scholarly journals Covid-19 on Twitter: an analysis of risk communication with visuals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Sleigh ◽  
Julia Amann ◽  
Manuel Schneider ◽  
Effy Vayena
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Risk Communication ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
Health Gains ◽  
Risk Framing ◽  
Loss Framing

Abstract Background: In a pandemic, when timely and clear communication is important, visuals on social media can help citizens quickly find and understand health risk information. In recognition of visuality and social media’s value during a crisis, we investigated popular Covid-19 risk communication with visuals posted on the platform Twitter. Looking at tweet authors, their use of graphics, the preventative messages, and risk framing, our objective was to determine how visual communication on Twitter promoted WHO Covid-19 health recommendations.Methods: We sourced Twitter’s 500 most retweeted Covid-19 messages for each month from January - October 2020 using Crowdbreaks. Included tweets had to have visuals, be in English, come from verified accounts, and contain at least one of the keywords ‘covid19', 'coronavirus', 'corona', or 'covid’. Following a retrospective approach, we then performed a qualitative content analysis of the tweets’ text and visuals. Results: Most of the tweets analysed came from influencers - individuals with many followers (51%), followed by media companies (30%), and health and government institutions (15%). At the start of the pandemic, the latter two were most prevalent. Analysis of visual formats showed that photographs were most common, and the majority of tweets combined them with other graphic types (55%). 68% of tweets had text in their visual, 42% of all visuals were animated, and 26% included a URL. ‘Stay home’ and ‘wear a mask’ were the most frequently communicated Covid-19 preventative measures. 70% of tweets used risk framing (emphasising health gains or loss), and 32% had tones of critique.Conclusion: This study found that the most retweeted Covid-19 preventative measures with visuals mostly came from individuals, showing that health and government organisations were not alone in promoting preventative measures on Twitter. This stresses the important role individuals play in the dissemination of information using social media during a health crisis. The finding that more tweets used health loss framing, often combined with the emotive medium of photographs, raises concerns about persuasive tactics feeding on fear. Future research is needed to better understand this approach's consequences and its impact on public perceptions and behaviours.

COVID-19 and the politicisation of medical preprints on Twitter: Quantitative Analysis of Social Media Data (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Stefania Ionescu ◽  
David Garcia ◽  
Anikó Hannák
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Direct Effect ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Preventative Measures ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
New Research ◽  
Sharing Patterns ◽  
Political Divide

BACKGROUND Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists have been willing to share their results quickly to speed up the development of potential treatments and/or a vaccine. At the same time, traditional peer-review-based publication systems are not always able to process new research promptly. This has contributed to a surge in the number of medical preprints published since January 2020. In the absence of a vaccine, preventative measures such as social distancing are most helpful in slowing the spread of COVID-19. Their effectiveness can be undermined if the public does not comply with them. Hence, public discourse can have a direct effect on the progression of the pandemic. Research shows that social media discussions on COVID-19 are driven mainly by the findings from preprints, not peer-reviewed papers, highlighting the need to examine the ways medical preprints are shared and discussed online. OBJECTIVE We examine the patterns of medRxiv preprint sharing on Twitter to establish (1) whether the number of tweets linking to medRxiv increased with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) which medical preprints were mentioned on Twitter most often; (3) whether medRxiv sharing patterns on Twitter exhibit political partisanship; (4) whether the discourse surrounding medical preprints among Twitter users has changed throughout the pandemic. METHODS The analysis is based on tweets (n=557,405) containing links to medRxriv preprint repository that were posted between the creation of the repository in June 2019 and June 2020. The study relies on a combination of statistical techniques and text analysis methods. RESULTS Since January 2020, the number of tweets linking to medRxiv has increased drastically, peaking in April 2020 with a subsequent cool-down. Before the pandemic, preprints were shared predominantly by users we identify as medical professionals and scientists. After January 2020, other users, including politically-engaged ones, have started increasingly tweeting about medRxiv. Our findings indicate a political divide in sharing patterns of the top-10 most-tweeted preprints. All of them were shared more frequently by users who describe themselves as Republicans than by users who describe themselves as Democrats. Finally, we observe a change in the discourse around medRxiv preprints. Pre-pandemic tweets linking to them were predominantly using the word “preprint”. In February 2020 “preprint” was taken over by the word “study”. Our analysis suggests this change is at least partially driven by politically-engaged users. Widely shared medical preprints can have a direct effect on the public discourse around COVID-19, which in turn can affect the societies’ willingness to comply with preventative measures. This calls for an increased responsibility when dealing with medical preprints from all parties involved: scientists, preprint repositories, media, politicians, and social media companies. CONCLUSIONS Widely shared medical preprints can have a direct effect on the public discourse around COVID-19, which in turn can affect the societies’ willingness to comply with preventative measures. This calls for an increased responsibility when dealing with medical preprints from all parties involved: scientists, preprint repositories, media, politicians, and social media companies.

Warnings for Hurricane Irma: Trust of Warning Type and Perceptions of Self-Efficacy and Susceptibility

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 1368-1372
Author(s):  
Jason A. Parker ◽  
Daphne E. Whitmer ◽  
Valerie K. Sims
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Risk Communication ◽  
Critical Point ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Protective Action ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Alert System ◽  
Efficacy Measure ◽  
Use Of Social Media ◽  
Hurricane Irma

The purpose of this study was to examine the types of risk communication received about Hurricane Irma by a university sample, along with their perceptions of self-efficacy and susceptibility to the storm. Three days after the storm, 176 individuals completed a survey that asked about how they received alerts, the frequency of the alerts received, and their trust in the different risk communication mediums. Additionally, respondents completed a susceptibility measure, a self-efficacy measure, and a storm fear questionnaire. Results showed that most people received alerts from their university alert system or social media. Participants trusted risk communication the most from text alerts and radio reports, but the least from social media. Additionally, results showed that those who received more alerts also had higher levels of perceived susceptibility to the hurricane, except for those who received 16 to 20 alerts. Perceived self-efficacy was not related to the number of alerts received. These data suggest that although many urge the use of social media for spreading emergency warnings, people distrust social media for risk communication, and that this mistrust may be due to recent cases of misinformation spreading on various platforms. In addition, these data suggest that there may be a “critical point” of alerting, such that receiving more than 5 hurricane alerts may lead to significant increase in perceptions of susceptibility to the storm. Future research should investigate the critical point of effective alerting and the effect that trust in the different mediums of alert technology has on motivation to comply with the warning’s protective action recommendations.

scholarly journals USAD: An Intelligent System for Slang and Abusive Text Detection in PERSO-Arabic-Scripted Urdu

Complexity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Nauman Ul Haq ◽  
Mohib Ullah ◽  
Rafiullah Khan ◽  
Arshad Ahmad ◽  
Ahmad Almogren ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Intelligent System ◽  
Automatic Detection ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Offensive Language ◽  
Language Detection

The use of slang, abusive, and offensive language has become common practice on social media. Even though social media companies have censorship polices for slang, abusive, vulgar, and offensive language, due to limited resources and research in the automatic detection of abusive language mechanisms other than English, this condemnable act is still practiced. This study proposes USAD (Urdu Slang and Abusive words Detection), a lexicon-based intelligent framework to detect abusive and slang words in Perso-Arabic-scripted Urdu Tweets. Furthermore, due to the nonavailability of the standard dataset, we also design and annotate a dataset of abusive, offensive, and slang word Perso-Arabic-scripted Urdu as our second significant contribution for future research. The results show that our proposed USAD model can identify 72.6% correctly as abusive or nonabusive Tweet. Additionally, we have also identified some key factors that can help the researchers improve their abusive language detection models.

scholarly journals Qualitative analysis of visual risk communication on twitter during the Covid-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Sleigh ◽  
Julia Amann ◽  
Manuel Schneider ◽  
Effy Vayena
Keyword(s):  
Risk Communication ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Health Gain ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Loss ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Visual Characteristic ◽  
Communication Dynamics ◽  
Loss Framing

Abstract Background The Covid-19 pandemic is characterized by uncertainty and constant change, forcing governments and health authorities to ramp up risk communication efforts. Consequently, visuality and social media platforms like Twitter have come to play a vital role in disseminating prevention messages widely. Yet to date, only little is known about what characterizes visual risk communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. To address this gap in the literature, this study’s objective was to determine how visual risk communication was used on Twitter to promote the World Health Organisations (WHO) recommended preventative behaviours and how this communication changed over time. Methods We sourced Twitter’s 500 most retweeted Covid-19 messages for each month from January–October 2020 using Crowdbreaks. For inclusion, tweets had to have visuals, be in English, come from verified accounts, and contain one of the keywords ‘covid19’, ‘coronavirus’, ‘corona’, or ‘covid’. Following a retrospective approach, we then performed a qualitative content analysis of the 616 tweets meeting inclusion criteria. Results Our results show communication dynamics changed over the course of the pandemic. At the start, most retweeted preventative messages came from the media and health and government institutions, but overall, personal accounts with many followers (51.3%) predominated, and their tweets had the highest spread (10.0%, i.e., retweet count divided by followers). Messages used mostly photographs and images were found to be rich with information. 78.1% of Tweets contained 1–2 preventative messages, whereby ‘stay home’ and ‘wear a mask’ frequented most. Although more tweets used health loss framing, health gain messages spread more. Conclusion Our findings can inform the didactics of future crisis communication. The results underscore the value of engaging individuals, particularly influencers, as advocates to spread health risk messages and promote solidarity. Further, our findings on the visual characteristic of the most retweeted tweets highlight factors that health and government organisations should consider when creating visual health messages for Twitter. However, that more tweets used the emotive medium of photographs often combined with health loss framing raises concerns about persuasive tactics. More research is needed to understand the implications of framing and its impact on public perceptions and behaviours.

Tweeting rape culture: Examining portrayals of victim blaming in discussions of sexual assault cases on Twitter

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Stubbs-Richardson ◽  
Nicole E Rader ◽  
Arthur G Cosby
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Sexual Assault ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Victim Blaming ◽  
Rape Culture ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Victim Support ◽  
Twitter Users

Social media has become an important aspect of contemporary culture and cultural change; it has accordingly become a valuable resource for informing feminist theory. Social media is a digitized social reality that lends itself to analysis and research. This study examines rape culture in the widely used social media platform, Twitter. We collected tweets from four days surrounding the Torrington and Steubenville Rape Trials and the Rehtaeh Parson’s story of rape, victimization, and suicide. Using qualitative content analysis, we identified three themes related to rape culture: (1) the virgin–whore binary and the just world, (2) sharing information on the sexual assault cases as subnews, and (3) rape myth debunking to support victims. Additional analysis indicated that Twitter users who engaged in victim blaming were more likely to be retweeted and have more followers than Twitter users who engaged in tweeting victim support content. The research demonstrates that rape culture is an aspect of social media and that data about rape culture can be readily accessed and studied. It also suggests that in future research, social media can be used to study how individuals and groups who are exhibiting rape culture interact with others who are engaged in victim support.

scholarly journals Strategic Uses of Facebook in Zika Outbreak Communication: Implications for the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Model

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 1974 ◽  
Author(s):  
May Lwin ◽  
Jiahui Lu ◽  
Anita Sheldenkar ◽  
Peter Schulz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Risk Communication ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Strategic Communication ◽  
Great Level ◽  
Communication Model ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
One Year

While social media has been increasingly used for communication of infectious disease outbreaks, little is known about how social media can improve strategic communication across various stages of the health crisis. The Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Model (Reynolds & Seeger, 2005; CERC) outlines strategies across different crisis phases and can guide crisis communication on social media. This research therefore investigates how social media can be utilized to implement and adapt the CERC model, by examining the strategic uses of Facebook in communicating the recent Zika epidemic by health authorities in Singapore. Zika-related Facebook posts of three main Singapore health agencies published within the one year period from January 2016 to December 2016 were thematically analysed. Results suggest that Facebook was used to communicate the crisis strategically, which supported and added to the CERC model. Novel uses of Facebook for outbreak communication were demonstrated, including promoting public common responsibility for disease prevention and expressing regards to the public for cooperation. Results also suggested that preparedness messages might be the most effective, as they produced a great level of public engagement. The adaptability of the CERC model in social media contexts to improve crisis communication is discussed.

Understanding the relationships between social media influencers and their followers: the moderating role of closeness

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 767-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Taillon ◽  
Steven M. Mueller ◽  
Christine M. Kowalczyk ◽  
Daniel N. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Purchase Intentions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Student Sample ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Moderating Role

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to better understand the role of closeness and the relationships between social media influencers and their followers, and, more specifically, how social media influencers can effectively manage their human brands. Design/methodology/approach Two studies were conducted to explore social media influencers. Qualitative content analysis and modeling with path analysis were used to analyze the data. Findings Results found attractiveness and likeability to positively predict attitudes toward the influencer, word-of-mouth and purchase intentions, whereas similarity only predicted word-of-mouth from the follower. Closeness served as a moderator but had different effects. Closeness positively moderated the effect of attractiveness on purchase intentions; however, it had a negative effect with similarity on purchase intentions. Moreover, closeness moderated the effect of likeability on attitude toward the influencer. Research limitations/implications This study was limited by the student sample as well as the students’ self-identification of a social media influencer. Future research should include experimental design manipulating well-known/followed or fictional social media influencers on different social media. Practical implications This paper explores the characteristics of social media influencers as well as the potential outcomes associated with influencers on social media. The implications for marketers and advertisers include a better understanding of how consumers engage with influencers on social media. Originality/value The role of closeness is identified as a moderator of consumers’ behaviors toward social media influencers.

scholarly journals The Presumed Influence of COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Survey Research from Two Countries in the Global Health Crisis

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 5505
Author(s):  
Yunjuan Luo ◽  
Yang Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Model Following ◽  
The U.S

While the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is spreading all over the world, misinformation, without prudent journalistic judgments of media content online, has begun circulating rapidly and influencing public opinion on social media. This quantitative study intends to advance the previous misinformation research by proposing and examining a theoretical model following an “influence of presumed influence” perspective. Two survey studies were conducted on participants located in the United States (N = 1793) and China (N = 504), respectively, to test the applicability of the influence of presumed influence theory. Results indicated that anger and anxiety significantly predicted perceived influence of misinformation on others; presumed influence on others positively affected public support in corrective and restrictive actions in both U.S. and China. Further, anger toward misinformation led to public willingness to self-correct in the U.S. and China. In contrast, anxiety only took effects in facilitating public support for restrictive actions in the U.S. This study conducted survey research in China and the U.S. to expand the influence of presumed influence (IPI) hypothesis to digital misinformation in both Western and non-Western contexts. This research provides implications for social media companies and policy makers to combat misinformation online.

Change of Attitude, Technology and Practice: Identifying the Change for Increased Value Creation with Customer Co-creation

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-82
Author(s):  
Soumi Paul ◽  
Paola Peretti ◽  
Saroj Kumar Datta
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Customer Orientation ◽  
Customer Relationships ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Management Competencies ◽  
Business Decisions ◽  
Prime Concern

Building customer relationships and customer equity is the prime concern in today’s business decisions. The emergence of internet, especially social media like Facebook and Twitter, changed traditional marketing thought to a great extent. The importance of customer orientation is reflected in the axiom, “The customer is the king”. A good number of organizations are engaging customers in their new product development activities via social media platforms. Co-creation, a new perspective in which customers are active co-creators of the products they buy and use, is currently challenging the traditional paradigm. The concept of co-creation involving the customer’s knowledge, creativity and judgment to generate value is considered not only an upcoming trend that introduces new products or services but also fitting their need and increasing value for money. Knowledge and innovation are inseparable. Knowledge management competencies and capacities are essential to any organization that aspires to be distinguished and innovative. The present work is an attempt to identify the change in value creation procedure along with one area of business, where co-creation can return significant dividends. It is on extending the brand or brand category through brand extension or line extension. This article, through an in depth literature review analysis, identifies the changes in every perspective of this paradigm shift and it presents a conceptual model of company-customer-brand-based co-creation activity via social media. The main objective is offering an agenda for future research of this emerging trend and ensuring the way to move from theory to practice. The paper acts as a proposal; it allows the organization to go for this change in a large scale and obtain early feedback on the idea presented. 

Penerapan Strategi Social Media Marketing Untuk Meningkatkan Penjualan Pada Dealer Mobil Toyota, Daihatsu dan Honda Bandung

Infoman s ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Yopi Hidayatul Akbar ◽  
Muhammad Agreindra Helmiawan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Search Engine ◽  
Social Media Marketing ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Social Media Networks ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Marketing Activities ◽  
The University ◽  
Website Content

Social media is one of the information media that is currently widely used by several companies and personally to convey information, with the presence of social media companies no longer need to spread offers through print media, they can use information technology tools in this case social media to submit offers the products they sell to users globally through social media. This social media marketing technique is the process of reaching visits by internet users to certain sites or public attention through social media sites. Marketing activities using social media are usually centered on the efforts of a company to create content that attracts attention, thus encouraging readers to share the content through their social media networks. The application of the QMS method is certainly not only submitted through search engine webmasters, but also on a website keywords must be applied that relate to the contents of the website content, because with the keyword it will automatically attract visitors to the university website based on keyword phrases that they type in the search engine. With Search Media Marketing Technique (SMM) is one of the techniques that must be applied in conducting sales promotions, especially in car dealers in Bandung, it is considered important because each product requires price, feature and convenience socialization through social media so that sales traffic can increase. Each dealer should be able to apply the techniques of Social Media Marketing (SMM) well so that car sales can reach the expected target and provide profits for sales as car sellers in the field.

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