scholarly journals Public Perception of Tourism Cities before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic through the Lens of User-Generated Content

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 14046
Author(s):  
Yulin Chen

The COVID-19 pandemic (coronavirus disease of 2019) sent the world into disarray and devastated the global tourism economy. In 2020 alone, the number of international tourists dropped by roughly 1.1 billion. This study examines user-generated content (UGC) on social media to elucidate the shift in people’s perceptions of popular tourism cities from before the pandemic to during the pandemic. This paper analyzes the characteristics of the cues in tourism-city-related UGC (particularly those related to the pandemic) and identifies the cues that resonate most with the public. This paper collected the data using Instagram’s application programing interface and then sorted the UGC based on content, type, time, likes, share, and comments. Between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019, it collected a total of 207,752 pre-pandemic posts and 173,131 peri-pandemic posts. The findings reveal that, during the pandemic, the interactivity of city-related UGC dropped, and only pandemic-related keywords gained public attention. By comparison, pre-pandemic positive posts mentioned local features and contained calls to action that were generally well-received. The findings also validate that UGC effectively reflects and enhances overall public perceptions, suggesting that, in a future which is forced to co-exist with SARS-CoV-2 in the long term, it is important to understand the positive and negative influences of UGC on tourism cities.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Smith ◽  
Lorraine Warren

PurposeHumour and, in particular, jokes have received little serious academic scrutiny in the entrepreneurship literature to date. To address this, the purpose of this paper is to examine publicly available jokes about entrepreneurs to establish what such jokes tell us about how humour, particularly entrepreneur jokes shapes public perceptions of entrepreneurial identity. This is important because humour may be an integral part of an individual's entrepreneurial identity. The authors thus contribute to understandings of the complex nature of entrepreneurial identity and how public perceptions of humour influence such by encapsulating negative public perception of entrepreneurs which may act as a de-legitimisation mechanism.Design/methodology/approachFrom a representative sample of entrepreneur jokes located on the web using netnographic techniques, the authors apply a multi-disciplinary framework to analyse the material and its messages to establish how such jokes shape public perceptions.FindingsThe findings suggest that jokes convey a pejorative message about how entrepreneurs are perceived by the public with the content and message of the jokes being negative and derogatory. Common themes contained in the punchlines include – criminality, greed, dishonesty, hubris, stupidity, misfortune, ridicule and deviousness – all of which may de-legitimise generic entrepreneurial identity. In the process, the authors uncovered liminal aspects of joke telling and consumption in that the perception of jokes about entrepreneurs relate to the time and context in which the joke is told given that situational cleverness is a key facet of such jokes. In addition, the authors discuss variations across jokes.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors discuss learning outcomes for future research and potential future studies into humour in an entrepreneurial context.Originality/valueThis study places humour and joking on the research stage, making an incremental contribution. The authors add to the literature on the use of entrepreneurial humour and in particular in relation to how jokes influence public perception of entrepreneurs. From the data collected, the authors develop some fresh insights into the variation and range of entrepreneurship related jokes accessible online.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Petek Tosun

Purpose Coffee is among the primary products that attract the public attention to the social and environmental responsibilities of companies. Coffee shops have a big carbon footprint because of their daily operations. With the rising consciousness about sustainability in developing countries, online disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is becoming increasingly important for not only multinational but also local coffee chains. The purpose of this study is to analyze the extent to which coffee chains include CSR on their websites. Design/methodology/approach Turkey, which is a large emerging economy with an expanding coffee chain market, is selected as the research context. The CSR disclosure on the websites of coffee chains is examined by content analysis according to CSR dimensions. A sample of 27 coffee chains with more than ten stores is included in the analysis. Findings Foreign coffee chains disclose more information on the environment and fair trade than local coffee chains. On the other hand, CSR content in websites of foreign and local coffee chains does not differ significantly in human resources and community dimensions. Foreign coffee chains have comparatively longer brand history, more rooted brands and larger networks than local coffee chains. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first that used a content analysis about CSR on the websites of coffee chains in Turkey. Findings contribute to the understanding of CSR disclosure in the coffee chain industry and can be beneficial for researchers and managers in other emerging markets.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aasif Ahmad Mir ◽  
Sevukan Rathinam ◽  
Sumeer Gul

PurposeTwitter is gaining popularity as a microblogging and social networking service to discuss various social issues. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a global pandemic and is discussed worldwide. Social media is an instant platform to deliberate various dimensions of COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to explore and analyze the public sentiments related to COVID-19 vaccines across the Twitter messages (positive, neutral, and negative) and the impact tweets make across digital social circles.Design/methodology/approachTo fetch the vaccine-related posts, a manual examination of randomly selected 500 tweets was carried out to identify the popular hashtags relevant to the vaccine conversation. It was found that the hashtags “covid19vaccine” and “coronavirusvaccine” were the two popular hashtags used to discuss the communications related to COVID-19 vaccines. 23,575 global tweets available in public domain were retrieved through “Twitter Application Programming Interface” (API), using “Orange Software”, an open-source machine learning, data visualization and data mining toolkit. The study was confined to the tweets posted in English language only. The default data cleaning and preprocessing techniques available in the “Orange Software” were applied to the dataset, which include “transformation”, “tokenization” and “filtering”. The “Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning” (VADER) tool was used for classification of tweets to determine the tweet sentiments (positive, neutral and negative) as well as the degree of sentiments (compound score also known as sentiment score). To assess the influence/impact of tweets account wise (verified and unverified) and sentiment wise (positive, neutral, and negative), the retweets and likes, which offer a sort of reward or acknowledgment of tweets, were used.FindingsA gradual decline in the number of tweets over the time is observed. Majority (11,205; 47.52%) of tweets express positive sentiments, followed by neutral (7,948; 33.71%) and negative sentiments (4,422; 18.75%), respectively. The study also signifies a substantial difference between the impact of tweets tweeted by verified and unverified users. The tweets related to verified users have a higher impact both in terms of retweets (65.91%) and likes (84.62%) compared to the tweets tweeted by unverified users. Tweets expressing positive sentiments have the highest impact both in terms of likes (mean = 10.48) and retweets (mean = 3.07) compared to those that express neutral or negative sentiments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of the study is that the sentiments of the people expressed over one single social platform, that is, Twitter have been studied which cannot generalize the global public perceptions. There can be a variation in the results when the datasets from other social media platforms will be studied.Practical implicationsThe study will help to know the people's sentiments and beliefs toward the COVID-19 vaccines. Sentiments that people hold about the COVID-19 vaccines are studied, which will help health policymakers understand the polarity (positive, negative, and neutral) of the tweets and thus see the public reaction and reflect the types of information people are exposed to about vaccines. The study can aid the health sectors to intensify positive messages and eliminate negative messages for an enhanced vaccination uptake. The research can also help design more operative vaccine-advocating communication by customizing messages using the obtained knowledge from the sentiments and opinions about the vaccines.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on an essential aspect of COVID-19 vaccines and how people express themselves (positively, neutrally and negatively) on Twitter.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Proscovia Svärd

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to highlight the long-term preservation challenges that the Swedish private archives are faced with. In as much as they offer a complement to the public archives and hence offer a nuanced national narrative, they lack both financial and human resources to effectively deal with the digital information management environment. Design/methodology/approach Participatory Action Research (PAR) was used to identify the challenges of long-term preservation together with the six private archives institutions that were involved in the collaboration. The collaboration was financially facilitated by the Södertörn University. PAR is defined as a systematic investigation, with the collaboration of those affected by the issue being studied, for the purposes of education and taking action or effecting social change. What is distinctive of PAR is the active involvement of people whose lives are affected by the phenomenon under study. Findings The private archival institutions face long-term preservation challenges such as lack of a digital repository that would facilitate the capture, organization and management of digital records that are of different formats and in a dispersed environment. There are no stringent legal requirements to facilitate the creation and management of the records in a standardized way and the institutions fear that imposing such requirements might deter their clients from depositing archival materials with them. The institutions will also need to espouse the business-oriented archival descriptions where private organizations are concerned to identify relevant archival materials and to promote participatory archival descriptions that would allow the creators to tag their records with metadata. Digital information requires a proactive approach, that is, planning for the long-term preservation of the information before it is created. Private archives need to invest in education packages that will facilitate their clientele’s understanding of the challenges of digital long-term preservation. Research limitations/implications The findings cannot be generalized to all private archival institutions, as it was only six institutions that participated, but the issues discussed are relevant to most archival institutions. Practical implications A lot of research has been carried out in the area of long-term preservation, but researchers have not paid enough attention to the woes of the private archives. To sustain a nuanced national narrative, the private archives need all the support to be able to live up to their mission of preserving archives of the private sector that are not captured by the public archival institutions. This is important in a pluralistic society such as Sweden. Highlighting the challenges might enable the institutions to work towards finding common challenges. Social implications The private archives are part of Sweden’s national heritage. Their preservation matters to the society as a whole and to enhancing the voices of the underrepresented. Originality/value The literature review revealed that not much research has paid attention to the challenges being faced by the private archives. This paper, therefore, contributes to this knowledge gap.


2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1146-1166
Author(s):  
Trish McCulloch ◽  
Stephen Webb

Abstract This article reports on findings of a government-funded research project which set out to understand what the public think about social services in Scotland. The authors were particularly keen to examine issues of legitimacy, trust and licence to operate for social services as they are framed in public perceptions. Drawing on a national online survey of 2,505 nationally representative adults, the findings provide the first and largest empirical data set on public perceptions of social services in Scotland. Data analysis occurred in two stages and employed descriptive statistical measurement and cross-tabulation analysis. The findings indicate that, overall, people in Scotland are positive about social services and the value of their impact on society. Furthermore, they believe that social services perform a valuable public role. These findings are significant for debates surrounding social services and suggest that the Scottish public has a more positive view of social services than social service workers and welfare institutions typically perceive. The findings demonstrate the need to develop a more theoretically rich understanding of the relationships between public perception, legitimacy and social licence in social services, including attention to co-productive models of engagement.


Author(s):  
Muhammad Aditya Majdi

Public perception of immigration content at the TPI East Jakarta Class I Immigration Office is very important in determining the quality of information and understanding of immigration provided to the public by focusing on social media Instagram. With some literacy regarding public perceptions it can produce a public view of immigration content that has been disseminated through social media Instagram TPI Class I Immigration Office, East Jakarta. This can be used as study and learning material in seeing some of the shortcomings that must be addressed by the TPI East Jakarta Class I Immigration Office regarding public perceptions of immigration content. With the descriptive qualitative research method, it explains that there are still gaps or shortcomings of immigration content disseminated through social media Instagram TPI Class I Immigration Office, East Jakarta. So it is very necessary to make several further research studies related to public perceptions of immigration content so as to harmonize understanding between the information provider and the recipient of the information.  


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Restu Lanjari ◽  
Anis Kairunisa

Soreng dance is a kind of populist dance in the village Lemahireng. Dance Soreng describe the morale of the troops brave choice soldiers prepared for war games. Issues examined in this study are: Public perception of the Dance in the Village Lemahireng Soreng Bawen District of Semarang District. Goals to be achieved in this research is to determine the public perception in the village Lemahireng Bawen District of Semarang District and to determine the measures to be undertaken by the Department of Education and Culture. This study uses qualitative research methods and conduct research with a sociological approach method. Data were analyzed using data reduction, data presentation and conclusion. The results showed that of some perceptions obtained from the community about Tari Soreng. Perception is not present in the community to support children age (12-17 years) and younger age (17-25 years) and that support tends society in old age (25-85 years). Factors that affect the public perception of dance in the village Soreng Lemahireng Bawen District of Semarang District is the background for the birth of the perception of the community as a high level of education makes way people view more open and modern. The effort to do Office of Education and Culture of Semarang District is to provide guidance Dance Soreng should start with their own community in their respective regions, also carried out by a group of community Soreng kridho Wargo budhoyo, one form of effective formation is to hold a festival or competition. The conclusions of the study are: Problems sector in the public perception depends on your viewpoint and how to view an art. Dance Soreng perception of change in different elements of society Lemahireng village along with the advancement of age. Suggestions for the Education and Culture District of Semarang, to further maximize conservation efforts in the utilization of Dance Soreng in science and tourism. The younger generation is expected to be more easily studied dance Soreng and is expected to preserve and develop it.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Schulz ◽  
Daniel Mayerhoffer ◽  
Anna Gebhard

Across income groups and countries, the public perception of economic inequality and many other macroeconomic variables such as inflation or unemployment rates is spectacularly wrong. These misperceptions have far-reaching consequences, as it is perceived inequality, not actual inequality informing redistributive preferences. The prevalence of this phenomenon is independent of social class and welfare regime, which suggests the existence of a common mechanism behind public perceptions. We propose a network-based explanation of perceived inequality building on recent advances in random geometric graph theory. The literature has identified several stylised facts on how individual perceptions respond to actual inequality and how these biases vary systematically along the income distribution. Our generating mechanism can replicate all of them simultaneously. It also produces social networks that exhibit salient features of real-world networks; namely, they cannot be statistically distinguished from small-world networks, testifying to the robustness of our approach. Our results, therefore, suggest that homophilic segregation is a promising candidate to explain inequality perceptions with strong implications for theories of consumption behaviour.


Author(s):  
Yurnal Yurnal ◽  
Anis Shafika Binti Saiful Adli

The purpose of this study was to describe public perceptions of people’s housing programs for handling slums in Malaysia. Malaysia has begun organizing and fostering communities that have lived in slums since 1998 in the 'slum-free Malaysia vision 2005' program, and today Malaysia can be said to have successfully resolved slums, through public housing programs. The type of research used is this research is descriptive qualitative, using accidental sampling as sampling technique. Data collection methods used are interview and documentation methods, with research instruments in the form of interview guidelines. The results showed that the community strongly agreed with the existence of The People’s Housing Program (PPR), especially for the lower middle class and poor people in Malaysia. This program is able to realize the dream of the poor to be able to have a place to live that is suitable for living with family. Furthermore, the program itself is acknowledged by the community as being able to deal with slum settlements in Malaysia, and the poor who are biased in occupying slum areas voluntarily move to the houses provided by this PPR. So, people's perception of the Public Housing Program is very supportive especially to deal with slums in Malaysia.


1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-24
Author(s):  
Douglas H. Rapelje

After two years of design research, the near-term goal of the Senior Citizens Department, Regional Niagara, was to build innovative homes to address the issues and programs the studies revealed. The long-term objective was to build homes that would start to change the public perception of long-term care facilities. Featuringa “Town Square”, the home comprises five houses of 20 beds, each providing a different level of care. Corridors are a unique design, and each house has its own dining room facilities and activity room. A central Day Care lounge features dining room facilities for family and friends. The Department hopes the overall design will help to break down the stereotype image of long-term care design, an d provide a suitable environment for the mentally and physically frail, as well as ambulatory residents.


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