scholarly journals Does the COVID-19 Vaccine Still Work That “Most of the Confirmed Cases Had Been Vaccinated”? A Content Analysis of Vaccine Effectiveness Discussion on Sina Weibo during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing

Author(s):  
Hao Gao ◽  
Qingting Zhao ◽  
Chuanlin Ning ◽  
Difan Guo ◽  
Jing Wu ◽  
...  

In July 2021, breakthrough cases were reported in the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nanjing, sparking concern and discussion about the vaccine’s effectiveness and becoming a trending topic on Sina Weibo. In order to explore public attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine and their emotional orientations, we collected 1542 posts under the trending topic through data mining. We set up four categories of attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccines, and used a big data analysis tool to code and manually checked the coding results to complete the content analysis. The results showed that 45.14% of the Weibo posts (n = 1542) supported the COVID-19 vaccine, 12.97% were neutral, and 7.26% were doubtful, which indicated that the public did not question the vaccine’s effectiveness due to the breakthrough cases in Nanjing. There were 66.47% posts that reflected significant negative emotions. Among these, 50.44% of posts with negative emotions were directed towards the media, 25.07% towards the posting users, and 11.51% towards the public, which indicated that the negative emotions were not directed towards the COVID-19 vaccine. External sources outside the vaccine might cause vaccine hesitancy. Public opinions expressed in online media reflect the public’s cognition and attitude towards vaccines and their core needs in terms of information. Therefore, online public opinion monitoring could be an essential way to understand the opinions and attitudes towards public health issues.

1969 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rustan A.

The wide coverage of work and scope of public services requires the public participation to provide input or informationfor the regional government in order to optimize the performance of public service and regional development.Consequently, the media for channeling public aspirations need to be available. On the other hand the handling of the public's aspirations need to be managed well and solvethe needs of the public. This study attempted to assess the public's aspirations management model in a local newspaper in Kalimantan. This study is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach and the analysis tool appliedis content analysis. From the various models of complaints management that are shown in the local newspaper in Kalimantan, in general it can be concluded that model of the public aspirations' column that more interactive, two-way, communicative, and complemented by a follow-up solution is a better model in handling of complaints, thus needs to be developed or replicated by other local governments. In addition, the role of the mass media as a bridge of information and public communication to the government needs to be optimized continuously.Keywords:Management of Public Aspirations, Newspaper, KalimantanLuasnya wilayah kerja dan ruang lingkup pelayanan publik menuntut peran serta masyarakat dalam memberikan masukan ataupun informasi kepada pemerintah daerah agar kinerja pembangunan dapat lebih optimal. Oleh karena itu, media untuk menyalurkan aspirasi publik tersebut perlu tersedia. Di sisi lain penanganan atas aspirasi publik tersebut perlu dikelola secara baik dan menjawab kebutuhan publik. Kajian ini mencoba melakukan penilaian atas model pengelolaan aspirasi publik di surat kabar lokal yang ada di kalimantan. Kajian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif dengan pendekatan kualitatif dengan alat analisis yang digunakan adalah analisis isi(content analysis). Dari berbagai model penanganan pengaduan masyarakat yang diperlihatkan pada surat kabar lokal di kalimantan, secara umum dapat diberikan penilaian bahwa model penanganan kolom aspirasi publik yang lebih interaktif, dua arah, komunikatif, dan disertai penjelasan langkah tindak lanjut adalah model penanganan pengaduan yang lebih baik dan perlu dikembangkan atau direplikasikan oleh pemerintah daerah lainnya. Selain itu, peran serta media massa sebagai jembatan penghubung informasi dan komunikasi publik kepada pemerintahnya perlu semakin dioptimalkan.Kata Kunci: Pengelolaan Aspirasi Publik, Surat Kabar, Kalimantan


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Rita Gill Singh ◽  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Alex Chun Koon

BACKGROUND The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance. OBJECTIVE We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People’s Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public. The objective of this study is to develop an integrated framework to examine the content, message style, and interactive features of COVID-19–related posts and determine their effects on public engagement in the largest social media network in China. METHODS Content analysis was employed to scrutinize 608 COVID-19 posts, and coding was performed on three main dimensions: content, message style, and interactive features. The content dimension was coded into six subdimensions: action, new evidence, reassurance, disease prevention, health care services, and uncertainty, and the style dimension was coded into the subdimensions of narrative and nonnarrative. As for interactive features, they were coded into links to external sources, use of hashtags, use of questions to solicit feedback, and use of multimedia. Public engagement was measured in the form of the number of shares, comments, and likes on the People’s Daily’s Sina Weibo account from January 20, 2020, to March 11, 2020, to reveal the association between different levels of public engagement and communication strategies. A one-way analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc Tukey test and negative binomial regression analysis were employed to generate the results. RESULTS We found that although the content frames of action, new evidence, and reassurance delivered in a nonnarrative style were predominant in COVID-19 communication by the government, posts related to new evidence and a nonnarrative style were strong negative predictors of the number of shares. In terms of generating a high number of shares, it was found that disease prevention posts delivered in a narrative style were able to achieve this purpose. Additionally, an interaction effect was found between content and style. The use of a narrative style in disease prevention posts had a significant positive effect on generating comments and likes by the Chinese public, while links to external sources fostered sharing. CONCLUSIONS These results have implications for governments, health organizations, medical professionals, the media, and researchers on their epidemic communication to engage the public. Selecting suitable communication strategies may foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise the public’s awareness of COVID-19 and motivate them to take preventive measures. The sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus.


10.2196/21360 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. e21360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindy Sing Bik Ngai ◽  
Rita Gill Singh ◽  
Wenze Lu ◽  
Alex Chun Koon

Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed an unprecedented challenge to governments worldwide. Effective government communication of COVID-19 information with the public is of crucial importance. Objective We investigate how the most-read state-owned newspaper in China, People’s Daily, used an online social networking site, Sina Weibo, to communicate about COVID-19 and whether this could engage the public. The objective of this study is to develop an integrated framework to examine the content, message style, and interactive features of COVID-19–related posts and determine their effects on public engagement in the largest social media network in China. Methods Content analysis was employed to scrutinize 608 COVID-19 posts, and coding was performed on three main dimensions: content, message style, and interactive features. The content dimension was coded into six subdimensions: action, new evidence, reassurance, disease prevention, health care services, and uncertainty, and the style dimension was coded into the subdimensions of narrative and nonnarrative. As for interactive features, they were coded into links to external sources, use of hashtags, use of questions to solicit feedback, and use of multimedia. Public engagement was measured in the form of the number of shares, comments, and likes on the People’s Daily’s Sina Weibo account from January 20, 2020, to March 11, 2020, to reveal the association between different levels of public engagement and communication strategies. A one-way analysis of variance followed by a post-hoc Tukey test and negative binomial regression analysis were employed to generate the results. Results We found that although the content frames of action, new evidence, and reassurance delivered in a nonnarrative style were predominant in COVID-19 communication by the government, posts related to new evidence and a nonnarrative style were strong negative predictors of the number of shares. In terms of generating a high number of shares, it was found that disease prevention posts delivered in a narrative style were able to achieve this purpose. Additionally, an interaction effect was found between content and style. The use of a narrative style in disease prevention posts had a significant positive effect on generating comments and likes by the Chinese public, while links to external sources fostered sharing. Conclusions These results have implications for governments, health organizations, medical professionals, the media, and researchers on their epidemic communication to engage the public. Selecting suitable communication strategies may foster active liking and sharing of posts on social media, which in turn, might raise the public’s awareness of COVID-19 and motivate them to take preventive measures. The sharing of COVID-19 posts is particularly important because this action can reach out to a large audience, potentially helping to contain the spread of the virus.


1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 431-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Matas ◽  
N. El-Guebaly ◽  
D. Harper ◽  
M. Green ◽  
A. Peterkin

The public image of psychiatry has been tarnished in recent years. In order to determine the extent to which press coverage has contributed to negative attitudes towards psychiatry, we conducted a content analysis of a random selection of newspaper articles which appeared over a twenty-year period in two different newspapers. We found that although there had been some minor, cosmetic changes over the years, such as more appropriate headlines and more direct quotes from psychiatric experts, on the whole, content and attitudes had changed very little. An accuracy check of media reporting of forensic cases over a 20-year period revealed that when reporters have access to written material, the accuracy levels are greatly improved.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Feona Sayles

<p>The District Council (Prohibition of Gang Insignia) Act 2009 (‘Gang Insignia Act 2009’) came into force in 2009 and prohibited the ‘display’ of ‘gang insignia’ within ‘specified areas’ of the Whanganui District. The purported aim of the legislation was to reduce intimidation of the public and confrontations between gangs. There was no requirement for intent on the part of the wearer of the insignia. This made the Whanganui gang insignia ban unique in terms of criminal law as it maintained that harm was inflicted due to group identity rather than specific conduct. This raises the question of how an identity can be constructed so that it is considered capable of causing criminal harm. To address this question, this research looked at the ways in which the media contributed to the construction of gang identity during the period of 2004 to 2013. This was achieved through (1) a content analysis of reports from three print newspapers and two online newspapers, (2) a content analysis of reader interactions with the reports, and (3) a textual analysis of two print newspapers. The research was guided by moral panic theory so looked for ways in which the events related to stages or elements of moral panic. The focus of the moral panic was also expanded so as to explore the overall context operating at the particular time. It was found that the events did correspond to a moral panic model and that whilst the panic was triggered by key occurrences of gang violence, the underlying motive for the panic could be attributed to racial tensions, penal populism, and the use of a terrorist frame. Whilst this research focuses on the construction of gang identity, the techniques used by the media can be applicable to other group identities.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhuan Zhou ◽  
Yi Wang

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 outbreak, social media served as the main platform for information exchange, through which the Chinese government, media and public would spread information. At the same time, a variety of emotions interweave, and the public emotions would also be affected by the government and media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the types, trends and relationships of emotional diffusion in Chinese social media among the public, the government and the media under the pandemic of COVID-19 (December 30,2019, to July 1,2020) . METHODS In this paper, Python 3.7.0 and its data crawling framework Scrapy 1.5.1 are used to write a web crawler program to search for super topics related to COVID-19 on Sina Weibo platform of different keywords . Then, we used emotional lexicon to analyze the types and trends of the public, government and media emotions on social media. Finally cross-lagged regression was applied to build the relationships of different subjects’ emotions. RESULTS The highlights of our study are threefold: (1) The public, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic in China; (2) Emotional diffusion shows a certain change over time, and negative emotions are obvious in the initial phase of the pandemic, with the development of the pandemic, positive emotions surpass negative emotions and remain stable. (3)The impact among the three main emotions with the period as the time point is weak, while the impact of emotion with the day as the time point is relatively obvious. The emotions of the public and the government impact each other, and the media emotions can guide the public emotions. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of comparing pubic, government and media emotions on the social media during COVID-19 pandemic in China. The pubic, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the pandemic. And the government and the media have better effect on short-term emotional guidance. Therefore, when the pandemic suddenly occurs, the government and the media should intervene in time to solve problems and conflicts and diffuse positive and neutral emotions. In this regard, the government and the media can play important roles through social media in the major outbreaks. At the theoretical level, this paper takes China's epidemic environment and social media as the background to provide one of the explanatory perspectives for the spread of emotions on social media. At the some time, because of this special background, it can provide comparison and reference for the research on internet emotions in other countries.


Author(s):  
Hamdani M. Syam ◽  
Nur Anisah ◽  
Rahmat Saleh ◽  
Abdul Rani Usman ◽  
Dini Khairani

In addition to having the freedom to spread news to the public, the press also have the freedom to search and process news. In exercising that freedom, journalists always consider that news must be interesting so that people want to read it. The media coverage of sex, including stories on rape, sexual harassment, adultery, cheating, and sordid topics, is a news value that has a high rating for people. Sometimes in the economic interests of the media, journalists violate the norms and ethics of the news. This study is aimed to examine through content analysis the coverage of sex in the Harian Rakyat Aceh newspaper, which from January to April 26 featured 54 articles related to sex. This study examined this coverage in the context of Indonesia’s implementation of the journalistic code of ethics. Indonesian journalists are prohibited from mixing facts and opinions and from reporting sadistic and obscene news. Using the Holsti formula, inter-coder reliability resulted in a CR of 0.99, showing strong reliability. After data collection, coding sheets were analyzed using SPSS software to determine the results of each category. This study found that the news value of the 54 articles in the Harian Rakyat Aceh newspaper is considered to have violated the journalistic code of ethics. Thus, it can be assumed that there is an economic interest in the media’s reporting of sex in that newspaper.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Indranil Chakravorty

There is a rising trend of violence against healthcare professionals across the world, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries report between 43-75% of professionals experiencing at least one incident in any annual survey. The most recent incident of doctors and healthcare staff in a Manchester City General Practice raised alarms. As the healthcare infrastructure and services are severely stretched following the disruption of 2020, there are more reasons for disquiet and frustration from the public. The media and political portrayal of primary care physicians as not caring enough to provide face-to-face appointments in the UK is believed to increase the public angst. There are protests from professional organisations but this is not heard by the public. In any violence prevention strategy, a multi-system approach is critical. While tackling misinformation is essential, so is the tackling the root causes, the waiting lists and a balanced information to the public. Political and organisational leaders need to be visible and vocal in explaining why the healthcare infrastructure is beyond breaking point. This will justify the additional resources needed and reduce the frustrations of the public, in need of care. There is also a vital need to help new doctors and nurses as well as all frontline staff in violence dissipation techniques, self-preservation. The Voluntary community organisations including those that support professional groups have a vital role to play. The NHS People Plan has recommended that VSCEs should join robust and reliable partnerships with Integrated Care Organisations in developing strategies and interventions. There is more work to be done. This article is a call for action and invites all VSCEs interested in the reduction of violence against staff to join with employing organisations to set up collaborative working groups with specific actions to implement. This is essential to reduce harm and reduce the demoralisation of an already burnt-out healthcare workforce.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Anđelija Đukić

In recent decades, there has been notably increased engagement of the international community in combating human trafficking, which has also been contributed by the media. The role of the media is reflected in building certain public attitudes and influencing political decision-making. Based on the selected literature, the paper considers the media framing of human trafficking from the 1990s to the present. The media decides on how to approach trafficking, content and causes, information sources, generating and presenting alternative solutions process, as well as motivational procedures for initiating actions of the public and politicians, thus creating diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames. Based on the research, it is concluded that media frames of human trafficking are not holistic but segmental, and instead of a comprehensive approach, stereotypes are presented in which trafficking is identified with sexual exploitation or considered as the consequence of migration or organized crime actions. This harms the victims, makes the identification of all perpetrators difficult, and narrows the focus of the suppression efforts. It is noted that in the relations between the media, the public and the authorities, in the process of creating a policy and implementing solutions for combating, there are significant influences of policy-makers on media framing, and thus on public attitudes, which provides support and legitimacy of current or future political decisions. In order to illustrate the diversity of media representation of human trafficking, as a COM-plex phenomenon and the possibility of different analyses of media framing, the main findings of several studies in the USA, EU, and Serbia are presented.


Author(s):  
Vera Zaharieva

This research offers a review of the online news content in Bulgaria, related to school aggression, violence, and sports initiatives tackling those behavioral problems. The aim is to provide an understanding of the phenomenon and the societal attitude towards its dimensions and possible solutions through sport. A media content analysis of online articles, dated January 2019 – April 2020, was used as a research methodology. Thirty-three articles on aggression and violence in school were reviewed, based on their frequency, timeline, place of publication, topics, and spokesperson. For the same time period, sixteen articles related to dealing with aggression through sport were reported. The results show that most of the media content on violence and aggression among students was related to raw statistical data and reports of cases. A relatively small section in the news was dedicated to opinion articles. It was observed that those who witness cases of aggression do not understand the seriousness of the situation and see it as entertainment. As a result, a major part of the video content, related to aggression, is being uploaded on the Internet by students and parents. However, the public focus is mainly shifted towards the school authorities and the figure of the teacher. At the same time, aggression in schools is spread among all students. It has a constant value and is provoked by numerous factors. On the contrary, initiatives and events aiming to disseminate information and to reduce aggression through sport were organized in many Bulgarian cities by nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and schools. The majority of events were organized as a part of European or national projects. It is suggested a more centralized national approach towards reducing aggression through different sports activities in school.


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