspiracy theories and misinformation (e.g. van
Mulukom et al, 2022). These have related to the origin of, and potential cure for, the virus as
well as around the measures that have been put in place to suppress its spread, ideas that can
in turn lead to a reduction in adherence to health safeguarding measures (van Bavel et al,
2020; van Mulukom et al., 2022). Recent work exploring conspiracy theories and cognition
suggests potential explanatory factors relating to conspiracy theories and the Covid
pandemic. A key finding is that conspiracy theories can play a role in satisfying cognitive
motives that people have for building a sense of a stable, accurate and consistent
understanding of the world whilst protecting core beliefs (e.g. Jost et al, 2003; Douglas et al,
2017).

According to these cognitive theories, attraction to conspiracy theories can thus increase
under conditions that generate increased uncertainty, lack clear official explanations, and
threaten that the legitimacy of social systems and arrangements (Douglas & Sutton, 2018)
and in which people perceive a loss of control over their environment and are reminded of
their own mortality (Jonas & Mulhberger, 2017). The casting of overwhelmingly
disconfirmatory evidence on official and scientific findings that provoke such perceptions can
be understood as a form of motivated cognition fulfilling these epistemic motives under
conditions of threat and uncertainty.

Misinformation potentially carries with it serious risks, if people are tomis understand the risk
of a pandemic then they are less likely to engage in behaviour to help control it. Greene and
Murphy (2021) demonstrate how exposure to even one case of ‘fake news’ can have a small
impact on behaviour. They also found that general warnings against misinformation tend to
be ineffective, which supportssuporting van Bavel et al’s claim that in an environment of
misinformation ‘other approaches beyond debunking are needed’ (2020: 464).

Carmen Lee (2022) notes the lack of work considering misinformation and conspiracy around
covid as discursive action. Some recent work has explored these issues from CDA (Lee,
2022) and systemic functional linguistics (Inwood & Zappavigna, 2022) approaches [more to
add from other references here?] s. This emerging work is valuable in showing how media
discourse constructs objects and targets hate speech in pursuit of political goals, and how
people affiliate and disaffiliate from propagation of conspiracy discourse.

However, it does not address how people themselves undertake discursive action (in terms of
accusing, blaming, excusing, negating, etc) and rhetorically construct arguments in their own
communication. These explanations fail to account for the ways that arguments about the
nature of covid information are constructed rhetorically and function discursively. Rather
than examining arguments around covid and misinformation in terms of their relation to
assumed internal beliefs or motivated cognitions, or in terms of the political goals of media
discourse, we thus propose an approach that sees them as discursive activity in which
accounts are produced and rhetorically defended indefended in specific social contexts.

To overcome these limitations, tThis study therefore draws on the discursive approach
(Edwards and Potter, 1992) because it is well placed to investigate the ways that arguments
around these issues are made and received. The research question for this analysis is, how are
arguments against the local lockdown in Leicester discursively formulated in online
discussions?

Method

Data sources

Data was were drawn from online discussions surrounding theLeicester’s UK's first local
lockdown, implemented in Leicesterfirst announced on 30th June 2020. At this time, details
of the severity of the pandemic, and the effectiveness of measures such as lockdowns were
relatively unknownthe impacts of long covid were not well-known and no vaccines were
available.

The lockdown was widely reported in national and local newspapers. We set out to draew
data from a selection of UK newspapers that had published online articles relating to the
Leicester lockdown and that had open comments sections for members of the public to post
responses to the article. We aimed for a sample that was representativeillustrative of the
breadth of the UK press, and dreawing data from the comments sections of four newspapers:
The Daily Maili (5,717 comments), The Daily Mirrorii (107 comments), The Financial
Timesiii (147 comments) and The Leicester Mercuryiv. This provided data from ideologically
right (Mail) and left (Mirror) national tabloids, a traditional national broadsheet (FT) and the
most-read local newspaper (Mercury). Although the Leicester lockdown was local, as it
wasbeing the first of the local lockdowns implemented in the UK, it made the national news,
with people all over the country able to comment and respond. As such, despite its local
nature it may be considered an issue of national significance / importance.

Due to the number of comments made across all sourcesin the Daily Mail discussion, some
filtering was required to render the amount of data manageable. Newspaper comment threads
often contain a faculty for readers to upvote and downvote comments. Comments for this
source canwere sorted be displayed in order of positive or negative voting by readers, and . In
comment threads where more than 200 posts had been made (in this case, the Daily Mail),
order of comments was filtered according to the best and worst received comments. These
ratings are created by members of the online diaspora themselvesdiscussion contributors
themselves, through the ability to show approval or disapproval to comments by ‘upvoting’
and ‘downvoting’ comments, to make them more or less visible. As such, these comments
were taken to represent the most engaged with for this sources reportage. This resulted in 419
comments ranked ‘best’ and 459 comments ranked ‘worst, giving 878 comments in total from
this source. As the other sources did not have this volume of comments, no selection or
filtering was applied to their comments.

Data was collected on 15th July 2020, and other than filtering the comments as described, no
action was taken to adjust the data. All comments made from date of publication up to the
date of data collection were included as they appeared in their originally published (online)
form. Where comments had been moderated, removed or edited by users or the newspaper
site itself, this information and formatting was retained including any spelling, typographical,
grammatical, or syntactical errors.

Ethics

Ethical approval was granted by the university ethics board. Approval was subject to ensuring
that all contributors to the discussions are presented anonymously, therefore all usernames
and any identifying information have been removed.

Analytic framework

Data was analysed following a discursive psychological framework, following the guidance
from Goodman (2017). Discursive psychology treats discourse as situated, occasioned action
rather than attempting to identify internal cognitive states and processes, such as those
theories presented above that view the use of misinformation as a cognitive strategy.
Discursive psychology has previously been successfully utilised in the analysis of online
discourse (Coles, 2018; Coles and West, 2016), showing how speakers engage with published
material online, creating bespoke arguments aimed at rationalising and justifying positions
taken relative to the initially published argument. These positions are not understood to
reflect speakers own internal cognitive states and processes, but rather to represent available
stances which serve to justify a particular argumentative aim of the speaker. Discursive
psychology differs from CDA in that it does not explicitly focus on the relations between
language, power and ideology or overt politics (although not necessarily avoiding these
either) but does reject the making inferences about speakers’/writers’ emotions, instead
taking a more detailed focus on what actions are performed in the data (such as justifying
positions, constructing identities and making accusations).

Each member of the team took one comment thread and read through it to identify repertoires
present. Interpretative repertoires are defined as ‘a recognizable routine of arguments,
descriptions and evaluations found in people’s talk often distinguished by familiar clichés,
anecdotes and tropes … ‘what everyone knows’’’ (SeymourSmith et al. 2002: 255). After
this initial pass, team members met to co-ordinate initial observations. Repertoires were
examined together, and those agreed by the research team to be common across sources were
selected for inclusion and retained for further analysis. Repertoires which appeared in only
one source, which were not verified by co-researchers, or which garnered too few extracts
were removed.

Findings

The analysis identified seven six repertoires that challenged information about covid and
measures to address it. These range from scepticism over the severity of covid, which
included scepticism over (1) the prevalence and (2) severity of covid, scepticism over the
effectiveness of lockdowns, which includes the arguments that (3) lockdowns generally do
not work and that (4) the lockdown specifically in Leicester will not work, and scepticism
over the motives for imposing lockdowns including arguments that (5) lockdowns are overly
risk-averse, that (6) there are hidden political motives for lockdown.

1. Scepticism over the severity of covid

Respondents expressed scepticism over the prevalence and the severity of Covid-19,
mobilisinged a range of rhetorical tools to minimise, challenge, or dismiss the prevalence and
severity of the covid pandemic. Posters’ objections centre around the claim that the
coronavirus is not as deadly as has been claimed. As such, measures being taken to limit its
impact are unnecessarily burdensome. Extract 01 demonstrates this claim made through
appeals to numeracy, centred on the claim that the UK Government is providing misleading
information.

Scepticism over the prevalence of covid

P1

“Some 866 people tested positive in the two weeks to June 23". What we also need to know is how
many tests have been conducted? Without knowing the number of tests conducted the number of 866 is
useless. By average, 1/100 tests returns a false positive, if they have tested 10,000 people in Leicester
since June 23 then about 1,000 tests will return a false positive. And, have they all tested positive for
covid-19 or another variant of the Corona-virus? How many have developed any symptoms? If the
authorities refuse to tell us the number of tests conducted then I am tempted to believe they are trying
to inflate the numbers artificially in order to keep up the fear and justify the continued lockdown
measures. It has nothing to do with a real danger.
Extract 1 begins with reported speech (Leudar & Antaki, 1996) citing figures relating to the
pandemic (line 1), which provide the 'rhetorical other' against whom P1 argues. S/he presents
a factual claim presumably intended to indicate the severity and seriousness of the pandemic
through a mixture of specific numbers – '866' – appended to a vagueness modifier – 'some'
(Billig, 2021). P1 challenges not these specific numbers per se, but rather the amount of
additional information needed, but not provided, to understand them.

P1 asserts the need to know the proportion of tests, rather than raw numbers to take anything
meaningful from them, and appeals to consensus (Potter & Edwards, 1990) using the
inclusive 'we' (line 01) when arguing the need for additional information. P1 thus positions
whoever reads their comment as agreeing with them, and de-facto disagreeing with the
pandemic response. 'We' are invited from the outset to share P1’s scepticism.

The argument is constructed with a display of numeracy (although the numerical calculation
in lines 3 and 4 is, in fact, erroneous), to lend credibility to P1’s challenge to the efficacy of
the tests. This is presented as a rational argument for why these figures should be dismissed –
there is insufficient context about the numbers of tests conducted. The intended interpretation
is provided for the reader – the figures are negatively evaluated as 'useless' (line 3). This
evaluation is sandwiched between assertions of problematic information and two accounts of
distrust. The first of these again is based upon presented figures (“false-positive” rates,
implying a factual understanding). The second is based upon speculation concerning
information about covid which is omitted concerning, framing a claim that the authorities are
deliberately withholding information from the public (“the authorities refuse”).

This is followed by a footing shift (Goffman, 1981). P1 no longer uses the inclusive 'we', but
rather presents their own conclusions (“I am tempted”). This cautious hedge, rather than
assertion, about the government’s motivations allows the assertion to be challenged without
undermining P1’s overall argument. P1 continues to hedge their closing assertions with a
redundant stressor – “to inflate artificially” (Bazzanella, 2011). This hedging is necessary, as
P1 moves towards the coda of their extract. The Government wishes to maintain fear to
control the population – not to protect them from danger (lines 7–8).

It is notable that the lack of danger is simply asserted. No supporting evidence is mobilised –
that work is achieved through the numeracy discourse between lines 1–4, questioning the
strain of coronavirus people are exposed to (lines 4–6), and challenging the motives of the
Government (line 7). If the virus is not as deadly as we are led to believe, then the measures
taken to prevent the spread of the virus may be understood as excessive and unnecessary.

Scepticism over the mortality/morbidity of covid

Whilst the above comment casts doubt on the prevalence of covid by attempting to
delegitimize official case estimates, commentators also voiced scepticism as to the mortality
and morbidity of covid. Several comments argued that covid should be seen not as generally
deadly, but rather as “a virus which exclusively kills people who are ill” (P2). An extended
discussion of this argumentexample appears in the following extract:

P3: This paper has published a list so when reading it I checked my city details and found this
 There have been no new coronavirus-related deaths recorded in the city main NHS hospital trust for
over a week, as the number of cases in the city remains the same for another day.
Yet you say it's on the rise.
P4: It’s all lies. Government admitted putting covid on death certificates without ever having tested
for it. On live television. No one said a word!
P5: [P4] the government has nothing to do with what goes on a death certificate the only person
who has any input is the doctor who pronounced the death. But a death certificate will include
primary, secondary and contributory factors for someones death.
The mistake the government have made is they included in their statistics deaths whenever covid
was mentioned even if it was a contributory factor and the person would have died anyway due to
the primary cause of death if they didn't have the virus.

This exchange begins with P3 citing “details” they have “checked” which show that there
have been no new deaths in Leicester’s hospitals despite the case for lockdown being
predicated on covid’s mortality rate. In the follow-up discussion to this post, P4 inserts a
dismissal of covid’s reported mortality by framing the case for it as based on government
“lies” and the recording of covid as cause of death even in the absence of testing to establish
this. This argument is supported with a vague reference to a discussion “on live television.”
P5’s contribution moderates the rather extreme account in P4’s post whilst maintaining the
position that official reports of covid’s mortality are inaccurate. This poster challenges the
position that the government can control what is entered onto a death certificate and produces
a sense of legitimacy for his/her argument through the display a detailed account of practice
in this area, then providing an alternative formulation of a justified scepticism towards the
official figures through an apparently more moderate assessment of “the mistake” the
government has made in collating their statistics from death certificate data.

P6
The only crazy thing was crashing the world economy for an illness that is not a threat to most people

In this post, there is a more straightforward and simply-stated rejection of the government
strategy rooted in the position that several other posters elaborated above – that covid is not a
risk to those not already clinically vulnerable. The lockdown response is thus positioned as a
‘crazy thing’ that Governments have mistakenly and unnecessarily enforced even though the
coronavirus ‘is not a threat to most people’. By inference these decisions are not based on
sound scientific advice and have needlessly impacted the ‘world economy’ and trade. This
asserts that the wrong type of ‘risk’ (public health) is being prioritised over more certain
economic damage. This framing also implies the separation of the population into two
distinct categories: ‘most people,’ classified as healthy and not at risk, and the (here
unspecified) vulnerable people who are prioritised unfairly (see Sacks, 1975; Drew, 2003).

2. Scepticism over the effectiveness of lockdowns

Lockdowns (in general) do not work (also the virus will just subside on its own anyway)

Whilst there is an implicit opposition to lockdown in arguments that challenge the

prevalence, mortality and/or morbidity of covid, a number of posters focus their arguments
more specifically on scepticism about the effectiveness or desirability of imposing lockdowns
to tackle the pandemic. One feature in these posts is recourse to evidence, with the
implication that the public needs to be better informed and that data needs to be more closely
scrutinised by exploring ‘unproven’ peaks and waves of infection. Posters often structure
their arguments around international comparisons, with Government inaction and lockdown
delays highlighted as failures causing ineffective outcomes. Others focused on negative
evaluations of local lockdowns such as the one on in Leicester, which were depicted as
illogical and unfair to cities targeted.

P14
that's why Belgium, the UK, Spain and Italy all lead Sweden in Covid-19 deaths per capita, and are the
worst in the world. same as blue states vs red in the US lol.

Ireland has had one of the most draconian lock-downs (even by UK standards) and is not all that far
behind. and it's far more isolated.

Japan has had one of the looser lock-downs and has probably performed better than any other nation
globally, suggesting there are many other variables at play (mask wearing when sick, healthy
population, voluntary social distancing, good healthcare, protection of nursing homes - crucial)

lock-downs vs isolating the at-risk make very little sense (especially when implemented 3 months late).
the evidence is far from overwhelming. in fact the evidence probably suggests the opposite - that lock-
downs do more harm than good when enacted after the horse has well and truly bolted.

but don't let that get in the way of you from cheering for the loss of your personal freedoms ;)

The argument against the use of local lockdowns is structured as a comparison of countries
the poster deems to be doing well (e.g. Sweden, Japan) and those not doing well in containing
the pandemic (e.g. Belgium, UK, Spain, Italy, Ireland). This binary categorisation is
presented as rather clear-cut and obvious, rather than emphasising any ambiguity or
equivocality in data that might support it (see Sharrock and Turner, 1978). “Success” here is
actually directly linked to societies adopting ‘looser’ lockdown measures and, without
providing any specific statistics, the poster claims that the correct means of exhibiting this
pattern is using is ‘Covid-19 deaths per capita’ (see Sacks, 1988/9).

The poster then focuses on the UK Government’s decision-making by introducing further

binary possibilities of a full lockdown for all citizens versus mandating the isolation of the
‘at-risk.’ The former is dismissed as making little sense and ‘doing more harm than good,’
exacerbated in negative impacts through a purported late implementation ‘after the horse has
bolted.’ The sub-text here is one of Government inaction and faulty decision-making. Further
this judgement suggests that even if a Government decides to adopt a lockdown-type
approach to the pandemic, the policy can only be effective if enacted swiftly before cases
rise. Delayed lockdowns are failed lockdowns. Instead, the poster argues that the purpose of
the lockdown is not about saving lives, but a back-door way of eroding ‘personal freedoms’
with citizens giving up their rights without questioning the regulations and those who
mandate them.

P15
Germany will, inevitably, experience outbreak after outbreak, potentially for years. This is because, if
the statistics are to be taken at face value, only a very small % of the German population have been
exposed to the virus.
By contrast, such a high proportion of the U.K. population has either been exposed (& survived or
died) or is otherwise not susceptible that herd immunity is near at hand. This is a logical destination
which will be reached imminently.

This post also sets up a comparison between the situation of the UK against that ofand a comparator
country (Germany) that implemented a more stringent system of lockdowns. At the time of this post,
it was well-known that Germany had experienced markedly lower rates of infection, hospitalisation
and death than the UK. It is this evidence that this post implicitly disconfirms the significance of.
Germany’s lower rates of infection in this account mask a problem that is building up for the country
– a low rate of exposure equating to a low rate of immunity and a lowered resistance to viral waves to
come. The UK’s higher rates of infection, by contrast, are diminished in significance because they
imply an approach to “herd immunity.” This evidence is predictive and suppositional, but presented as
trumping and disconfirming existing epidemiological data through plotting an inevitable trajectory
that the poster presents as an obvious, inevitable and logical outcome (on this, see Sacks, 1975).

The Leicester lockdown is not impacting rates of transmission/fatalities

A sub-set of posts focused on data-driven debates around the effectiveness of the lockdown
that was implemented in Leicester. A central focus of these posts is distrust of both media
and government sources and their scientific advisors, who, it is contestsed, selectively present
incomplete or misleading data. Scepticism about the link between lockdown and the
weakening of the virus transmission rates leads to debates around potential sources of reliable
and trustworthy information.

P16

Deaths are 3-4 weeks behind infections. The people that underestimate the risk and think they know
better than the scientists are the problem.
P14
In reply to P16
they are generally 2 weeks, not 3-4. lock-downs are not scientifically justified unless you
believe that: a) hospitals will be overwhelmed (they wont be in Leicester); b) you can lock-
down forever (you can't) or c) there will be an imminent cure (there won't be).

your plan is basically to have intermittent lockdowns forever for a virus that kills <0.3%. nice
one!
 like most of the US states being hit now, there will be an uptick in deaths for a while before
the virus subsides, but it seems to be getting less fatal as the virus wears on (this tends to
happen).

suggest you get your head out of your backside and start reading more widely than the BBC
and FT. you might learn a thing or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn5BGHuK1zo

The first poster raises concerns over people not taking covid-19 seriously enough. They
criticise people who undermine the risk of covid-19 – possibly because the deaths are ‘3-4
weeks behind infections’ – and describes them as a problem who ‘think they know better than
the scientists.’

Another poster (P14) presents a counterargument and offers alternative figures to support
their suggestion that covid-related deaths occur sooner than previously suggested. This
poster, who offers reasons as to why lockdown is not scientifically justified, describes pro-
lockdown views as based in ‘belief’ rather than fact. A hypothesis is proposed (and then
refuted) that lockdowns can only be deemed ‘scientifically justified’ if hospitals are
‘overwhelmed’ by covid admissions – something presented as not the case in Leicester
(although without supporting evidence). Ancillary conditions for potential effective
lockdowns are similarly simultaneously presented and dismissed: governments would need
to, but cannot, impose lockdown forever, and lockdowns could only end with development of
a cure (which will not be forthcoming). In light of the rejection of the possibility of effective
lockdowns, the implication is that the only alternative is an ineffective repeated strategy of
local lockdowns, and the need for such measures is further undermined by the diminution of
the lethality of the disease (‘a virus that kills <0.3%’).

Reported rates of covid cases in America are also used to suggest that covid weakens
naturally over time as more people are infected. The poster ends with a dismissive retort to
those who they presume consume information from limited sources (the BBC and FT), with
the implication that (more accurate) information supporting their viewpoint is available to
those who seek it.

P17
It is going away. It will gradually fade away if we simply resume normal life.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Please examine the daily deaths plot. The 3-day moving average shows peak daily deaths April 10th.
Note that death reporting is always somewhat delayed, so the peak deaths was probably a few days
earlier still. https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/declining-death-rate-from-covid-19-in-hospitals-in-
england/ Henegan et al argue the peak daily deaths was Apr 8.
 We locked down on Mar 23. That’s just 2weeks 2days prior to peak deaths, The interval between
infection & death is in excess of 3 weeks. Lockdown is the wrong side of the turning point. Therefore,
it did not cause the turning point.
Once your mind accepts that, many things become clear, including causes of the turning point & future
profile of the pandemic.

This poster argues that covid is ‘going away,’ and suggests resuming ‘normal life’ – implying
no more lockdowns – as a way of mitigating covid. P17 leaves a link to the Worldometer’s
tracker of covid-19, and suggests that the UK has passed their covid peak, thus rendering
lockdown unnecessary.

They also reference an academic report that suggests a decline in covid-related deaths in
England. This is followed by a calculation based on assumed infection lead-in times to
support the notion that covid-19 has peaked. It is suggested that lockdown has come too late
– ‘the wrong side of the turning point’ – and will not be effective. The post also hints at some
conspiracy, with the poster suggesting that once you accept lockdown has come too late, then
‘many things become clear’.

Although posters displayed different perspectives and views about the public health approach
to the pandemic in the UK (and/or Leicester), a common under-current is the ulterior motives
behind the decisions. As such the public are framed as ceding their ‘personal freedoms’
without proper scrutiny (P14), variable rules are argued to be unfair (P15), and the
Government and media are characterised by ineffective action and the misuse of data.

3. Scepticism over motives for imposing lockdowns

In this section, the government’s imposition of lockdown – driven by advice from scientists –
is critiqued. Lockdown is portrayed as a misguided, overcautious and an extreme measure to
tackle covid-19. The data used by the government to justify lockdown are questioned and
alternative figures offered to reframe it as doing more harm in relation to other public health
issues. Some conspiratorial ideas begin to appear in some of the critiques to lockdown
policies. In such instances, the general public are described as passive while government
policies have negative impact on other social/public policies.

Lockdown driven by inappropriate risk aversion

P6
The same scientists that are suggesting you wash your fiance's hand before you put the ring on at your
wedding day. The same scientists that say you can't let guests sing on your wedding day?
There is a difference between risk aversion and risk management but not for the govt who are hoping to
pass a hindsight test with the British media.
Think for yourself. "The science" involves more guesswork than you are comfortable admitting.
This poster uses comical examples to ridicule scientists’ covid advice. The crux of the
argument is that the British government are being risk-averse so they can be judged more
favourably in the future. It is then suggested that the general public are not exercising
independent critical thinking about this. The use of scare quotes when referring to “the
science” reinforces the notion of official advice as a problematic construction lacking
adequate basis in evidence.

P7
As others have said elsewhere if the Govt's stats are right then Leicester is experiencing 35 new cases
per 100k population, that's 450 cases based on city size.
The death rate is now 0.25-0.5% thats 1-2 deaths. Presumably like everywhere else they'll probably
already sick with a serious condition; so why destroy more livelihoods, further ruin kid's education,
delay cancer treatment etc., and cause more suicides?
Oh before I get the usual "but any death must be avoided" nonsense: we live with flu and all the other
risks every day this is no different. There's a balance in everything.

As Professor David Miles of Imperial has found in his recent paper 'Living with COVID 19' even if the
death rate in this country increased by a multiple of the current level it would still not justify the
damage done by Lockdown using NICE's own figures.

P7 constructs an argument against lockdown by presenting figures that minimise the harm
caused by covid in juxtaposition with more serious harms caused by lockdown. The argument
is introduced and supported by the presentation of, and extrapolation from, “government
stats.” Although abstracted from any associated data that might show trends, transmission and
modelled future projections, the precise nature of the figure and their associated calculations
produces a minimised negative outcome “1-2 deaths” which is further linked to the
presumption that these would be people “already sick.” There is an implicit here an othering
and devaluation of this group to achieve a minimised presentation of the potential benefits of
lockdown.

The argument’s legitimacy is defended through the extreme case formulation in line six –
“before I get the usual “but any death must be avoided” nonsense.” This positions alternative
proposals – those trying to control the virus through lockdowns – as unrealistic. It juxtaposes
two alternatives – accepting “risk” in relation to covid as is done with other risks to public
health and thus pursuing “balance” (which equates to not locking down), or pursuing of a set
of unrealistic and unachievable aims to nullify all risk.

The “balance” to be struck against the minimised risk of covid is presented against more
significant risks of lockdown to the economy, healthcare and wellbeing. There is a contrast
between the precise figures presented in the first part of the post in relation to viral spread
and fatalities, and the qualitative risks of lockdown – whose legitimacy is derived from the
authoritative positions of the purported source from an esteemed institution (“Professor
David Miles of Imperial”).
Both extracts employ discursive strategies to cast doubt on official scientific advice by
undermining the certainty of the scientific enterprise and the credibility of SAGE scientists or
by the marshalling and presentation of alternative data to present a more viable alternative.

Hidden motives for lockdown

Whilst the propagation of such arguments might be problematic from a public health
perspective, they are framed as contrary positions to lockdown, which is presented as
misguided and balanced out with counterarguments. However, there are also more
conspiratorial aspects to these arguments, particularly in repeated suggestions that the
government and media are hiding the ‘truth,’ and hints at authoritarianism and ‘being
played’. Other comments go further, framing opposition to lockdown in a qualitatively
different way, rooted in deliberate misrepresentation and manipulation of facts by nefarious
government and media actors for hidden motives.

P8
Locking down Leicester is just another dead cat to distract from the government failing to extend the
Brexit deadline. It also allows them to claim that they are serious about dealing with the virus, when
without publishing their full testing statistics (how many actual people are tested with results
received!), and actually quarantining the city, it is meaningless distraction.

When it was first mooted that there may be local lockdowns, I already had Leicester at the top of my
list without knowing anything about it’s virus history: it is an ideal test case - large, but not too large,
easy to isolate as not spread out, near enough to monitor without being too close...... Just what you need
for an experiment on lockdown.

Here, lockdown is not enforced through a misguided pursuit of an unrealistic outcome as in

earlier extracts, but as knowingly based on fictitious claims for political motives – distracting
the public from political failures elsewhere and attaining a veneer of political credibility for
responding to the virus. Initial allusions to covered-up government testing data segue into a
strategy to manage the facticity of the account through the contention that the strategy was
clear to the poster before the fact. This strategy manages the subjectivity of the argument by
presenting it not merely as a position arrived at from the poster’s subjective assessment, but
as one that, given appropriate evaluation of the facts, was predictable in advance –
predictable even “without knowing anything about [Leicester’s] virus history.”

The facts underpinning this predictability are presented as supporting Leicester’s selection as
an “experiment on lockdown.” Whilst this differs somewhat from the initially presented
motive of political distraction, both share a common framing of lockdown not as a mistaken
policy to be argued against, but as the result of deliberate deception in the pursuit of goals
divergent from those presented to justify it.

P9
 Sir Peter is right about the Government in London. Leicester is the perfect place to trial an extra
lockdown because of two things: It is the least visited City in the UK in terms of tourists. And
Leicestershire is owned by only a few families (in trust) making it very unlikely people from outside
the city (walls) will complain.

P10
In reply to P9
Agreed, someone in the Government picked Leicester as a test.
Note the 'recommend' language and 'stay at home as much as possible' so Cummings can go
there for a ice cream and a walk in the woods.
The children are particular affected so the schools will close on Thursday, Thursday? today is
Monday.
Hancock refered to the rules - like the 2m rule - like slapping a colleague on the back?
What a joke Government!

P11
In reply to P10
So no local outbreak? Invented by the government or engineered? Please state which
(with evidence).

P10
In reply to P11
Do your own research and look into the Government moving Covid cases
into Glenfield Hospital near Leicester and then counting the cases. I think
that counts as 'engineered.'

This extract begins with a justification for why Leicester is being used as a ‘trial’ for local
lockdowns, implying the intention of then introducing a wider-scale lockdown. The idea that
Leicester is ‘owned by only a few families’ is presented as an explanation for it being the
‘test’ site. It is not made clear why this is being done, but the government is deemed
responsible. The post further criticises the government for leaving loopholes for those in
power to act outside of its own rules (through the reference to Cummings).

P11 responds critically, implying that their criticisms are baseless and potentially
conspiratorial. This is done using two questions. The first implies that there is a local
outbreak. The second further challenges the conspiratorial arguments of the previous posts by
asking which conspiratorial feature (invented or engineered) is occurring, positioning both as
far-fetched.

P10 responds not with direct evidence, but with the suggestion that P11 seek out evidence,
followed by a brief, unspecific example of what is supposedly happening. The reply ends
with an answer to P11’s question. Placing the answer in quotation marks, functions to resist
the implication that the earlier posts are conspiratorial. Together, this interaction shows that
potentially conspiratorial arguments are made, supported, challenged and backed up with
examples.

P12

But don’t forget you’ll be fined for not sending the kids to school. Won’t be long before we get to the
ultimate government wet dream - you’re criminalised for not staying at home with your kids or you’re
criminalised because you are staying at home with them.

This post presents the lockdown as designed to enable government control over the
population (their ‘ultimate’ ‘wet dream’), through the criminalisation of all options available
to parents (sending children to school, staying or not staying at home with them). The
lockdown is therefore not about protecting people, but a means for the government to pursue
authoritarian goals. In the following extracts, similar sentiments about the use of lockdowns
to introduce gradual extension of government control:

P13

Glad I don't live in Leicester. If my state of internment without crime or trial, or being in any danger
from this virus, was continued I would be seriously angry. I'm yet to hear why the just vulnerable could
not be asked to isolate. When the dust settles on this many governments need to be held to account for
what they did to their own people, without such measures being absolutely necessary.

P14
and there was / is still a clearly defined at-risk population we can protect (start with nursing
homes)

sadly, govts are relishing the new authoritarian powers, and elites want a global reset

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/03/pandemic-is-chance-to-reset-
global-economy-says-prince-charles

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/now-is-the-time-for-a-great-reset/

The first post repeats ‘lockdowns are ineffective’ and ‘only the vulnerable are at risk’
arguments identified previously. The overuse of the ineffective lockdown is presented as
grounds for anger, meriting an investigation into the government’s actions. There is some
hedging, with lockdown being presented as not ‘absolutely’ necessary. P14 replies by
supporting and building on this comment. The first sentence picks up the ‘vulnerable at risk’
repertoire and suggestsing a course of action (helping those in nursing homes) to deal with
this. The second goes further, arguing that governments (not just the UK’s) and unspecified
‘elites’ are taking advantage of newfound abilities to control populations, including
implementing a ‘global reset’. The lockdown is therefore presented as a way to bring about
social change and authoritarianism, rather than about preventing the spread of covid.

Discussion

Our analysis identifies six repertoires in online discussions of the imposition of lockdown in
Leicester that work to undermine the case for lockdown by taking sceptical positions to
reasons given for its implementation. These are classified under categories of covid
scepticism, lockdown scepticism and scepticism over motives for the government response to
covid.

In relation to covid scepticism, we identified repertoires (i) covid is not as prevalent as

official statistics present, and (ii) covid is not sufficiently dangerous to merit implementing
lockdown. In both repertoires, discussants leverage ambiguities or lacunae in official
statistics or accounts (such as breakdowns of testing rates, local-level data for hospitalisations
or the process of ascertaining official cause of death) to cast doubt on official accounts of the
prevalence or dangerousness of covid. These moves are strengthened by short-form
presentation of the official figures for argumentative purposes, often without context in
original sourcing. This doubt opens up discursive space for strategies similar to Sacks’ (1988)
‘members’ measurement systems’ and Lave’s (1988) ‘everyday mathematics, in which
discussants introduce alternative figures and present their own calculations that then are
presented as resolving the putative doubts in favour of a position minimising the prevalence
and harm of covid – reported numbers of positive tests become less significant, and risks of
death from covid are reduced.

The lockdown scepticism categorisation comprised repertoires (i) lockdowns are ineffective
disease control measures and/or impossible to implement in a way that would have any
impact, and (ii) the imposed lockdown is not actually affecting rates of transmission or
fatalities. Here, posters use selective comparisons with other countries, based on a snapshot
idealisation of them as “doing well” or “doing badly” in terms of infection rates, and
extrapolate from their covid response measures to argue that the decision to lock down or not
to has little impact on disease transmission. A parallel argument rests on the construction of
chains of events based on behaviours of the public. That is, if lockdown is implemented
people will behave in ways that undermine its effectiveness, with the only possible outcomes
being a lockdown backed by an unduly heavy police control or one that is ineffective in
preventing transmission. We see here similar strategies to those in covid scepticism
repertoires of delegitimising the case for lockdown through selective application of everyday
mathematics – in these cases, (re)calculations based on posters’ own derivations of the (lack
of) impact of the lockdown on covid fatalities through estimations of the ways in which death
rates will or will not reflect a lead-in time for incubation of the disease. This suggests an
interesting parallel with the phenomenon of “motivated numeracy” (Nurse & White, 2020).
This predicts that people’s numerical interpretations of risk are influenced by prior beliefs
such that accurate numerical inferences are more likely to be made when they align with or
are unrelated to strongly held beliefs, and vice versa. Here we see similar occurrences with
communication rather than interpretation of numerical information, as discussants dismiss
official figures that challenge their sceptical position, and promote a more numerate analysis
of alternative figures to support it. These arguments also intersect with a (re)mobilisation of a
generalised scepticism over the mortality of covid to further undermine the case for
lockdown.

Presentation of scepticism over the motives for imposing lockdown comprised repertoires (i)
government and scientists are overly risk-averse, and (ii) there are hidden socio-political
motives behind implementation of the Leicester lockdown. The discourse of risk aversion by
government and scientists was often managed through ridiculing a caricatured position of
excessive risk aversion that was imputed to those proposing lockdown (“the same scientists
that say you can't let guests sing on your wedding day?”) and, similar to repertoires discussed
above, through leveraging the increased risk of hospitalisations and death for people with pre-
existing health conditions to downplay and ridicule the necessity of instituting lockdown as a
general protection measure. Whilst this first repertoire presents disagreement with the
assessment of risk behind government decisions, the second is more pointed and accusatory.

Implications for literature

Here, the implication is that the government are motivated in their imposition of lockdown by
hidden and nefarious political motives – to distract from unwanted political attention
elsewhere, or to extend and entrench their ability to monitor and control the population. This
marks an interesting point at which sceptical discourses cross over into something more akin
to conspiracy theories. As Billig (1991) notes, a key feature of these discourses is their
rhetorical target can be seen to be more “ordinary, non-conspiratorial interpretations of the
world” that are countered by the discussant being able to discover “the hidden truth.”

We see similar and overlapping discursive strategies underpinning these claims (marshalling
uncertainty around official figures for hospitalisations to undermine official accounts; the
conceptual separation of the healthy “most people” from those “at risk” to undermine a
universalist response). The key difference, as Billig notes, is the target of these accounts
being a more ordinary interpretation of the reasons for lockdown – so, the outcome should
have been predictable to those who were able to evaluate the requisite knowledge
appropriately, and those who do not see through the hidden motives are enjoined to “do your
own research.” It is proposed that a vaguely-referenced government or set of elites
(referenced as “they,” or through metonymy “Cummins” or ““(unelected psychopath)
Cummins”) deliberately distorting and controlling information to pursue what are taken to be
common-sense goals of government control (a government’s “wet dream” ) or globalist
conspiratorial goals (a global cabal pursuing the “great reset”), similar to the far-right
discourse of ‘elites’ working against the national interest (Johnson and Goodman, 2013).

Individualistic approaches to dealing with (mis)information, such as motivated cognition, fail

to address the nature of talk about controversial topics as situated and occasioned action
(Edwards & Potter, 1992) constructing and rhetorically managing accounts to carry off
interpersonal goals, which is why a discursive approach is so beneficial. This also points
tohighlights the need for more research on how misinformation is understood and negotiated.
Hadlington et al. (2022) begin to do this with their social constructionist analysis of how
social media users understand and interact with potential information regarding covid, in
which they found a difficult situation where people draw on social media for fact checking
despite displaying awareness of the existence of misinformation. Further discursive analysis
of how people produce and respond to misinformation is therefore needed.

Whilst van Mulukom et al (2022), in their meta-analysis of belief in covid conspiracy

theories, note associations between specific personality traits and prior beliefs and belief in
covid conspiracies, the focus in this paper on the discursive content of responses to health
safeguarding measures notes considerable overlap and interdependence between these
identified discourses. In practice they can co-exist in the same series of accounts and support
one another in undermining the case for lockdown. Whilst the more conspiratorial style of
account is on the surface more alarming (especially in light of some of the high profile
violent or destructive actions by people protesting covid public health measures in these
terms – e.g. BBC News, 2021), both these and the non-conspiratorial accounts are potentially
harmful from a public health perspective. As Toth (2020) points out in respect of discourses
of vaccine resistance, these repertoires have in common the delegitimising of ‘a series of
dominant discourses (of the main actors in the health systems)’ and the offering of ‘moral and
epistemic alternatives.’ Whilst different to discourses identified in Toth’s study, those
examined here share the characteristic of seeming to be “easily accessible discursive
resources,” and “ready-made answers” to challenge public health benefits of lockdowns to
contain the spread of a dangerous pathogen. There are challenges for public health messaging
to counter the degree to which official accounts and statistics can be so widely undermined
by alternative ones, and for the degree to which these same alternative accounts can cross a
rather blurry demarcation line and become more actively conspiratorial and accusatory and so
potentially more dangerous.
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i
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8469725/Leicester-faces-extra-two-week-lockdown-pubs-
hairdressers-staying-SHUT.html#comments
ii
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/leicester-braces-local-lockdown-36-22272894#comments-wrapper
iii
https://www.ft.com/content/5b9ce1f9-35f2-4640-914e-12b8f757b103#comments-anchor (comments no
longer available)
iv
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/governments-leicester-lockdown-include-
restrictions-4275440#comments-wrapper (comments no longer available)