Scepticism or conspiracy? A discourse analysis of anti-lockdown comments to online newspaper articles

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