Do mothers pick up a phone? A cross-sectional study on utilizations of MCH voice messages in Lagos, Nigeria (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Voice messages have been employed as the effective and efficient means for increasing health service utilizations and health promotion in low- and middle-income countries. Yet, unlike SMS, voice message services require their users to pick up a phone call at the time of its delivery. Furthermore, voice messages are difficult for the users to review their contents afterwards. While recognizing that voice messages are more friendly to specific groups (eg, illiterate or less literate populations), there should be several challenges in successfully operationalizing its intervention program. OBJECTIVE This study is aimed at estimating the extent to which voice message service users pick up the phone calls of voice messages and complete listening up to or beyond the core part of voice messages. METHODS A voice message service program composed of 14 episodes on maternal, newborn and child health was piloted in Lagos, Nigeria, during the period from 2017 to 2019. A voice message call of each of 14 episodes was delivered to the mobile phones of the program participants, per day for 14 consecutive days. A total of 513 participants in the voice message service chose one of five locally spoken languages as the language to be used for voice messages. Two multilevel logistic regression models were created: (1) Model 1 for testing whether a voice message call is picked up; and (2) Model 2 for testing whether a voice message call having been picked up is listened to up to the core messaging part. RESULTS The greater the voice message episode number became, the smaller proportion of the participants picked up the phone calls of voice message (aOR: 0.98; 95% CI: 0.97-0.99; P=.01). Only 854 of 3765voice message calls having been picked up by the participants (22.7%) were listened to up to their core message parts. It was found that the level of sequentiality between picking up a phone call of a voice message and listening up to the core message part was low. This indicates discontinuity between these two actions. CONCLUSIONS The participants were likely to stop picking up the phone as the episode number of voice messages progressed. In view of discontinuity and independence between picking up a phone call and listening up to the core message part, we should not assume that those picking up the phone would automatically complete listening to the entire or core voice message.

A Meeting Point of Probability, Graphs, and Algorithms: The Lovász Local Lemma and Related Results—A Survey

A classic and fundamental result, known as the Lovász Local Lemma, is a gem in the probabilistic method of combinatorics. At a high level, its core message can be described by the claim that weakly dependent events behave similarly to independent ones. A fascinating feature of this result is that even though it is a purely probabilistic statement, it provides a valuable and versatile tool for proving completely deterministic theorems. The Lovász Local Lemma has found many applications; despite being originally published in 1973, it still attracts active novel research. In this survey paper, we review various forms of the Lemma, as well as some related results and applications.

Facilitators and Barriers for Young Medical Doctors Writing Their First Manuscript for Publication

Although scientific publication is often mandatory in medical professions, writing the first research article for publication is challenging, especially as medical curricula have only a minor focus on scientific writing. The aim was therefore to identify facilitators and barriers experienced by medical doctors writing their first scientific article for publication. An explorative inductive approach made use of semi-structured interviews for collecting data until saturation. Data were analyzed with systematic text condensation. Several barriers were identified: (a) writing in general; (b) writing in English; (c) dealing with content, structure, and presentation; and (d) navigating in the author group. Good supervision in the initial writing phase was a facilitating factor. Medical doctors requested a course in which they could work on their own articles and give feedback to fellow students. They valued skilled lecturers and individual supervision, and they wanted to learn about author instructions, how to present text correctly, and how to sell their core message. Their goal was to create a useful end product and to obtain European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) points. The facilitators and barriers that medical doctors experience when writing their first scientific article for publication and their course requests should be reflected in the learning objectives and content of future courses.

Effects of user-generated content on social media advertising strategi

Both the use of UGC in the designing process of social media advertising and social media advertising itself, are two relatively new developments following the information age. Time and time again the various effects and outcomes of UGC in social media advertising, including positive and negative responds which accordingly changed audience perception of the advertised. One recent example is the use of #GundalaFanart, a call for fan art submissions to promote the 2019 Indonesian superhero movie, Gundala. The case study method will be used to analyze the implementation of this UGC on the advertising of Gundala, and to provide an example of how much it affects brand awareness or image. We arrive to the conclusion that the UGC #GundalaFanart received positive attention from both familiar and new audience due to two factors; the form of the UGC itself aligns well with the film’s image and core message, and aligns as well with the product’s position within the consumer’s mind. These two factors are important to ensure effectiveness when designing and implementing UGC into a social media advertisement campaign. The UGC has significant effect on the reputation of the product or brand, which in turn affects the consumer’s perception of it, subsequently also affecting the decision making process in consuming said product.

Standardisation Versus Cultural Adaptation: The Case of Language of Advertisements in Turkish and German

In the course of globalization, there are more and more companies that sell their products internationally. In particular international branded products have achieved a major upturn in the Turkish and German markets in recent years. A functioning international advertising is one domain where it is significant to distinguish between standardized - formally and content wise identical - and differentiated -adapted to the respective country. On the other hand, it is questionable whether standardization can be successfully implemented in all countries. Numerous factors with regard to country-specific characteristics - such as culture, underlying values and the form of society - play an important role here. The foundation of standardization is formed by an identical core message in all countries and has the goal of addressing and indirectly influencing the audience. Thus, an advertising message represents the decision-maker about the (in) efficiency of the advertisement or (non-) consumption of the product. Today, the product is attached to less functional, but mainly subjective characteristics that are supposed to cause emotions. This is especially true for branded products, as they try to build trust and build a bond with the consumer. Nevertheless, since often formal and content elements of the commercial - depending on the culture - can cause different interpretations and emotions, special attention must be paid to country-specific features and differences, especially when designing standardized commercials. However, it is possible to circumvent these cultural peculiarities by resorting to universal appeals. With this viewpoint, the present study aims to find out to what extent commercials are standardized or culturally adapted within the context of international comparison between Turkey and Germany.

Ernst Cassirer’s Posthumous Grandchildren and the Paradigm Shift of Davos

Scholars who are members of a generation descending from a founder of a philosophical school might be titled as “children.” Those members are characterized as scholars who continue the doctrines of the founder into the future. In the history of ideas there are many examples for such scholarly lineages. Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy was less suitable for generating a successorship in the sense of a filiation: That became dramatically obvious at the famous debate between Martin Heidegger and himself in Davos. Heidegger seemed to be the philosopher of the future by developing a “new essentialism” which shall be expounded as the core-message of his doctrine; this is elaborated in the first chapter of this essay. Only in the post-war generations and long time after Cassirer’s death, eminent scholars working in different scientific disciplines and in different countries based their public research – more or less explicitly – on Cassirer’s philosophy of culture. The second section will discuss three famous examples: Nelson Goodman’s Semiology, Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Symbolic Forms and lastly the Political Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas.

System Reliabilism and basic beliefs: defeasible, undefeated and likely to be true

To avoid the problem of regress, externalists have put forward defeaters-based accounts of justification. The paper argues that existing proposals face two serious concerns: (i) They fail to accommodate related counterexamples such as Norman the clairvoyant, and, more worryingly, (ii) they fail to explain how one can be epistemically responsible in holding basic beliefs—i.e., they fail to explain how basic beliefs can avoid being arbitrary from the agent’s point of view. To solve both of these problems, a new, externalist, defeaters-based account of justification is offered—viz., System Reliabilism. The core message of the view—and the way it deals with both (i) and (ii)—is the claim that the justificatory status of justified basic beliefs originates from being the undefeated outputs of a reliable, cognitively integrated system that is capable of defeating them. Simply put, to be candidates for being justified, basic beliefs must be epistemically responsible and to be so they must be undefeated while being defeasible. The paper also offers a detailed, naturalistic analysis of the notion of cognitive integration. This long-due, mechanistic account of cognitive integration is then used to argue that an additional advantage of System Reliabilism is its unique position to account for the as yet unexplained intuition that responsible beliefs are also likely to be true.

What is the Eisenhardt Method, really?

This essay sharpens and refreshes the multi-case theory-building approach, sometimes termed The “Eisenhardt Method.” The Method’s singular aim is theory building, especially with multiple cases and theoretical logic. Its defining features (e.g. research questions without obvious answers, careful case selection, well-identified constructs and relationships, theoretical arguments, boundary conditions) reflect this aim. I begin with the influence of the 1980s, including grounded theorizing and case logic. Relying on exemplars, I illustrate the Method’s defining features. I also address common misconceptions (e.g. types of data, number of cases, performance emphasis). These miss the Method’s essence and imply a rigid template that does not exist. Instead, the Method’s relatively few defining features enable a wide variety of research possibilities. I conclude with what I would write today like a richer palette of research choices, more emphasis on time, and flexible philosophy of science. Yet the core message of theory building would remain.

A Genealogy of Lust

In this study I argue that the translator of Prov 24:50–51 LXX (30:15–16 MT) adapts the Hebrew text to his Hellenistic audience by alluding to Hesiod’s Theogony. The core message of these verses—the ineluctability of cosmic greed—remains the same, yet the images employed in the Septuagint are engrained in and originally belong to the Hellenic mythological understanding of how the universe came into being. The use of classical literature to convey the message contained in the texts of the Hebrew Bible speaks to the hybrid character of the Jewish community of the Egyptian diaspora. When the translator quotes or alludes to Greek literature, he is not borrowing foreign material, but rather drawing wisdom from his very own well. In Alexandria, the waters that flowed from the rock at Horeb and from the Hippocrene spring have merged their course.

MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF WARDAH LIPSTICK ADVERTISEMENT

Advertising is utilized to promote certain products and attract the attention of potential customers to purchase the products. In this study, the researchers use advertisements broadcasted through an electronic form, namely Wardah lipstick advertisement. The advertisement is audiovisual, and the form of the message included sound and moving images. The analysis in this study used a semiotic approach and multimodal analysis focusing on multimodal systems, including aspects of linguistics, visual, audio, gestural, and location. This study used qualitative research methodology by applying a descriptive analysis in the research. The study found that this advertisement covers the five aspects of the multimodal semiotic system: linguistics, visuals, audio, gestural, and location. These five aspects are integrated to convey the core message in Wardah lipstick advertisement. Finally, this research found the meaning contained in an advertising message. The advertisement structure was also composed of verbal and visual text to persuade and affect buyers' decisions.