scholarly journals Exploring Environmental Health on Weibo: A Textual Analysis of Framing Haze-Related Stories on Chinese Social Media

Author(s):  
Fan Yang ◽  
Jessica Wendorf Muhamad ◽  
Qinghua Yang

According to the latest report by the World Health Organization, air pollution, one of the planet’s most dangerous environmental carcinogens, has become one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. In China this is a particularly crucial issue, with more than 100 cities and close to one billion individuals threatened by haze due to heavy air pollution in recent years. Beyond traditional channels, the rise of social media has led to greater online haze-related information sharing. Formative research suggests that Weibo is playing a larger role in the process of information seeking than traditional media. Given the severity of haze and the influential role of Weibo, a textual analysis was conducted based on Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) to provide health decision-makers and media consumers knowledge on how environmental health issues such as haze are framed in Chinese social media. Framing theory served to explain the differences across various outlets: People’s Daily, China Daily, and the Chinese version of the Wall Street Journal. By analyzing 407 Weibo posts, five major frames emerged: (1) governmental concern, (2) public opinion and issue management, (3) contributing factors and effects, (4) socializing haze-related news, and (5) external haze-related news.

2020 ◽  
pp. 002029402096703
Author(s):  
Jia Luo ◽  
Rui Xue ◽  
Jinglu Hu

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 (2019 coronavirus disease), misinformation related to the virus spread rapidly online and have led to serious difficulties in controlling the disease. The term infodemic is coined to outline the bad effect from the extensive dissemination of misinformation during the outbreak. With regards to this phenomenon, the World Health Organization emphasized the need to fight against infodemic and asked all countries not only to make efforts in slowing down the spread of the COVID-19 but also in countering the risk caused by infodemic. Due to its negative impact, this paper analyzes infodemic on Chinese social media at the initial stage of the COVID-19 outbreak and presents a 4P framework standing for the four features of Chinese infodemic: Prevention Attention, Problem Orientation, Patterns Interaction and Points Globalization. Furthermore, a selective review of existing datasets in the neural networks domain is synthesized based on the 4P framework. Finally, research directions, including recommendations, about constructing a large-scale dataset for Chinese infodemic automatic detection are proposed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Rubaba Archi ◽  
Md.Israil Hossain

This paper describes how the city of Rajshahi fought back air pollution through adopting mitigation measures by identifying every possible contributing factors of the pollution. The paper also includes how implementing battery operated rickshaw as a means of intercity transportation impacted the pollution level and contributed towards sustainable environment. The paper covers the details about the problem identification process and the mitigation measures taken by the engineers in the Rajshahi City Corporation. As a result of the steps taken, Rajshahi showed a 67.2% percent decline in concentration of PM10 particles, from 195 micrograms per cubic meter of air volume in 2014 to 64 micrograms for cubic meters. This was the largest percentage reduction in PM10 concentration worldwide. PM2.5 concentration also nearly halved from 70 micrograms per cubic meter to micrograms per cubic meter. The report where this achievement was announced was published by World Health Organization (WHO). By analyzing the discussion it was concluded that Rajshahi was a model city and can be considered as a benchmark and ideal for other cities to follow to reduce air pollution and create a sustainable environment.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 433
Author(s):  
Simonetta Giordano ◽  
Valeria Spagnuolo ◽  
Fiore Capozzi

The World Health Organization reported that air pollution in 2012 caused the death of about 7 million people worldwide (WHO, 2014), confirming air pollution as one of the principal environmental health risks in the world, and indicating its reduction as an urgent mission to save millions of lives [...]


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Wen-Yi Wang ◽  
Jo-Yu Lan ◽  
Ming-Hung Wang ◽  
Chihhao Yu

BACKGROUND In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put the world in crisis on both physical and psychological health. Simultaneously, a myriad of unverified information flowed on social media and online outlets. The situation was so severe that the World Health Organization identified it an infodemic on February 2020. OBJECTIVE We want to study the propagation patterns and textual transformation of COVID-19 related rumors on a closed-platform. METHODS We obtained a dataset of 114 thousand suspicious text messages collected on Taiwan’s most popular instant messaging platform, LINE. We also proposed an algorithm that efficiently cluster text messages into groups, where each group contains text messages within limited difference in content. Each group then represents a rumor and elements in each group is a message about the rumor. RESULTS 114 thousand messages were separated into 937 groups with at least 10 elements. Of the 936 rumors, 44.5% (417) were related to COVID-19. By studying 3 popular false COVID-19 rumors, we identified that key authoritative figures, mostly medical personnel, were often quoted in the messages. Also, rumors resurfaced multiple times after being fact-checked, and the resurfacing pattern were influenced by major societal events and successful content alterations, such as changing whom to quote in a message. CONCLUSIONS To fight infodemic, it is crucial that we first understand why and how a rumor becomes popular. While social media gives rise to unprecedented number of unverified rumors, it also provides a unique opportunity for us to study rumor propagations and the interactions with society. Therefore, we must put more effort in the areas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victória Prates Pasqualotto ◽  
Mariene Jaeger Riffel ◽  
Virgínia Leismann Moretto

ABSTRACT Objective: To describe and analyze the practices suggested in social media for the elaboration of Birth Plans, available on Blogs/Sites and not included in the WHO recommendations. Method: Qualitative, exploratory, descriptive study with thematic analysis. A total of 41 e-mail addresses were selected for analysis among the 200 web addresses previously identified between March and July 2016. Three web addresses were in Portugal and the others in Brazil. Results: 48 practices not included in the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) were identified. Conclusion: Blogs/Websites, as means of transmission, circulation and production of knowledge, enable the horizontal expression of values, encourage women to plan the events considered important for their deliveries and put childbirth decisions on the hands of women, which has caused controversy in the discourse of humanization of childbirth.


Author(s):  
E. K. Mgbe ◽  
C. G. Mgbe ◽  
S. N. Ezeofor ◽  
J. F. Etiki

Background: The world is experiencing a global corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic. As of 9th June 2020, over 7 million confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and more than 400,000 deaths had been reported in more than 30 countries of the world according to World Health Organization. Aim: We aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and vulnerability perception of Enugu state residents during the coronavirus outbreak in order to facilitate better health care outcomes. Methodology: A prospective Web-based cross-sectional survey was designed for this study which was conducted in March 2020 among Enugu state residents. The obtained data were coded, validated, and analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences SPSS software, version 24. Descriptive analysis was applied to calculate the frequencies and proportions and Chi-Square Test was also used. A preliminary phase was conducted to assess the validity and reliability of the questionnaire before its use.  Results: The study showed that significant number (99.6%) of the respondents had heard about Covid-19 and the most stated source of knowledge was social media (57.6%), followed by Newspaper and television shows (50.2%) while the least was from General Practitioner (GP) (8.9%). There was over 75% agreement with, and practice, of all known covid precautionary measures and less than 35% responses for wrong claims and practices about covid -19. Conclusion: The overall knowledge, attitude, and perception are high in Enugu state population although few still has background combined superstitious believes. Social media and internet are the highest used facility for acquisition of knowledge and information in Enugu, Nigeria.


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