scholarly journals The Interplay of Jargon, Motivation, and Fatigue While Processing COVID-19 Crisis Communication Over Time

2021 ◽  
pp. 0261927X2110431
Author(s):  
Hillary C. Shulman ◽  
Olivia M. Bullock ◽  
Elizabeth E. Riggs
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Processing Fluency ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Message Acceptance ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Risk Policy ◽  
Over Time

Using the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, this three-wave experiment ( N = 1,830) examined whether a public health crisis motivates people to engage with complicated information about the virus in the form of jargon. Results revealed that although the presence of jargon negatively impacted message acceptance for topics that were not particularly urgent (flood risk and federal risk policy), the presence of jargon within the COVID-19 topic condition did not affect message perceptions—at first. In subsequent waves of data collection, however, it was found that the influence of jargon strengthened over time within the COVID-19 topic condition. Specifically, jargon began to exert a stronger influence on processing fluency despite the continued urgency of the topic. This finding suggests that motivation to process COVID-19 related information declined over time. Theoretical contributions for language, processing fluency, and persuasion are offered and practical implications for health, risk, science, and crisis communicators are advanced.

A Framework for the Interaction of Active Audiences and Influencers on Twitter: The Case of Zika Virus

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (04) ◽  
pp. 2050032
Author(s):  
Shadi Shakeri
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
User Involvement ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Network Community ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Over Time

In this paper, we investigate communication among Twitter users in the context of the 2016 Zika crisis, to understand how influencers and audiences contribute to agenda setting in health crisis communication. We analyse the content of 146,953 Zika-related tweets posted between April and September 2016 and examine how discussion topics vary by network community and user involvement over time. We argue that audiences adopt a broad view of health crisis-related issues and advocate for long-term solutions drawn from theories of active audiences and agenda-setting. Based on our observations on the Zika crisis case, we propose a framework for the dynamics in health crisis communication, which suggests a shift of discourse from a short-term perspective on specific issues to a long-term perspective on broader issues. The research contributes to the KM literature by suggesting a new method for converting individual tacit knowledge to collective explicit knowledge. Applying the framework to the coronavirus pandemic conversations can offer significant insights into the crisis.

scholarly journals Changes in Tobacco Use Patterns among Veterans in San Diego during the Recent Peak of the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (22) ◽  
pp. 11923
Author(s):  
Javad J. Fatollahi ◽  
Sean Bentley ◽  
Neal Doran ◽  
Arthur L. Brody
Keyword(s):  
Tobacco Use ◽  
San Diego ◽  
Multinomial Logistic Regression ◽  
Psychiatric Diagnoses ◽  
Peak Period ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Initial Stage ◽  
Over Time

The prevalence of tobacco use increases in times of stress; however, during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, tobacco use rates stayed the same in most populations. Previous work focused on the initial months of the pandemic, while this study examined the changes in tobacco use during a later peak period of the pandemic. We used data from 61,852 visits to the VA San Diego Healthcare System from November 2019 to February 2021, divided into pre-, early, and peak pandemic periods. Multinomial logistic regression was used to test whether the odds of being a daily or non-daily tobacco user varied over time, by demographic group, or with the presence of specific psychiatric diagnoses. Younger Veterans had a greater reduction in the prevalence of non-daily tobacco use between the early and peak periods, while older Veterans had a rise in daily use from pre- to the early pandemic, which returned to baseline during the peak. Individuals with substance use disorder and serious mental illness diagnoses were more likely to report tobacco use, but psychiatric diagnoses did not predict change over time. These findings demonstrate factors that potentially contribute to changes in tobacco use during a public health crisis and may help guide future targeted cessation efforts.

scholarly journals Emotions of COVID-19: A Study of Self-Reported Information and Emotions during the COVID-19 Pandemic using Human Centric Artificial Intelligence (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achini Adikari ◽  
Rashmika Nawaratne ◽  
Daswin De Silva ◽  
Sajani Ranasinghe ◽  
Oshadi Alahakoon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
State Transitions ◽  
Clustering Methods ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Over Time

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a global disruption, starting with a public health emergency, followed by a significant loss of human life and a severe economic and social fallout. As physical distancing regulations were introduced to manage outbreaks, individuals, groups and communities took to social media to express their thoughts and emotions reflecting different behaviours. This has led to increased interaction on social media thereby recording diverse behaviours of people as the pandemic progressed. OBJECTIVE This research aims to explore the human behaviours recorded on the digital traces of social media during the pandemic. The investigation is focused on examining the emotions, emotion state and intensity changes, topical associations and different groups of people using social media conversations that uncover informed insights on behaviours during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS Our study explores emotion classifications, intensities, transitions, profiles and alignment to key themes and topics, across the four stages of the pandemic; declaration of a global health crisis, first lockdown, easing of restrictions, and the second lockdown. This study employs a human-centric artificial intelligence (AI) based framework comprising of natural language processing, emotion modelling, unsupervised clustering methods that are collectively used to investigate the social media conversations. The investigation was carried out using 73,000 Twitter conversations related to Australia from January to September 2020. RESULTS The outcomes of this study enabled to analyse and visualise different emotion behaviours and concerns reflected on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, the topic analysis showed the diverse and common concerns people have expressed during the four stages of the pandemic. It was noted that starting from personal level concerns, the concerns expressed over social media has escalated to broader concerns over time. Second, the emotion intensity and emotions state transitions showed that ‘fear’ and ‘sad’ emotions were more prominently expressed at first, however, they transition into ‘anger’ and ‘disgust’ over time. Negative emotions except ‘sad’ were significantly higher (P < .05) in the second lockdown showing increased frustration. Emotion state changes during these stages were visualised to comprehend the change in emotions over time. Third, based on the concerns expressed social media users were categorized into profiles. The profiles in the first lockdown differed from the profiles in the second lockdown showing the shift of concerns as the pandemic progressed. CONCLUSIONS This study showed diverse emotion behaviours and concerns recorded on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. While this study establishes the use of social media to discover informed insights during a time where physical communication is impossible the outcomes also contribute towards post-pandemic recovery and understanding people’s emotions better during crises. The study exploits AI and social media to enhance our understanding of human behaviours in global emergencies, leading to improved planning and policymaking for future crises.

scholarly journals Narrating the crisis: Moral regulation, overlapping responsibilities and COVID-19 in Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 001139212110558
Author(s):  
Sean P Hier
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Moral Regulation ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Epidemic Curve ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Moral Capital

This article theorizes some of the ways that the COVID-19 health crisis was publicly narrated and morally regulated in Canada. Beginning with Valverde’s theory of moral capital, public health crisis communication is conceptualized as dialectical claims-making activities aimed at maximizing the individual moral capital of citizens and the aggregate moral capital of nations. Valverde’s historical sociology explains how moral capital operated in relation to economic capital accumulation in the context of 19th-century moral regulation of the urban poor. This article applies aspects of Valverde’s historical framework about mixed economies of regulation to contemporary biopolitical moralization in the midst of a pandemic. It does so by arguing that responsibilizing citizens to flatten the epidemic curve of the disease contributed to the social construction of a normative pandemic subject. In this way, the analysis provides insights into how public health crisis communication explicitly intended to mitigate COVID-19 infection rates both reflected and reinforced the conjunctural norms associated with neoliberal governmentality.

scholarly journals Construction and Validation of a Brief Pandemic Fatigue Scale in the Context of the Coronavirus-19 Public Health Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Cuadrado ◽  
Miguel A. Maldonado ◽  
Carmen Tabernero ◽  
Alicia Arenas ◽  
Rosario Castillo-Mayén ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Protective Measure ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Protective Behaviors ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Path Analyses ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Confirmatory Analysis ◽  
And Gender

Objectives: The chronic restrictions to mitigate the new SARS-CoV-2 virus may result in pandemic fatigue. This study set out to develop a short, reliable, valid, and gender-invariant instrument—the Pandemic Fatigue Scale (PFS).Methods: In the first phase, 300 students responded to a pilot questionnaire that allowed the reduction and refinement of the items. In the second phase, the validity, reliability, and invariance of the scale were explored among a sample of 596 participants.Results: Factor exploratory and confirmatory analyses confirmed a robust adjustment for the bifactorial structure that explained 79,36% of the variance. The two factors identified were 1) people’s demotivation in continuing to follow the recommended protective behaviors (neglect) and 2) people’s boredom regarding the pandemic-related information (boredom). The pattern of relations between the Pandemic Fatigue Scale and other variables—find through correlation, mediation, and path analyses—and the gender differences—find in the ANOVA analyses—provided strong evidence of the construct validity. Moreover, the PFS was shown to be invariant regarding gender in a multigroup factor confirmatory analysis.Conclusion: The instrument can be of utility for professionals and researchers to assess pandemic fatigue, a variable that can affect the adoption of protective measure to avoid catching and spreading the virus.

Molecular characterization of SARS-CoV-2

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miribane Dërmaku-Sopjani ◽  
Mentor Sopjani
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Drug Targets ◽  
Virus Genome ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Therapeutic Drugs ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
New Public ◽  
And Function

Abstract:: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is currently a new public health crisis threatening the world. This pandemic disease is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus has been reported to be originated in bats and by yet unknown intermediary animals were transmitted to humans in China 2019. The SARSCoV- 2 spreads faster than its two ancestors the SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERSCoV) but has reduced fatality. At present, the SARS-CoV-2 has caused about a 1.16 million of deaths with more than 43.4 million confirmed cases worldwide, resulting in a serious threat to public health globally with yet uncertain impact. The disease is transmitted by inhalation or direct contact with an infected person. The incubation period ranges from 1 to 14 days. COVID-19 is accompanied by various symptoms, including cough, fatigue. In most people the disease is mild, but in some other people, such as in elderly and people with chronic diseases, it may progress from pneumonia to a multi-organ dysfunction. Many people are reported asymptomatic. The virus genome is sequenced, but new variants are reported. Numerous biochemical aspects of its structure and function are revealed. To date, no clinically approved vaccines and/or specific therapeutic drugs are available to prevent or treat the COVID-19. However, there are reported intensive researches on the SARSCoV- 2 to potentially identify vaccines and/or drug targets, which may help to overcome the disease. In this review, we discuss recent advances in understanding the molecular structure of SARS-CoV-2 and its biochemical characteristics.

Preparation and Antitubercular Activities of Palindromic Hydrazinecarbothioamides and Carbonothioic Dihydrazides

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 1202-1210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Joseps Hearn ◽  
Gwendolyn Towers ◽  
Michael Henry Cynamon
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Virulent Strain ◽  
Chemotherapeutic Agents ◽  
Disc Diffusion ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Chemical Structures ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
Zones Of Inhibition ◽  
Diffusion Assay

Background:With approximately one-third of the world’s population infected, tuberculosis continues to be a global public health crisis. The rise of strains that are unusually virulent or highly resistant to current drugs is a cause of special concern, prompting research into new classes of compounds, as well as the re-evaluation of known chemotherapeutic agents.Objectives:The antimycobacterial activities associated with some recently-reported thiocarbonyl compounds kindled our interest in the synthesis of substituted hydrazinecarbothioamides (3) and carbonothioic dihydrazides (4), with the aim of investigating their potential in antitubercular drug design and discovery.Methods:In the present study, the title compounds 3 and 4 were prepared by the condensation of hydrazines with isothiocyanates in reactions readily controlled by stoichiometry, temperature and solvent. The compounds were assessed against Mycobacterium bovis BCG in Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion, and minimum inhibitory concentrations were determined against the virulent strain M. tuberculosis Erdman.Results:The chemical structures of these thermally stable compounds were determined by IR, 1HNMR, 13C-NMR, high-resolution mass spectrometry and elemental analysis. In the Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion assay, some of the compounds showed substantial diameters of inhibition against BCG. In some cases, the zones of inhibition were so large that no growth at all was observed on the assay plates. Against M. tuberculosis Erdman, several of the compounds showed significant activities. Compound 3h was the most active, demonstrating a minimum inhibitory concentration of 0.5 µg/mL.Conclusion:We found that the title compounds may be prepared conveniently in excellent purity and good yields. They are readily identified on the basis of their characteristic spectra. Some members of this class showed significant activities against mycobacteria. We conclude that further work will be warranted in exploring the antitubercular properties of these compounds.

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