scholarly journals The Effectiveness of Varied Forms of Education in Attitudes and Behaviors Towards Veganism

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ava Seiffer ◽  
Maura Large
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Large Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Animal Products ◽  
Media Campaigns ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
And Behaviors

In today’s society, the number of people who are socially conscious is rising as information becomes increasingly available. Veganism is one expression of social consciousness and while a diet that abstains from animal products dates back to the days of Native Americans, a poll conducted by Gallup found that only three percent of the United States population is vegan (McCarthy). Many studies previously conducted have synthesized the reasons why people choose to be vegan, but none of them have touched on how to best shift attitudes and behaviors of non-practitioners. According to a Vomad study, 68% of vegans were abstaining from consuming animals due to the ill-treatment of animals by society. This means that a large population of practitioners adopted veganism through becoming educated about the treatment of animals. The origins of veganism are rooted in Native Americans’ notions of duality with nature. Modern philosophical theories regarding the treatment of animals which are intended to educate society includes Ecological Animalism, focused on dualism between humans and nature, and Ontological Veganism, focused on the equality of all living beings and the morality of inflicting pain on others. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a pro-vegan organization, has chosen to educate through polarizing marketing and social media campaigns. This poses my research question: How effective is education on the philosophies of veganism in influencing non-vegans’ attitudes and behaviors as compared to education through polarizing marketing and social media campaigns?

Attitudes and behaviors related to distracted driving in college students: a need for interventions in adolescence

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey H. Basch ◽  
Sarah A. MacLean ◽  
Philip Garcia
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Text Messages ◽  
Distracted Driving ◽  
Opinion Poll ◽  
Driving Behaviors ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Use Of Social Media

Abstract Objective One of the biggest contributors to distracted driving among young people in the United States is technology. The objective of this study was to describe distracted driving behaviors among college students, with a specific focus on attitudes towards and use of social media. Methods With written permission, a survey was adapted from the Distracted Driving Public Opinion Poll distributed by the National Safety Council. The survey comprised 43 questions assessing attitudes and behaviors. A total of 411 students enrolled in a personal health course were invited to complete the survey. In total 324 surveys were completed, resulting in a response rate of 79%. Results Among students with a driver’s license, 95.2% reported engaging in distracted driving behaviors. The use of social media while driving was common, with 30.7% reporting that they glance at, read, or post to social media while driving, most commonly on Snapchat or Instagram. It was common for students to make or answer phone calls (72.0%), review or send text messages (54.6%), or glance at or read automatic notifications (43.3%). Almost all students (91.5%) reported that they believed a hands-free solution is safer than holding the phone while driving, but only 67.9% reported that they usually used a hands-free device. Students in a health major and students who drive in urban areas were more likely to engage in distracted driving behaviors. Conclusions These findings suggest a need for interventions, particularly those which target adolescents in an attempt to deter these behaviors as they transition into adulthood.

scholarly journals Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency’s impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017

2019 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Bail ◽  
Brian Guay ◽  
Emily Maloney ◽  
Aidan Combs ◽  
D. Sunshine Hillygus ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Political Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computational Social Science ◽  
Bayesian Regression ◽  
Internet Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Twitter Users

There is widespread concern that Russia and other countries have launched social-media campaigns designed to increase political divisions in the United States. Though a growing number of studies analyze the strategy of such campaigns, it is not yet known how these efforts shaped the political attitudes and behaviors of Americans. We study this question using longitudinal data that describe the attitudes and online behaviors of 1,239 Republican and Democratic Twitter users from late 2017 merged with nonpublic data about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) from Twitter. Using Bayesian regression tree models, we find no evidence that interaction with IRA accounts substantially impacted 6 distinctive measures of political attitudes and behaviors over a 1-mo period. We also find that interaction with IRA accounts were most common among respondents with strong ideological homophily within their Twitter network, high interest in politics, and high frequency of Twitter usage. Together, these findings suggest that Russian trolls might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized. We conclude by discussing several important limitations of our study—especially our inability to determine whether IRA accounts influenced the 2016 presidential election—as well as its implications for future research on social media influence campaigns, political polarization, and computational social science.

scholarly journals “Wars” on COVID-19 in Slovakia, Russia, and the United States: Securitized Framing and Reframing of Political and Media Communication Around the Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta N. Lukacovic
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Research Question ◽  
The United States ◽  
Frame Element ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
The Government

This study analyzes securitized discourses and counter narratives that surround the COVID-19 pandemic. Controversial cases of security related political communication, salient media enunciations, and social media reframing are explored through the theoretical lenses of securitization and cascading activation of framing in the contexts of Slovakia, Russia, and the United States. The first research question explores whether and how the frame element of moral evaluation factors into the conversations on the securitization of the pandemic. The analysis tracks the framing process through elite, media, and public levels of communication. The second research question focused on fairly controversial actors— “rogue actors” —such as individuals linked to far-leaning political factions or militias. The proliferation of digital media provides various actors with opportunities to join publicly visible conversations. The analysis demonstrates that the widely differing national contexts offer different trends and degrees in securitization of the pandemic during spring and summer of 2020. The studied rogue actors usually have something to say about the pandemic, and frequently make some reframing attempts based on idiosyncratic evaluations of how normatively appropriate is their government's “war” on COVID-19. In Slovakia, the rogue elite actors at first failed to have an impact but eventually managed to partially contest the dominant frame. Powerful Russian media influencers enjoy some conspiracy theories but prudently avoid direct challenges to the government's frame, and so far only marginal rogue actors openly advance dissenting frames. The polarized political and media environment in the US has shown to create a particularly fertile ground for rogue grassroots movements that utilize online platforms and social media, at times going as far as encouragement of violent acts to oppose the government and its pandemic response policy.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Seidman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Gender Equity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feminist Activism ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Barriers And Challenges ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Feminist Work

Seidman describes the origins of the social media called Who Needs Feminism and how that led her to undertake oral history interviews with feminist activists around the United States. She explains that her focus is on people who came of age during and after the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s. Her interviews are all people who earn their living or center their major activist commitments and actions in feminist work, and include non-profit leaders, writers, journalists, philanthropists, labor unionists¬¬, budding politicians, media professionals, and students. They share a fundamental belief that women still face barriers and challenges based on their gender, and that laws, policies, attitudes and behaviors need to change in order to reach the goal of gender equity. She discusses narrators general rejection of the construct different “waves” of feminism; how the rise of social media as has reshaped feminist activism in both positive and negative ways, with special attention to Twitter and tensions within the movement that arise there; feminists’ goals and strategies; and how these interviews reveal the different ways that feminism has unfolded across the life arc of her interviewees. Seidman argues these interviews help explain the rise of the Women’s March on Washington and the #MeToo movement.

COVIDiots and Cogency

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-85
Author(s):  
Roy Schwartzman ◽  
Jenni M. Simon
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Heuristics And Biases ◽  
Health Campaigns ◽  
Broadcast Media ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Public Health Campaigns ◽  
Health Experts

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States spawns a perplexing polemic. Intransigent coronavirus skeptics who defy public health recommendations often get cast as ideological zealots or as perniciously ignorant. Both characterizations overlook a more fundamental epistemic opposition. The authors recast the conflict between COVID-19 skeptics and public health advocates as the rhetorical incompatibility between the deliberative, scientifically grounded public health experts and the intuitive, emotion-driven mental heuristics of the non-compliant. This study examines the discourse of COVID-19 misinformation purveyors on broadcast media and online. Their main contentions rely on heuristics and biases that collectively not only undermine trust in particular medical experts, but also undercut trust in the institutions and reasoning processes of science itself. The findings suggest ways that public health campaigns can become more effective by leveraging some of the intuitive drivers of attitudes and behaviors that scientists and argumentation theorists routinely dismiss as fallacious.

scholarly journals Family physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors regarding the weight effects of added sugar

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 205031211880124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Mackey ◽  
Melissa A Plegue ◽  
Marian Deames ◽  
Matthew Kittle ◽  
Kendrin R Sonneville ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Family Physician ◽  
Family Physicians ◽  
The United States ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
P Value ◽  
Dietary Counseling ◽  
Added Sugar ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
Dietary Sugar ◽  
And Behaviors

Background and objectives: Added sugar consumption is a major risk factor for negative health outcomes and family physicians play an important role in educating patients regarding nutrition behaviors, such as consumption of added dietary sugar. The aim of this study was to describe the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of family physicians regarding added dietary sugar. Methods: An online questionnaire was administered to family physician members of the Council of Academic Family Medicine organizations, which support teaching physicians that train family physicians throughout the United States. Survey items underwent rigorous pilot and cognitive testing prior to administration. Descriptive statistics and Pearson’s chi-square test were performed to evaluate physician’s dietary counseling for patients with overweight and obesity. Results: Among practicing family physician members (n = 1196), 72% reported providing dietary counseling to the majority (⩾50%) of their patients with overweight and obesity. Most (90%) believed that their counseling was ineffective for the majority of patients. Frequency of counseling was significantly associated with beliefs about counseling effectiveness (p-value < 0.001). Nearly all physicians (97%) advised against consuming sugary beverages, while advising patients to limit foods with added sugar was less common (82%). Discussion: Dietary counseling is often, but not always, provided to patients with overweight and obesity by family physicians in our sample, though most physicians believed their counseling is ineffective. National attention to added sugar as a risk for poor health should serve as a catalyst for renewed efforts from primary care educators and clinicians to engage in innovative practices to empower at-risk patients to improve their nutrition.

Mobile Health and Exposures to Health and Risk Messages

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Fitts Willoughby
Keyword(s):  
Health Information ◽  
Mobile Health ◽  
Text Messaging ◽  
Cell Phone ◽  
The United States ◽  
Text Messages ◽  
Target Audience ◽  
Portable Devices ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
And Behaviors

People who communicate health and risk information are often trying to determine new and innovative ways to reach members of their target audience. Because of the nearly ubiquitous use of mobile phones among individuals in the United States and the continued proliferation of such devices around the world, communicators have turned to mobile as a possible channel for disseminating health information. Mobile health, often referred to as mHealth, uses mobile and portable devices to communicate information about health and to monitor health issues. Cell phones are one primary form of mHealth, with the use of cell phone features such as text messaging and mobile applications (apps) often used as a way to provide health information and motivation to target audience members. Text messaging, or short message service (SMS), is a convenient form for conveying health information, as most cell phone owners regularly send and receive text messages. mHealth offers benefits over other channels for communicating health information, such as convenience, portability, interactivity, and the ability to personalize or tailor messages. Additionally, mHealth has been found to be effective at changing attitudes and behaviors related to health. Research has found mobile to be a tool useful for promoting healthy attitudes and behaviors related to a number of topic areas, from increased sexual health to decreased alcohol consumption. Literature from health communication and research into mHealth can provide guidance for health communicators looking to develop an effective mHealth intervention or program, but possible concerns related to the use of mobile need to be considered, such as concerns about data security and participant privacy.

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