EP.WE.551Killings Fields of the 21st Century- a price of social messaging gone wrong

Aim To assess the impact of public health messaging on the COVID-19 deaths Methods Review of all government, Public Health England, NHS England messages during the pandemic to see how they influenced public activity and thereby influenced hospital admissions and death. Results The one thing that has been consistent in the government messages has been to follow the rules “To save the NHS’. This came in from seeing the Italian health system in Lombardy being overwhelmed in the beginning of the year. Repeatedly public asked on the role of the masks and every time they were told that science did not support its use. It took 6 months for science to catch up with common sense but the message remained “To save the NHS” and not “To save your life”. 76% of the 100,000 deaths occurred in the hospitals making them the killing fields of the 21st Century as primary care shut its door to primary treatment of these patients. The patients got advice form online call centres and waited to get seriously ill before reporting to emergency departments. In the hospitals more deaths occurred on the wards then on ITU as patients were triaged or care rationed. Conclusion The government and Public Health England failed to act on the lessons from previous respiratory viruses world over and waited for exact science to be available before changing their social messaging. This in part contributed to lack of public compliance and over 100000 deaths in the UK.

Exposure to queer characters in Konigsberg’s Openly Straight through social messaging

Research conducted by The Other Foundation has indicated that South Africans view the lives of queer individuals as lifestyle choice (34%), illness (12%), sin (5.10%), results of these individuals’ upbringing (3.80%) and/or resulting from the influence of ancestral spirits (3.70%). Advocacy and information about sexual orientation and sexual diversity through literary as characters may be instrumental in possibly changing negative perceptions of queer individuals. This article aims to show how a selected young adult queer novel, and the social messaging that emerges from the text, may be a potentially influential location for creating an awareness and better understanding of queer individuals. The aim of the investigation on which the article is based was to examine the possibility or viability of implementing critical literacy in secondary education systems in the language classroom as an opportunity to address social issues in heteronormative environments. The social messages found in queer texts may be used as entry points to fruitful discourse in language classroom environments. The study followed a qualitative approach with the use of critical hermeneutics as a strategy of inquiry and social constructivism as philosophical worldview. The queer text utilised was Openly Straight (2013) by Bill Konigsberg with the method of data generation being document analysis. The main findings were that queer texts should form part of the language classroom (as learners may read these texts critically and emphatically) and that Bill Konigsberg’s Openly Straight contained social messages that can contribute to positive influences on queer- and heterosexual readers.

The adoption of social messaging apps in Iran: Discourses and challenges

Today, social networks are the most popular and widely used applications among smartphone users all around the world. Three years ago, the Telegram messaging app was the most widely used social messaging app in Iran due to its technical features and user-friendliness. Despite its popularity, Telegram caused controversial debates among policymakers and public opinion. To discover the nature of these conflicts, two main discourses were identified through qualitative data analysis based on Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. Proponents of Minaret discourse consider the Telegram as a threat to national security, thus they have tried to provide favorable condition to limit using it, and develop alternative domestic apps. In contrast, Cylinder discourse supports using the Telegram app to fulfill citizens’ digital rights and their rights of privacy and freedom of expression. This discursive conflict among policymakers, along with users’ resistance, resulted in some failures in the adoption of foreign apps (e.g., Telegram). Despite the extensive technical, financial, and moral supports to popularize domestic apps, users still prefer foreign apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram. The analysis of emergent discourses demonstrates the origins of contestations and provides insights into how to adopt social messaging apps.

Maps and metrics of insecticide-treated net access, use, and nets-per-capita in Africa from 2000-2020

Insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) are one of the most widespread and impactful malaria interventions in Africa, yet a spatially-resolved time series of ITN coverage has never been published. Using data from multiple sources, we generate high-resolution maps of ITN access, use, and nets-per-capita annually from 2000 to 2020 across the 40 highest-burden African countries. Our findings support several existing hypotheses: that use is high among those with access, that nets are discarded more quickly than official policy presumes, and that effectively distributing nets grows more difficult as coverage increases. The primary driving factors behind these findings are most likely strong cultural and social messaging around the importance of net use, low physical net durability, and a mixture of inherent commodity distribution challenges and less-than-optimal net allocation policies, respectively. These results can inform both policy decisions and downstream malaria analyses.

ModifiedCritical Incident (mCIT): AMeans to Uncover Experience of Mobile Social Messaging System Using Informant-SpecificCues

Part of Human-computer interaction (HCI)researchevolves around understanding of the experiential aspects of users -their what, why and how of technology use in the domestic setting which is always privy to the users. The process of understanding is often not straightforward and a reliable means to develop thisHCI knowledge is deemed necessary. This article describes a study whereCritical Incident Technique (CIT) was adapted to HCI research and applied in the context of social messaging system use in understanding technology-mediated familial bonding enactment.CIT often involves the recalled critical incidents – or significant instances of a specific activity as experienced by research participants to recognize similarities, differences, and patterns, and to seek insights into how and why people engage in the activity of interest.However, such approach may contaminate the reliability and trustworthiness of the findings. Thus, our adapted version of CIT utilizes the procedures and logic of CIT, but differs in two ways: 1) Relying on situated and informants’ genuine critical incidents to elicit experience of interaction and 2) ‘uncritical’ incidents were also included as complementary to critical incidents to cueing informants on the phenomenon of interest. This uncritical incident represents negative evidence to counter the drawback of existing technique.Considering both critical and uncritical incidents in the studyhas provided a bigger picture and rich descriptions of the technology-mediated familialbonding enactment from both lens ofgenuine incidents and informants.

Effects of “the Selected Smartphone Social-Messaging Applications” Training on Iranian Elderly’s Quality of Life: Results of a Qualitative Study

This qualitative study aimed to investigate the effects of using smartphone’s communication apps on Quality of Life (QoL) of elderly people living in Shiraz-Iran. The population of the study was all the senior residents registered with local public health centers located in Shiraz, Fars, Iran in 2018-2019. Overall, 20 participants volunteered to join the study, from the intervention and control groups (10 in each). Data were collected via semi-structured face to face interviews and analyzed using open-coding. The findings of this study and the educational training are intended to help families, practitioners in the aging field to pay more attention to teaching modern communication technology in order to promote healthier elderly and community.

Digital Behavioral Criminalistics to Elucidate the Cyber Pathway to Intended Violence

With the vast advances in computer, mobile, and online technologies, visibility into an offender’s thought processes and decision-making trajectory has been markedly enhanced. Digital behavioral artifacts, or digital evidence “breadcrumbs” of an offender’s behaviors, are now often left in publicly accessible locations on the Internet—such as social media platforms and social messaging applications—and in locations not privy to the public—such as the offender’s devices. Importantly, early seminal literature introduced and described examining an offender’s actions as series of steps along a path of threat escalation, or “pathway.” The totality of these emerging digital behavioral artifacts allows investigators to piece together an offender’s behavioral mosaic at a much more intimate and granular level, warranting a revised pathway—the cyber pathway to intended violence (CPIV)—that captures the thoughts and actions of an offender leading up to an act of deliberative, predatory violence. This chapter introduces the emerging discipline of Digital Behavioral Criminalistics and how this process can meaningfully be used by threat assessors to elucidate an offender’s steps on the CPIV.

Abstract P698: Coming Together in a Time of Distancing: Creating Community Messaging for Emergency Care During Covid

Introduction: In the early months of COVID-19 pandemic, a decline in stroke hospital admissions were reported nationwide. In a large, diverse region of Southern California, a collaborative effort was made to collect real-time data trends in stroke code activations and to assess this impact locally. The San Diego (SD) County Stroke Receiving Centers demonstrated a notable decrease of 30% in stroke code activations from March-May 2020 as compared to the same timeframe in 2019, which motivated the group to dedicate time and resources to pursue a united community messaging focused on seeking emergency treatment for stroke. Methods: A unified marketing campaign was created in collaboration with SD County EMS and the SD region American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. A single graphic message was utilized that emphasized the importance of seeking emergency treatment when suffering signs of stroke, along with the slogan “We are here for you. Every minute matters.” Impact of the campaign was gauged by quantifying the number of times our message was viewed on social media and number of stroke code activations after the campaign ended. Results: The unified social media campaign was posted by 14 of the 18 SD County stroke receiving hospitals during the month of June 2020. The team utilized Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to convey the message. The campaign yielded a total of 26,727 views. The median monthly stroke code activations in July 2020 increased to 34, as compared to 26.5 for March-May 2020. Conclusion: In a time when social distancing has become the norm, it is more important than ever to band together as a community. This endeavor demonstrates that virtual messaging serves as a viable option for community education during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the future. A unified social messaging campaign targeting the importance of seeking emergency care for stroke during the COVID-19 pandemic is an effective way to reach large numbers of people regionally.