scholarly journals Health Communication Through News Media During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Outbreak in China: Digital Topic Modeling Approach

10.2196/19118 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. e19118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Liu ◽  
Zequan Zheng ◽  
Jiabin Zheng ◽  
Qiuyi Chen ◽  
Guan Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Community Education ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

Background In December 2019, a few coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Soon after, increasing numbers of cases were detected in other parts of China, eventually leading to a disease outbreak in China. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus, such as its pathogenesis, spread, prevention, and containment. Objective The aim of this study was to collect media reports on COVID-19 and investigate the patterns of media-directed health communications as well as the role of the media in this ongoing COVID-19 crisis in China. Methods We adopted the WiseSearch database to extract related news articles about the coronavirus from major press media between January 1, 2020, and February 20, 2020. We then sorted and analyzed the data using Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number with evidence of the coherence number. We operated latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with a suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We then divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into a 2D plane via multidimensional scaling. Results After removing duplications and irrelevant reports, our search identified 7791 relevant news reports. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as the number of topics and generated the topics’ themes and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine main primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three most popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, and global or local social and economic influences, accounting for 32.57% (n=2538), 16.08% (n=1258), and 11.79% (n=919) of the collected reports, respectively. Conclusions Topic modeling of news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. Comparing the number of articles for each day and the outbreak development, we noted that mass media news reports in China lagged behind the development of COVID-19. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society rather than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide issue, and society has become concerned about donations and support as well as mental health among others. We recommend that future work addresses the mass media’s actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.

scholarly journals Health Communication Through News Media During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Outbreak in China: Digital Topic Modeling Approach (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Liu ◽  
Zequan Zheng ◽  
Jiabin Zheng ◽  
Qiuyi Chen ◽  
Guan Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Community Education ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

BACKGROUND In December 2019, a few coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Soon after, increasing numbers of cases were detected in other parts of China, eventually leading to a disease outbreak in China. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus, such as its pathogenesis, spread, prevention, and containment. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to collect media reports on COVID-19 and investigate the patterns of media-directed health communications as well as the role of the media in this ongoing COVID-19 crisis in China. METHODS We adopted the WiseSearch database to extract related news articles about the coronavirus from major press media between January 1, 2020, and February 20, 2020. We then sorted and analyzed the data using Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number with evidence of the coherence number. We operated latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with a suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We then divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into a 2D plane via multidimensional scaling. RESULTS After removing duplications and irrelevant reports, our search identified 7791 relevant news reports. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as the number of topics and generated the topics’ themes and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine main primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three most popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, and global or local social and economic influences, accounting for 32.57% (n=2538), 16.08% (n=1258), and 11.79% (n=919) of the collected reports, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Topic modeling of news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. Comparing the number of articles for each day and the outbreak development, we noted that mass media news reports in China lagged behind the development of COVID-19. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society rather than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide issue, and society has become concerned about donations and support as well as mental health among others. We recommend that future work addresses the mass media’s actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.

scholarly journals Health Communication Through News Media During the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Outbreak in China: A Digital Topic Modeling Approach

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Liu ◽  
Zequan Zheng ◽  
Jiabin Zheng ◽  
Qiuyi Chen ◽  
Guan Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Modeling Method ◽  
Search Term ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Mass Media ◽  
Novel Coronavirus

AbstractBackgroundIn December 2019, some COVID-19 cases were first reported and soon the disease broke out. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus.MethodsWe adopted the Huike database to extract news articles about coronavirus from major press media, between January 1st, 2020, to February 20th, 2020. The data were sorted and analyzed by Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number using the coherence number. We operated Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling with the suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into two-dimensional plane via multidimensional scaling.FindingsAfter removing duplicates, 7791 relevant news reports were identified. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as our number of topics and obtained their names and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, global/local social/economic influences, accounting for 32·6%, 16·6%, 11·8% of the collected reports respectively.InterpretationThe Chinese mass media news reports lag behind the COVID-19 outbreak development. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a global issue, and society has also become concerned about donation and support as well as mental health. We recommend that future work should address the mass media’s actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.FundingNational Social Science Foundation of China (18CXW021)Evidence before this studyThe novel coronavirus related news reports have engaged public attention in China during the COVID-19 crisis. Topic modeling of these news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. We searched the Huike database, the most professional Chinese media content database, using the search term “coronavirus” for related news articles published from January 1st, 2020, to February 20th, 2020. We found that these articles can be classified into different themes according to their emphasis, however, we found no other studies apply topic modeling method to study them.Added value of this studyTo our knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the patterns of health communications through media and the role the media have played and are still playing in the light of the current COVID-19 crisis in China with topic modeling method. We compared the number of articles each day with the outbreak development and identified there’s a delay in reporting COVID-19 outbreak progression for Chinese mass media. We identify nine main themes for 7791 collected news reports and detail their emphasis respectively.Implications of all the available evidenceOur results show that the mass media news reports play a significant role in health communication during the COVID-19 crisis, government can strengthen the report dynamics and enlarge the news coverage next time another disease strikes. Sentiment analysis of news data are needed to assess the actual effect of the news reports.

Health Communication for Hospice Care through Chinese media: Digital Topic Modeling Approach (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Liu ◽  
Zequan Zheng ◽  
Jingsen Chen ◽  
Winghei Tsang ◽  
Jin Shan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Health Care Services ◽  
Hospice Care ◽  
Patient Treatment ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Second Period

BACKGROUND Hospice care, a type of end-of-life care provided for dying patients and their families, has been rooted in China since the 1980s. It can improve receivers’ quality of life as well as ease their economic burden. The Chinese mass media have continued to actively dispel misconceptions of hospice care and deliver the latest information to citizens. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to retrieve and analyze news reports on hospice care to gain insight into whether any differences exist in delivered heath information as time went by and the role the mass media played in health communication in recent years. METHODS We searched the Huike (WiseSearch) database for related news from Chinese mass media between 2014 and 2019. We set January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2016 as the first time period and January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019 as the second time period. Python was used to complete the data cleaning process. We determined appropriate topic numbers for these two periods based on coherence score and applied the latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling. Keywords of each topic and corresponding topics’ names were then generated. The topics were plotted into different circles and their distances on the two-dimensional plane was represented by multidimensional scaling. RESULTS After removing the duplicated and irrelevant news articles, we obtained a total of 2227 articles. We chose eight as the suitable topic number for both time periods and generated topics’ name and their keywords. The top three most reported topics in the first period were patient treatment, hospice care stories, and development of health care services and health insurance, accounting for 18.68% (n = 178), 16.58% (n = 158), and 14.17% (n = 135) of the collected reports, respectively. The top three most reported topics in the second period were hospice care stories, patient treatment, and development of health care services, accounting for 15.62% (n = 199), 15.38 (n = 15.38), and 14.27% (n = 182), respectively. CONCLUSIONS Topic modeling of news reports gives us a better understanding of patterns of health communication about hospice care by mass media. Chinese mass media frequently reported on hospice care in April due to a traditional Chinese festival. An increase in coverage in the second period was observed. These two periods share six similar topics, among which patient treatment outstrips hospice care stories as the most-reported topic in the second period, showing the humanistic spirit behind the reports. We suggest stakeholders cooperate with the mass media when planning to update policies.

scholarly journals Lista de comprobación para mejorar la información sobre fármacos en la prensa: la importancia de informar sobre las fases y la incertidumbre de la investigación = A checklist for improving drug information in the general press: the importance of reporting on the phases and uncertainty of research

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 203
Author(s):  
Fèlix Bosch ◽  
Clàudia Escalas ◽  
Ainoa Forteza ◽  
Elisabet Serés ◽  
Gonzalo Casino
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Drug Information ◽  
Qualitative Studies ◽  
Current Phase ◽  
Quality Of Reporting ◽  
Interest In Science ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Medios De Comunicacion

Resumen: El interés de la ciudadanía por la ciencia es consecuente con que los medios de comunicación difundan también información sobre fármacos. Sin embargo, se requieren más estudios cuantitativos y cualitativos que analicen este tipo de información en la prensa generalista. En este artículo se revisan los estudios que han analizado las noticias sobre fármacos, así como las herramientas disponibles para evaluar su calidad. Se revisan aspectos cualitativos a considerar al informar sobre fármacos en investigación o ya comercializados: la necesidad de contrastar las fuentes, citar la publicación de origen y emplear un lenguaje comprensible. Asimismo, se recomienda informar tanto de beneficios como de riesgos, y hacerlo con valores relativos y absolutos; evitar la generación de falsas expectativas y contextualizar los aspectos relacionados con la financiación. Además, se sugiere explicitar la fase de investigación en la que se encuentra el fármaco para así orientar sobre las posibilidades y plazos para su comercialización, y sobre las fuentes de información más adecuadas. Con esta revisión y las consideraciones planteadas, este artículo pretende promover una reflexión general para mejorar la calidad de las noticias sobre fármacos, a la vez que proporciona una primera lista de comprobación útil para comunicadores y periodistas científicos.Palabras clave: comunicación en salud; divulgación; fármacos; información; investigación; medicamentos; medios de comunicación; prensa.Abstract: Given the public’s interest in science, it is logical that the mass media disseminate information about drugs. However, few quantitative or qualitative studies have analyzed the way this type of information is presented in the lay press. This article reviews the studies that have analyzed news reports about drugs and discusses the tools that are available to evaluate the quality of such reports. It also examines qualitative aspects when reporting on drugs in research or when have already been marketed: the need to check the sources, to cite the original reports, and to use language that is easy to understand. To avoid creating false expectations, news reports should inform readers about risks as well as benefits in both relative and absolute terms and put financial aspects in context. Moreover, it is important to specify the drug’s current phase of development to inform if and when it is likely to be commercialized. Finally, news reports about drugs should point readers to the most appropriate sources to obtain further information. This article aims to promote general reflection and ultimately to improve the quality of reporting about drugs in the general press and to provide a checklist for science communicators and journalists.Keywords: health communication; popularization; drugs; information; investigation; medicines; media; press.

scholarly journals Fit to Print: A Natural History of Obesity Research in the Canadian News Media

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephannie C Roy ◽  
Guy Faulkner ◽  
Sara-Jane Finlay
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
News Media ◽  
Health Research ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Telephone Interviews ◽  
Obesity Research ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
History Approach ◽  
History Of Obesity

Abstract: This natural-history approach to investigating media reports concerning health can reveal the complex process whereby health research becomes news. Using television and newspaper reports of a press event taken from a larger project, this article examines the inception and mediation of obesity research in the Canadian news media. By exploring questionnaire data, a media release, telephone interviews with journalists, and news reports, we can better understand the meaning making that occurs at all levels in the communications process. We conclude that there is an interdependent and possibly problematic relationship between health sources and journalists that shapes the inception and mediation of obesity research and the translation of health research to the public. Résumé : Cette approche, qui a recours à l’histoire naturelle pour investiguer les reportages sur la santé, peut révéler le processus complexe selon lequel la recherche dans le domaine de la santé devient une nouvelle. En utilisant des reportages de télévision et de journaux sur un événement de presse provenant d’un plus grand projet, cet article examine l’origine et la médiation de la recherche sur l’obésité dans les médias canadiens. Au moyen de données de questionnaire, d’un communiqué de presse, d’entrevues téléphoniques avec des journalistes et de rapports de nouvelles, nous pouvons mieux comprendre la création de sens qui a lieu à tous les niveaux du processus de communication. Nous concluons qu’il y a un rapport d’interdépendance peut-être problématique entre les experts en santé et les journalistes qui influence l’orientation et la médiation de la recherche sur l’obésité et la présentation au public de la recherche dans le domaine de la santé.

scholarly journals A topic analysis of traditional and social media news coverage of the early COVID-19 pandemic and implications for public health communication

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wallace Chipidza ◽  
Elmira Akbaripourdibazar ◽  
Tendai Gwanzura ◽  
Nicole M. Gatto
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Cable News ◽  
Public Health Communication ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Public Health Officials

AbstractKnowledge gaps may initially exist among scientists, medical and public health professionals during pandemics, which are fertile grounds for misinformation in news media. We characterized and compared COVID-19 coverage in newspapers, television, and social media, and discussed implications for public health communication strategies that are relevant to an initial pandemic response. We conducted a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), an unsupervised topic modelling technique, analysis of 3,271 newspaper articles, 40 cable news shows transcripts, 96,000 Twitter posts, and 1,000 Reddit posts during March 4 - 12, 2020, a period chronologically early in the timeframe of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coverage of COVID-19 clustered on topics such as epidemic, politics, and the economy, and these varied across media sources. Topics dominating news were not predominantly health-related, suggesting a limited presence of public health in news coverage in traditional and social media. Examples of misinformation were identified particularly in social media. Public health entities should utilize communication specialists to create engaging informational content to be shared on social media sites. Public health officials should be attuned to their target audience to anticipate and prevent spread of common myths likely to exist within a population. This will help control misinformation in early stages of pandemics.

Online news media and propaganda influence on radicalized individuals: Findings from interviews with Islamist prisoners and former Islamists

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1437-1461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Baugut ◽  
Katharina Neumann
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Willingness To Use ◽  
War Victims ◽  
Western Politics ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Commit Suicide

This study is the first to explore the twin influences of online propaganda and news media on Islamists. We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with cognitively and behaviorally radicalized Islamist prisoners in Austria as well as former Islamists in Germany and Austria. We found that online propaganda and news media had interdependent influences on Islamists’ rejections of non-Muslims and Western politics, as well as on their willingness to use violence and commit suicide. Cognitively radicalized individuals were influenced by propaganda that blamed non-Muslims for opposing Islam; this was reinforced by online mainstream news reports of right-wing populism and extremism that propagandists selectively distributed via social media. Among behaviorally radicalized individuals, exposure to propaganda and news reports depicting Muslim war victims contributed to the radicalized individuals’ willingness to use violence. Moreover, propaganda and media reports that extensively personalized perpetrators of violence strengthened radicalized individuals’ motivations to imitate the use of violence.

scholarly journals Earthquake Information Extraction and Comparison from Different Sources Based on Web Text

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuehua Han ◽  
Juanle Wang
Keyword(s):  
Information Extraction ◽  
News Media ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Monitoring Methods ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Disaster Information ◽  
Earthquakes In China ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Rule Based Approach ◽  
Disaster Event

Web text, using natural language to describe a disaster event, contains a considerable amount of disaster information. Automatic extraction from web text of this disaster information (e.g., time, location, casualties, and disaster losses) is an important supplement to conventional disaster monitoring data. This study extracted and compared the characteristics of earthquake disaster information from web news media reports (news reports) and online disaster reduction agency reports (professional reports). Using earthquakes in China from 2015 to 2017 as a case study, a series of rules were created for extracting earthquake event information, including temporal extraction rules, a location trigger dictionary, and an attribute trigger dictionary. The differences in characteristics of news reports and professional reports were investigated in terms of their quantity and spatiotemporal distribution through statistical analysis, geocoding, and kernel density estimation. The information extracted from each set of reports was also compared with authoritative data. The results indicated that news reports are more extensive and have richer information. In contrast, professional reports are less repetitive as well as more accurate and standardized, mainly focusing on earthquakes with Ms ≥ 4 and/or earthquakes that may cause damage. These characteristics of disaster information from different web texts sources can be used to improve the efficiency and analysis of disaster information extraction. In addition, the rule-based approach proposed herein was found to be an accurate and viable way to extract earthquake information from web texts. The approach provided the technical basics and background information to support further research seeking human-centric disaster information, which cannot be acquired using traditional instrument monitoring methods, from web text.

scholarly journals Topic Modelling pada Sentimen Terhadap Headline Berita Online Berbahasa Indonesia Menggunakan LDA dan LSTM

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chairullah Naury ◽  
Dhomas Hatta Fudholi ◽  
Ahmad Fathan Hidayatullah
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Online News ◽  
Distance Map ◽  
Analysis Process ◽  
Modeling Process ◽  
News Headlines

The online mass media is the source of the fastest and up-to-date information. A model that can provide mapping will help in sorting out information more precisely. In this study, the authors applied topic modeling to the results of sentiment analysis on online news headlines in Indonesian. Sources of data in this study were obtained from online mass media in Indonesian. The data collected were analyzed for sentiment using the Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) method, in order to obtain news headlines with positive, negative, and neutral sentiments. The classification obtained from the results of the sentiment analysis process is continued with the topic modeling process using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) method and visualized in the form of wordcloud and intertopic distance map (pyLDAVis) to determine the relationship between one topic and another. The result of sentiment analysis is a model with 71.13% of accuracy level and the results of topic modeling are in the form of some topics that are easy to interpret.

scholarly journals News media influence on public trust in bike-sharing operators in Singapore

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Wong ◽  
Lyon Tan ◽  
Rachel Wong ◽  
Su Lin Yeo
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Corporate Reputation ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Content Type ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Bike Sharing ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practical Implications

PurposeThe overnight introduction of tens of thousands of dockless bike-share bicycles in Singapore with its indiscriminate parking drew the attention of the media, which generated extensive news reports on the activities carried out by bike-sharing operators. Given the meteoric rise and fall of the industry, this study examines the influence of agenda-setting of news reporting on the public’s perception of the industry and the impact on the firms’ corporate reputation.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing the Reputation Quotient Index, the study content analyzed 147 textual data of online reports which were crawled over two years between 2017 and 2018 from six mainstream news organizations.FindingsOur findings showed that the news reports carried more negative frames in the headlines and body content. It also found that only five out of six dimensions of the Index were emphasized with varying degrees of importance, indicating that the corporate reputation as determined by the media reports did not collectively represent the operators’ past actions and results with valued outcomes.Practical implicationsPractical implications discussed included the need to integrate corporate strategies into public relations programs and the importance of engaging the media to demonstrate congruence between business objectives and positive social impact on society.Originality/valueAlthough the study limited its data collection only to online media reports, it is one of the few research to provide empirical evidence concerning the media’s influence on the public’s perceptions and reputation of the nascent bike-sharing industry.

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