scholarly journals Identifying Protective Health Behaviors on Twitter: Observational Study of Travel Advisories and Zika Virus (Preprint)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashlynn R Daughton ◽  
Michael J Paul
Keyword(s):  
Zika Virus ◽  
Travel Behavior ◽  
English Language ◽  
Disease Modeling ◽  
Control Sample ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Machine Learning Classification ◽  
Twitter Users

BACKGROUND An estimated 3.9 billion individuals live in a location endemic for common mosquito-borne diseases. The emergence of Zika virus in South America in 2015 marked the largest known Zika outbreak and caused hundreds of thousands of infections. Internet data have shown promise in identifying human behaviors relevant for tracking and understanding other diseases. OBJECTIVE Using Twitter posts regarding the 2015-16 Zika virus outbreak, we sought to identify and describe considerations and self-disclosures of a specific behavior change relevant to the spread of disease—travel cancellation. If this type of behavior is identifiable in Twitter, this approach may provide an additional source of data for disease modeling. METHODS We combined keyword filtering and machine learning classification to identify first-person reactions to Zika in 29,386 English-language tweets in the context of travel, including considerations and reports of travel cancellation. We further explored demographic, network, and linguistic characteristics of users who change their behavior compared with control groups. RESULTS We found differences in the demographics, social networks, and linguistic patterns of 1567 individuals identified as changing or considering changing travel behavior in response to Zika as compared with a control sample of Twitter users. We found significant differences between geographic areas in the United States, significantly more discussion by women than men, and some evidence of differences in levels of exposure to Zika-related information. CONCLUSIONS Our findings have implications for informing the ways in which public health organizations communicate with the public on social media, and the findings contribute to our understanding of the ways in which the public perceives and acts on risks of emerging infectious diseases.

scholarly journals Primo Bartolini and the “Eye-talians” of Nashville: Becoming American in the Athens of the South

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-36
Author(s):  
Matteo Brera
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Italian American ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This essay describes how the Italians who settled in Nashville between the end of the nineteenth century and before the outburst of the First World War favoured first and foremost their occupational mobility thus prioritizing their integration in the economic fabric of a thriving city. Initially, they kept their cultural heritage alive but aimed to gain solid knowledge of the English language and American customs in order to apply for American citizenship as soon as possible, thus avoiding the severe discrimination endured by other Italian communities in southern states. Among the Italians of Nashville, Primo Bartolini stands out as a unique example of successful cultural and social hybridization and of the making of Italian American identity in Nashville and the South. Bartolini moved to Music City in 1908, after a short experience as a teacher in Indiana, and he was the first non-native of Tennessee to be drafted in 1917 to serve for his adoptive country during the First World War. A poet and a scholar, he wrote more than 300 poems on nostalgia, love, and patriotism. In these unpublished works, Bartolini shows how his identity progressively became Americanized: his writing style changed over time while still maintaining certain prosodic elements proper to his Italian culture and education. Bartolini’s experience, along with those of his compatriot who found their new home in Nashville, also confirms the integrating effect that the Great War had on Italians. Indeed, in the United States, a blend of old loyalties and the strong desire for acceptance and recognition drew the entire community into the public life of their adopted cities.

Twitter Users Display Desensitization to Bad Health News: An Observational Study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah R Stevens ◽  
Yoo Jung Oh ◽  
Laramie R Taylor
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Coping Behaviors ◽  
Health News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Over Time

BACKGROUND Among the countries affected by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the US shows the highest number of confirmed cases (18.7 million, 23.5% of confirmed cases worldwide) and deaths (0.3 million, 18.9% of death worldwide) as of December 26, 2020. Early on in the pandemic, widespread social, financial, and mental insecurities led to extreme and irrational coping behaviors, such as panic buying. Yet, despite the consistent spread of COVID-19 transmission, the public have begun to violate public safety measures. From such observations, two key considerations arise. First, fear-eliciting health messages have a significant effect on eliciting motivation to take action in order to control the threat. However, repeated exposure to these messages over long periods results in desensitization to those stimuli. OBJECTIVE In this work, we examine the effect of fear-inducing news articles on people’s expression of anxiety on Twitter. Additionally, we investigate desensitization to the fear-inducing health news over time, despite the steadily rising COVID-19 death toll. METHODS This study examined the anxiety levels in news articles (n=1,465) and corresponding tweets containing “COVID,” “COVID-19,” “pandemic,” and “coronavirus” over 11 months, then correlated that information with the death toll of COVID-19 in the United States. RESULTS Overall, tweets that shared links to anxious articles were more likely to be anxious. (OR 2.62, 95% CI 1.58-4.43, p < .001). These odds decreased (OR 0.41, 95% CI 0.2-0.83, p = .01) when the death toll reached the 3rd quartile and 4th quartile (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.21-0.85, p = .01). Yet tweet anxiety rose rapidly with articles when the death toll was low and then decreased in the 3rd quartile of deaths (OR .61, 95% CI 0.37-1.01, p=.058). As predicted, in addition to the increasing death toll being matched by a lower level of article anxiety, the extent to which article anxiety elicited tweet anxiety decreased when the death count reached the 2nd quartile. CONCLUSIONS Tweets increased sharply in response to article anxiety early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, but as the casualty count climbed, news articles seemingly lost their ability to elicit anxiety among readers. This work investigated how individuals' emotional reactions to news of the COVID-19 pandemic manifest as the death toll increases. Findings suggest individuals became desensitized to the increased COVID-19 threat and their emotional responses were blunted over time.

scholarly journals Globalization and Public Attitudes towards the State in the Asia-Pacific Region

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
HSIN-HUANG MICHAEL HSIAO ◽  
PO-SAN WAN ◽  
TIMOTHY KA-YING WONG
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Government Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Language Capacity ◽  
The Government

AbstractGlobalization has led to a redefinition of the functions and roles of the state. Based on data drawn from a cross-national social survey, this article examines the influences of globalization on the public's attitudes towards their state in Australia, China, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States, by focusing on satisfaction with government performance and demands on the government. The six countries differ extensively in their sociopolitical and technological situations, as well as in the experiences of their people with globalization in terms of the following aspects: connectivity with the world through personal ties and digital means, English language capacity, and support for the forces of globalization. There are also huge disparities in the public rankings of government performance and demands for expanding government spending in a wide range of policy areas. Our analysis reveals that, although both intra- and inter-country variations in the influences of globalization on public attitudes towards the state are not particularly prominent, those who support globalization not only are more inclined than others to be satisfied with the government's performance, but also demand more government intervention.

scholarly journals Public Reactions towards the COVID-19 Pandemic on Twitter in the United Kingdom and the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Canruo Zou ◽  
Xueting Wang ◽  
Zidian Xie ◽  
Dongmei Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Topic Modeling ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Twitter Users

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread globally since December 2019. Twitter is a popular social media platform with active discussions about the COVID-19 pandemic. The public reactions on Twitter about the COVID-19 pandemic in different countries have not been studied. This study aims to compare the public reactions towards the COVID-19 pandemic between the United Kingdom and the United States from March 6, 2020 to April 2, 2020. Data: The numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom and the United States were obtained from the 1Point3Acres website. Twitter data were collected using COVID-19 related keywords from March 6, 2020 to April 2, 2020. Methods: Temporal analyses were performed on COVID-19 related Twitter posts (tweets) during the study period to show daily trends and hourly trends. The sentiment scores of the tweets on COVID-19 were analyzed and associated with the policy announcements and the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. Topic modeling was conducted to identify related topics discussed with COVID-19 in the United Kingdom and the United States. Results: The number of daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United Kingdom was significantly lower than that in the United States during our study period. There were 3,556,442 COVID-19 tweets in the United Kingdom and 16,280,065 tweets in the United States during the study period. The number of COVID-19 tweets per 10,000 Twitter users in the United Kingdom was lower than that in the United States. The sentiment scores of COVID-19 tweets in the United Kingdom were less negative than those in the United States. The topics discussed in COVID-19 tweets in the United Kingdom were mostly about the gratitude to government and health workers, while the topics in the United States were mostly about the global COVID-19 pandemic situation. Conclusion: Our study showed correlations between the public reactions towards the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and the confirmed COVID-19 cases as well as the policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom and the United States.

scholarly journals Public Sense of Water Fluoridation as Reflected on Twitter 2009–2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.J. Oh ◽  
C.H. Kim ◽  
J.G. Jeon
Keyword(s):  
Information Sources ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Information ◽  
Water Fluoridation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
Current State ◽  
Twitter Users ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Negative Sentiment

Though controversial, water fluoridation has been hailed as one of the top-ten public-health achievements of the 20th century in the United States of America. In this article, we aim to investigate the public sense of water fluoridation as reflected on Twitter, using data from 2009 to 2017. To this end, tweets related to water fluoridation were collected using queries such as “fluoridated water or fluoride water,” “water fluoridation or fluoridation of water,” and hashtags related to water fluoridation. The collected tweets ( n = 218,748) were examined through informetric, linguistic (word sentiment, word frequency, and word network analyses), and issue tweet analyses. We found that Twitter users who tweeted about water fluoridation in English between 2009 and 2017 constituted about <0.01% of all users including non-English users. In their tweets, words such as “poison” and “waste” were the strong negative sentiment words most often used. Of the top 30 words most frequently used, words related to information sources on water fluoridation and the safety of water fluoridation appeared more often than words related to its efficacy. Additionally, the words related to information sources on water fluoridation and the safety of water fluoridation were found to be core terms in the sentences of tweet mentions. Our linguistic analyses indicate that Twitter users responded sensitively to words that emphasize negative aspects of fluoridation. This is clearly shown in our issue tweet analysis, where tweet mentions expressing negative opinions about water fluoridation accounted for at least 59.2% of all mentions. By contrast, <15% of tweet mentions were found to be positive. These findings suggest that professionals need to reevaluate the current state of online information about water fluoridation, and improve it in a way so that the public can easily access reliable information sources.

scholarly journals Perceptions of the IQOS Heated Tobacco Product on Twitter in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Canruo Zou ◽  
Xueting Wang ◽  
Zidian Xie ◽  
Dongmei Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Risks ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Enforcement Policy ◽  
Quit Smoking ◽  
Twitter Users

After the approval of the sales of IQOS in the United States market, discussions about IQOS have become active on social media. Twitter is a popular social media platform to understand public opinions toward IQOS. This study aims to explore public perceptions toward IQOS on Twitter in the United States. IQOS-related tweets from the United States between November 19, 2019, and August 24, 2020, were collected using a Twitter streaming application programming interface (API). Sentiment analysis was performed to determine whether the public perceptions toward IQOS were positive, neutral, or negative. In addition, topics discussed in these tweets were manually coded. From November 2019 to August 2020, the number of tweets discussing IQOS was relatively constant except for a peak starting from July 7, 2020, which lasted for 4 days. Among IQOS tweets with positive sentiments, the most popular topic is “IQOS is safer than cigarettes,” followed by “IQOS helps quit smoking.” Among tweets with negative sentiments, the most popular topic is “illegal marketing/selling to youth,” followed by “health risks/fire hazards.” “FDA approval/regulation” is the most popular topic for tweets with neutral sentiments. After the announcement of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforcement policy on unauthorized flavored e-cigarette products on January 2, 2020, the proportion of tweets with positive attitudes toward IQOS significantly increased, while the proportion of negative tweets significantly decreased. Our study showed that the public perception of IQOS in the United States became more positive after the FDA enforcement policy on flavored e-cigarettes. While many Twitter users thought IQOS is safer than cigarettes and helps quit smoking, some Twitter users complained about the illegal marketing and health risks of IQOS. These findings provide useful information on future tobacco regulations.

The Limits of Americanization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosina Lozano
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Foreign Language Instruction ◽  
Language Of Instruction ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
The Public

One of the key roles of the public school system at the turn of the twentieth century was to create U.S. citizens. The federal government supported educational efforts in the noncontiguous territories that the United States acquired during the Spanish-American War. While both Arizona and New Mexico remained territories until 1912, they never received any federal educational aid. Americanization efforts across the United States largely encouraged a move away from foreign language instruction in the public schools in favor of English as the language of instruction. The interests of Americanization advocates coincided with the move to segregate students of Mexican descent into separate schools and classrooms throughout the Southwest. Administrators claimed they separated ethnic Mexican students due to their inability to speak the English language fluently. Despite the segregation of many Spanish-speaking students across the Southwest, Spanish remained in many classrooms in New Mexico—especially in the northern counties. Spanish was used in schools with the early support of the territorial superintendent of instruction and the New Mexico Journal of Education who both recognized that the vast majority of students in those districts entered school as monolingual Spanish speakers.

scholarly journals The CRTC’s Market-driven De-regulation of Canadian television

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Zoe Druick
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
The Impact

Over the past twenty years, the Canadian television landscape has come to increasingly resemble the market-driven television of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, to name only the other major English-language industries. Sports, reality TV, and sci-fi drama dominate, and the public elements of the system are increasingly under siege. How did this happen? A look back over the decisions of the past two decades makes it apparent that Canada’s regulatory agency the CRTC has repeatedly enabled the system we now see. These changes are the direct result of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Deal, signed in 1994), which drastically altered the cultural industries in Canada and led to an entrepreneurial approach to television. Since then, there has been a concerted shift toward an export-oriented industry, provoking a new emphasis on the global trade of cultural products (Edwardson 2008). In effect, even before the impact of the Internet, as the cable dial expanded, and sponsorship was diluted, production costs were pushed down and new, cheaper formats were created. At the same time, ownership became more consolidated and the telecommunication industry merged with the broadcast industry hoping to cash in on the promises of digital and wireless technologies. The CRTC enabled these shifts with the stated intention of increasing Canadian television’s competitiveness at an international level (CRTC 1999).

scholarly journals What Can 100,000 Books Tell Us about the International Public Library e-lending Landscape?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Giblin ◽  
Jenny Kennedy ◽  
Charlotte Pelletier ◽  
Julian Thomas ◽  
Kimberlee Weatherall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The United States ◽  
Original Publication ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Algorithms ◽  
Unique Dataset

Introduction: We investigated the relative availability of e-books to libraries for e-lending in five English-language countries, and analysed their licence terms and prices. Method: We created a unique dataset recording author, publisher, price and terms for 100,000 titles and 388,045 e-lending licences across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and United Kingdom via aggregator Overdrive. We developed new algorithms to estimate the original publication year for each title, and to match titles across jurisdictions.Analysis: We examined the relationships between title price, age, terms, jurisdiction, publisher and publisher type using various statistical analyses and machine learning. Results: Price and licence differences across countries are largely attributable to ‘Big 5’ publishers. Prices are largely independent of title age (unless the title is in the public domain) or the rights libraries obtain in exchange. Licence terms are not affected by age either, meaning that the most restrictive terms are often applied to older, less demanded books. Conclusions: By setting terms independent of titles’ value to libraries, publishers may discourage libraries from adding older and less-demanded books to their collections. We will test this hypothesis in a follow-up library survey.

scholarly journals Functioning of Emotive-Evaluative Vocabulary in a Political Text

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliya S. Polyakova ◽  
Elena V. Suvorova ◽  
Alexey Yu. Trutnev
Keyword(s):  
Political Discourse ◽  
English Language ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Continuous Sampling ◽  
The Public ◽  
Relevant Topic ◽  
The Media ◽  
English Articles

This paper is aimed at highlighting the problem of the use of emotive-evaluative vocabulary in the English-language mass media political discourse, which is a relevant topic since the scope of media texts in English is widespread in the information community and the media language is the basic means for communication, phrasing, conveying and storing information. Political discourse is a popular area of research of linguistics, as it covers all aspects of modern life and society. Being mainly broadcasted by the politicians, it is considered a complex linguistic phenomenon, whose objectives, direct or indirect, are aimed at disseminating, implementing political authorities and obtaining the majority of votes during the election campaigns. The article is devoted to the evaluation categories, which refer to the semantic and pragmatic categories and can be one of the strongest tools of influence on the public. Within the framework of our research 29 English articles, posted on the Internet, concerning the political leaders of the United States and Great Britain, attributing the personal characteristics to them, were analysed. Using the continuous sampling method there was found 214 examples of English emotive-evaluative vocabulary. During the study, the methods of compilation, interpretation, and descriptive methods were used.

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