Usage of Facebook by Student Leaders in Creating Awareness Regarding Covid-19 in Guwahati

Pandemic like COVID-19 has triggered disruptions in personal and collective lives globally. It is not only a pandemic, but also an Infodemic of misinformation about the virus which raises demand for reliable and trustworthy information. With the advent of social media creation and consumption of news have been changing among the young generation. Student leaders have taken on additional work and assumed new responsibilities by volunteering in their communities and creating awareness among the public about the accuracy of information and measures to be taken against the deadly virus. This study explores the use of Facebook handles by the student leaders of two universities in Guwahati in creating awareness about the health-related messages regarding Covid-19 and its vaccination. The researcher will use critical discourse analysis to evaluate the use of social networking sites by the students’ leaders. To understand the usage by the leaders, Facebook pages of the leaders would be followed and studied backed with unstructured interviews with the leaders to understand the purpose of and pattern of using the social media handles.

A battle for truth: Islam-related counterpublic discourse on Scandinavian news media Facebook pages

In this article, I aim to contribute to existing literature on counterpublics by analysing the extent to which competing counterpublics regarding Islam appear in mainstream news outlets’ comment sections on Facebook. By utilising, and slightly modifying, Toepfl and Piwoni’s pioneering theoretical framework for analysing (counter)publics, I identify an Islam-hostile counterpublic and an Islam-sympathetic counterpublic that operate in the examined comment sections. I conducted a quantitative content analysis of Facebook posts (and associated articles) published by 15 established Scandinavian news outlets in 2018 ( N = 599) and the comments written by ordinary Facebook users in response ( N = 6797). I found the majority of the comments mirrored the views presented in the established media posts, but a substantial minority of the comments engaged in counterpublic discourses, contesting the bounds of established discourse around Islam in the Scandinavian public spheres.

Participation With Social Media

By improving ICT within the scope of administration, new terms like e-government, m-government, e-governance, e-participation appeared in the field of public administration. The concept of e-government affects municipalities—closest service units to the citizens—and with this effect developed the term e-municipality. Municipalities in Turkey began to use the new technologies for the delivery of services, and terms like e-participation and e-governance are widening rapidly. This chapter investigates whether Facebook pages are an effective tool for local participation. The social media-citizen relationship that is claimed to be more effective, especially at the local level, has been evaluated through the Facebook pages of the municipalities. This chapter focuses on the role of social media in participatory administration.

Using Social Media to Advocate LGBT Rights in Black Africa

The prevalence of draconian homophobic laws in Cameroon and Nigeria has systematically stultified sympathy for the LGBT communities and made pro-gay street activism a risky venture in these two countries. In view of this, a good number of gay rights activists have resorted to the social media as a suitable platform for a less risky advocacy. Using the social media has afforded them the opportunity to explore interactive, post-modern, and personified approaches to sensitizing and mobilizing their readership in favour of gay proselytism in Cameroon, Nigeria, and some other parts of Africa. Based on a content analysis of 200 blog posts and web/facebook pages generated by Cameroonian and Nigerian gay activists, this chapter measures the extent to which gay activists adopt a national/local perspective versus the level to which they adopt an international perspective in their online advocacy. The chapter equally examines the degree to which these citizen journalist/activists construct their advocacy discourse from the prism of a cultural war between the West and Africa.

Sentiment Analysis and Summarization of Facebook Posts on News Media

Social media has become part of daily life in the modern world. News media companies (NMC) use social network sites including Facebook pages to let net users keep updated. Public expression is important to NMC for making valuable journals, but it is not cost-effective to collect millions of feedback by human effort, which can instead be automated by sentiment analysis. This chapter presents a mobile application called Facemarize that summarizes the contents of news media Facebook pages using sentiment analysis. The sentiment of user comments can be quickly analyzed and summarized with emotion detection. The sentiment analysis achieves an accuracy of over 80%. In a survey with 30 participants including journalists, journalism students, and journalism graduates, the application gets at least 4.9 marks (in a 7-point Likert scale) on the usefulness, ease of use, ease of learning, and satisfaction with a mean reliability score of 3.9 (out of 5), showing the effectiveness of the application.

Gender Democratization

Misogyny and gender violence are the result of social and cultural predetermination of gender roles. Indeed, eradicating role prescriptions is a real revolutionary action which implies escaping from male and masculinity hegemony and rethinking male identities. It is therefore crucial to create pathways of democratization of gender that aim to create real paths of equality between genders abandoning the social predetermination of gender roles. This challenge has become the goal of some social promotion associations which try to break down gender-based violence and the stigma attached to it. The chapter aims to investigate how these associations operate to democratize gender through a content analysis of messages posted on their respective Facebook pages. The unit of analysis of the study is constituted by the last 200 posts produced in these two Facebook pages for a total of 400 posts analyzed. Findings identify renewed spaces of masculinity (for example fatherhood) not adhering to the main stereotypes.

Communicating to Tourists During and Post-Covid-19: What Do They Want (Need) to Hear?

Swiss tourism relies heavily on international clientele to book rooms and purchase goods and services. However, from March to June 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, travel and subsequent bookings slowed and, in some cases, stopped altogether. Based predominantly on Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), this paper investigates Swiss hotels’ messages on their official Facebook pages and the SCCT strategies they employed during this crisis. The findings from 48 independent four- and five-star hotels show that the Victimage strategy was the most often employed when communicating about the COVID-19 pandemic in general. Further, most hotels published positive messages during this period (68%) and strongly emphasized their roles as victims at this time. Only 5% of the messages posted were negative messages. Hotels ‘blamed’ the government and the sanitary measures for their closing or reduced services. The findings presented here contribute to the literature by offering a pattern of crisis responses from Swiss hotels in the early period of the pandemic. These results are currently being updated with the messages communicated in the 12 months since the beginning of this study. The findings of this crisis communication during an early stage of the pandemic will be used to make concrete recommendations for the strategies that should be implemented in the future if the COVID-19 crisis continues or when faced with other crises.

How Covid-19 Pandemic Reshaped Cultural Environment in Italy and Ukraine: Facebook Content Analysis

<em><span>The need to incorporate cultural aspects into business practice is long-standing. The cultural environment in Ukraine and Italy was reshaped, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social networks reflected such transformation both at the personal level and in the business activities of national companies on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other media. Facebook pages were analyzed as the most popular social platform in Ukraine and Italy to reveal these changes. Content analysis of countries' leaders in retail, e-commerce, and service was carried out, namely </span><span>EVA, Rozetka, and Nova Noshta for Ukraine; and Conad, Bottega Verde, and Italo Treno for Italy. T</span><span>wo-phase desk research was conducted with ten research questions for each cultural dimension encoded in a binary system. The research has shown that Ukrainian business still manifests collaborative problem solving, compliance with social standards, and the value of human life. It demonstrates a low level of power distance and uncertainty avoidance. Ukraine is gradually changing its paradigm of thinking to a more hedonic and individualistic similar to Western Europe. In contrast, Italy shows less respect for power in all its manifestations and a greater willingness to take risks than before. The country has become less goal-oriented, restrained, and masculine but more collectivistic.</span></em>

Önkormányzati kommunikáció a COVID-19 világjárvány okozta krízishelyzetben

Összefoglaló. A COVID–19-járvány kezelésében az önkormányzatok kiemelkedő szerepet kaptak. Tanulmányunkban azt kívánjuk bemutatni, hogy ebben a krízishelyzetben, a járvány magyarországi három hulláma során az önkormányzatok milyen módon kommunikáltak különböző online felületeken (települési honlapok, települési és polgármesteri Facebook-oldalak) a lakossággal. A változó járványhelyzet, a reagálás gyorsaságának szükségessége felhívta a figyelmet arra, hogy milyen fontos az önkormányzatok és a lakosok közötti kommunikáció, illetve az új kommunikációs csatornák alkalmazása. A településtípusok között nem mutatkozott nagy különbség a kommunikáció mikéntjére, jellegzetességeire vonatkozóan, bár a feladatmennyiséget tekintve nyilván más-más kihívásokkal kellett az eltérő méretű önkormányzatoknak szembenézniük. Summary. Local governments had a key and prominent role in tackling COVID-19 pandemic. Their task was to take short-term measures quickly, to organize protection and care for those in need. The main objective of our paper is to present, how local governments communicated with their inhabitants on various online interfaces in this crisis situation. Our analysis covers 54 settlements representing all the different levels of the settlement network from large cities to small villages. We examined the webpages and Facebook pages of local governments and mayors, firstly during the first wave, then during the second and the third waves of the pandemic. Recognizing their responsibility, local governments clearly tried to provide all the information to the inhabitants as quickly as possible. They considered the online interfaces the most effective, but the online communication had typically been complemented by information published on more traditional channels as well. There were no significant difference in terms of the way and characteristics of communication among the different types of settlements, although local governments of different sizes obviously had to face different challenges in terms of the amount of tasks they had to tackle. The communication process was a very difficult task because of the lack of information and the not entirely transparent data provision. Even on the Facebook pages especially suitable for this purpose, interactivity rumbled, and in many cases the questions and suggestions of the inhabitants remained unanswered. It is instructive that, with few exceptions, local authorities do not place emphasis on surveying local needs and opinions. The full range of measures and contact with the public cannot be evaluated from local governmental online communication, but it can be said that the publication of information has changed thematically and has significantly declined in volume and frequency since the first month of the epidemic in March 2020. There were local governments that performed excellently in online communication, i.e. they published regular and relevant information, but there were also some (mainly small settlements) that did not use these channels at all or after a while. The latter may be explained by the fact that the population of the settlement – due to its age composition or the characteristics of Internet use – can be effectively informed mainly through other, traditional channels. There is little doubt that the lack of information available to local governments, declining local empowerment, and growing central management in epidemic management may also have resulted in less and less communication at the local level.

Analysis of Condolence Response to the Death of Dr. John Pombe Joseph Magufuli on Facebook

This study investigated on condolence comments posted on Facebook pages in response to the death of the fifth president of the United Republic of Tanzania, Dr. John Pombe Joseph Magufuli. A total of 200 comments were extracted from famous Facebook accounts. The findings revealed seven strategies of giving condolences from the most frequently used to the less frequently used: asking for God’s mercy and forgiveness, commenting on the deceased, expressing shock and grief, expressing sympathy, realizing death as a natural part of life, expressing skepticisms and reciting some verses from Holy books like the Bible and Quran. The choice of these strategies was related to respondents’ belief in either Christian or Islamic religion, the status of the deceased before death and nature and contribution offered by the deceased to other people’s life before his death. It is recommended that we should significantly contribute to other people’s life in one way or another so that we can be remembered here on earth at the end of our life like the way Magufuli was and is still remembered because of his good deeds and the significant contributions he offered to other people’s life before his death.