Local Media Concentration

In the COVID-19 pandemic, marginalized groups like migrants are disproportionately affected. As panic, fear of neglect, and mistrusting institutions in these groups are presumed to be apparent, their detachment to health services still needs to be investigated. This study comparatively analyzed the level of panic and trust between South Koreans and immigrants who are living within highly affected areas of South Korea. Mann–Whitney-U-Test and Pearson correlation showed panic is more pronounced in the Korean group while having a similar panic display pattern with the immigrants. The immigrant group appears to highly trust the Korean health system, health institutions, local media, and the local native community. Beyond conventional expectations, participant’s average panic score showed a statistically significant positive correlation with items of the trust scale, indicating a level of individual reliance amid the pandemic panic. Thus, ascertaining institutional trust and matured citizenry are identified as factors for effective public health outcomes. During such a pandemic, this study also reminded the public health needs of immigrants as secondary citizens, and presumptions of immigrants’ mistrust in such settings might not always be true.

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New Gatekeepers in Town: How Groups in Social Networking Sites Influence Information Flows in Russia’s Provinces

Social Media + Society ◽

10.1177/20563051211013253 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 205630512110132

Author(s):

Olga Dovbysh

Keyword(s):

Social Networking ◽

Social Networking Sites ◽

Digital Space ◽

Professional Norms ◽

Norms And Values ◽

Local Media ◽

Mediated Discourse ◽

Media Space ◽

Grassroots Initiatives ◽

Depth Interviews

The study focuses upon “city public groups” (“gorodskie pabliki,” local newsgroups on social networking sites)—the new entrants in the local media space of the Russian province that have recently become important actors of regional public communication. Such groups combine news posting and citizen discussions, report on local affairs and gossip, and entertain. Some groups are based on user-generated content; others create their own content or act as aggregators. Being non-registered and grassroots initiatives, these media enjoy higher freedom in comparison to official local newsrooms. Given the popularity of city public groups among local citizens and local authorities’ interest toward them, owners and moderators of these media are playing an influential role for local mediated discourse. Based on the gatekeeping theory and its extensions for digital space, this article explores the emerging roles of these new gatekeepers in the local communities. Based upon 28 in-depth interviews collected by the author in Russian towns in 2017–2018, the article also analyses the professional norms and values of the owners and moderators of local city groups that they employ to perform their gatekeeping function.

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Contrasting Public and Scientific Assessments of Fracking

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13126650 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (12) ◽

pp. 6650

Author(s):

Yu Zhang ◽

John A. Rupp ◽

John D. Graham

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Public Perceptions ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Opinion Survey ◽

Think Tank ◽

Advantages And Disadvantages ◽

Local Media

This paper examines whether public perceptions of the claimed advantages and disadvantages of fracking are consistent with an evidence-based assessment of the claimed advantages and disadvantages. Public assessments are obtained from an internet-based opinion survey in 2014 in six states: California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The survey presented eleven advantages and eleven disadvantages of fracking derived from local media stories, from advocacy claims made by pro- or anti-fracking groups, and from think tank pieces. Then the respondents were asked to indicate their feelings about how important each claimed advantage and disadvantage was to their support of/opposition to fracking. Scientific assessments regarding the same claims are compiled from available peer-reviewed literature and evidence-based reviews. We classify each claim as either (a) supported by the weight of the available evidence, (b) not supported by the weight of the available evidence, or (c) there is inadequate evidence to assess it. We find less consistency with respect to the disadvantages than advantages. Respondents perceive four disadvantages out of eleven as extremely important while there is inadequate evidence to assess them or the available evidence does not support them. Our comparison has interesting implications for understanding the controversy about fracking.

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An image dehazing algorithm based on double priors constraint

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201818904009 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 189 ◽

pp. 04009

Author(s):

Kun Liu ◽

Shiping Wang ◽

Linyuan He ◽

Duyan Bi ◽

Shan Gao

Keyword(s):

Standard Deviation ◽

Mean Value ◽

Experimental Results ◽

Dark Channel Prior ◽

Image Dehazing ◽

Color Distortion ◽

Local Media ◽

Dark Channel

Aiming at the color distortion of the restored image in the sky region, we propose an image dehazing algorithm based on double priors constraint. Firstly, we divided the haze image into sky and non-sky regions. Then the Color-lines prior and dark channel prior are used for estimating the transmission of sky and non-sky regions respectively. After introducing color-lines prior to correct sky regions restored by the dark channel prior, we get an accurate transmission. Finally, the local media mean value and standard deviation are used to refine the transmission to obtain the dehazing image. Experimental results show that the algorithm has obvious advantages in the recovery of the sky area.

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