Health Information on COVID-19 Vaccination for Sustainable Society: Readability of Online Sources and Newspapers in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroko Costantini ◽  
Rie Fuse
Author(s):  
Gerald Pratley

PRODUCTION ACTIVITY It was not so many years ago it seems when speaking of motion pictures from Asia meant Japanese films as represented by Akira Kurosawa and films from India made by Satyajit Ray. But suddenly time passes and now we are impressed and immersed in the flow of films from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, South Korea, the Philippines, with Japan a less significant player, and India and Pakistan more prolific than ever in making entertainment for the mass audience. No one has given it a name or described it as "New Wave," it is simply Asian Cinema -- the most exciting development in filmmaking taking place in the world today. In China everything is falling apart yet it manages to hold together, nothing works yet it keeps on going, nothing is ever finished or properly maintained, and yes, here time does wait for every man. But as far...


Author(s):  
Gizell Green ◽  
Riki Tesler ◽  
Cochava Sharon

The Internet and social media are crucial platforms for health information. Factors such as the efficiency of online health information, the outcomes of seeking online health information and the awareness of reliable sources have become increasingly important for the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to examine differences between elderly individuals’ income above and below the average monthly wage in relation to their online health information efficiency and the outcomes of seeking online health information; to evaluate types of online information sources with online health information efficiency and the outcomes of seeking online health information; and to explore online health information efficiency as a mediator between health status and awareness of online sources. A cross-sectional study design was conducted with 336 elderly participants age 65 or older. The participants volunteered to complete a questionnaire. No differences were found between the two groups regarding efficiency in retrieving health information from official online health sites and Google. Perceived efficiency mediated health status and awareness of online sources. In these challenging times, it is important to provide a tailor-made education strategy plan for reliable sources of online health information for the elderly, in order to enhance their technology safety skills. It is also important to explore other mediating variables between health status and awareness of online sources.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110035
Author(s):  
Adrian Farrugia ◽  
Andrea Waling ◽  
Kiran Pienaar ◽  
Suzanne Fraser

In this article, we investigate young people’s trust in online sexual health resources. Analyzing interviews with 37 young people in Australia using Irwin and Michael’s account of science–society relations and Warner’s conceptualization of “publics,” we explore the processes by which they assess the credibility of online sexual health information. We suggest that when seeking medical information, young people opt for traditionally authoritative online sources that purport to offer “facts.” By contrast, when seeking information about relationships or sexual practices, participants indicated a preference for websites presenting “experiences” rather than or as well as “facts.” Regardless of content, however, our participants approached online sexual health information skeptically and used various techniques to appraise its quality and trustworthiness. We argue that these young people are productively understood as a skeptical public of sexual health. We conclude by exploring the implications of our analysis for the provision of online sexual health information.


1994 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terutomo Ozawa

Structural upgrading and industrial dynamismin Pacific Asia—initially Japan, then the Asian NIEs (Newly Industrializing Economies: South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) following closely behind, and most recently, ASEAN 4 (Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines)—have been unprecedentedly phenomenal. This regional supergrowth in industrial activities has become the center of attention, but the evolving changes in the political systems and societal structures of the Pacific Asian nations have been, no doubt, equally important, although rather subtle and not so dramatic in appearance.


Author(s):  
Tony Banham

So we decided to emigrate to Australia and I suppose we could now be called ‘Dinkum Aussies’ – after 30 years.1 By 1946 Hong Kong’s pre-war colonial society, which had celebrated its hundredth birthday just five years earlier, had gone forever. Hong Kong, to the British people who lived there between the twentieth century’s two great wars, had been perhaps the prime real estate to be had in the empire. Life there was entertaining and cheap, profits were bountiful. But then came the threat of war. Mindful of their own situation in 1939, the British government instructed the Hong Kong government to mandate evacuation of British women and children should the colony be threatened by attack. In mid-1940, as the Battle of Britain stamped an indelible, greasy smoke stain through British skies thousands of miles away, the majority of Hong Kong’s civilians prescriptively escaped the threat of Asian war. Those families split asunder would often—in the context of the more than 200 husbands killed, and the many divorces—never be reunited; the cost of war being measured in permanently broken homes. That evacuation, in stages from Hong Kong to the Philippines, from the Philippines to Australia, and from Australia to the UK, or back to Hong Kong, and—in many cases—back to Australia again, would define many lives. Looking at Australia’s population today, a surprisingly large number can—at least in part—track their heritage back to Hong Kong’s pre-war society: the garrison, the businessmen, earlier evacuees who had washed up in the colony, and local families. From the perspective of Australia’s twenty-first century population, the effects of Hong Kong’s evacuation still reverberate through tens of thousands of its people. Many of the ancestors of those Australians are buried in Hong Kong or—for those who died as prisoners of war—in Japan, or they lie lost and forgotten, skeletons in Hong Kong’s remotest ravines or at the bottom of the South China Sea....


Author(s):  
Tony Banham

Chapter Four observes the evacuees’ environment as they fought to be allowed to return to Hong Kong and made the largely unassisted transition from pre-evacuation Colony to the difficulties (real and perceived) of life in Australia. They now had the social position of refugees. The eighteen months of separation before the Japanese attack meant families were immediately under strain - at the Hong Kong and Australian ends. The pressure on evacuated families was greater than on those not evacuated, added to by the continuing sense of injustice that many of the latter had deliberately evaded evacuation. The Hong Kong evacuees’ experience is contextualised through comparison with American civilians in the Philippines who were not evacuated and would eventually fare far worse. The vain hope for repatriation to Hong Kong delayed acclimatisation to Australia for many – though now more families realised that they could regain control of their destinies, by the evacuees themselves leaving Australia or by husbands who had been left behind leaving Hong Kong. Meanwhile, demonstrations and petitions calling for repatriation of the evacuees to Hong Kong grew to a crescendo.


Author(s):  
Tony Banham

Chapter Two describes the actual evacuation from Hong Kong, starting with an understanding of the methods and rationale of those who managed to avoid or evade the exodus, before focusing on the mechanics of the administration of evacuation and the successful execution of the voyages to the Philippines. Looking at the international context (the Japanese reaction, communication with the American authorities in the Philippines, and the planning of the removal to Australia) it then details the practical aspects of the reception and dispersal of the evacuees in the Philippine Islands while they awaited the next step. Here it exposes the ad hoc nature of the evacuation’s evolution, and the first understanding of the evacuees of the fundamental weaknesses of the plan.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicanor Guinto

Abstract The Central district is the government, financial, and business center of Hong Kong. Yet, on Sundays, it turns temporarily into a space densely occupied by migrant domestic workers from the Philippines. It is then that Tagalog emerges as a valuable linguistic resource in the center of Hong Kong, primarily as it is used on commercial signage as well as by speakers of other languages who see the presence of Filipinos – predominantly female domestic workers – as a business opportunity. Other signs in central Hong Kong that include Tagalog are regulatory, indexing the same Filipinos as low status domestic workers. Using the key concepts of sociolinguistic scales (Blommaert, 2007) and center-periphery dynamics (Pietikäinen & Kelly-Holmes, 2013), I analyze the underlying forces relevant to Tagalog’s (and hence its speakers) symbolic centering and peripheralization in Hong Kong’s semiotic landscape.


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