ABSTRACT
During the spring of 2020, COVID-19 limited contact between people and prevented from meeting and aggregating in real places. Many had to stay at home, and others spent time in quarantine facilities. In this context, virtual aggregation has increased at the expense of in-person aggregation. Expressive geo-tagging, namely the practice of creating locations with fictitious names to express an emotional condition, became worthy of attention. Grounded on anecdotal evidence, fictitious digital locations on social media such as 'Quarantine' began to proliferate, which, despite not having a name that could be traced back to an existing place, still carried geo-referenced information with them. Starting from this concept, we present the book Quaran.tiles, an archive of 364 expressive digital places collected from Instagram in April 2020 and enriched with information from Google Street View, which aims to give space and dimension to the resulting collection of fictitious and mingling user-generated places. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This study was carried out, between March and May 2021, in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, to: (a) collect information and analyse the opinions, values, experiences and behaviours of rural youth in these three countries of the SICA region in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact at different levels: education, work, health, violence, gender relations, citizen/political participation and associativism, environment, climate change and natural disasters;(b) investigate, in particular, how this pandemic influences the expectations and future projects of young people at a personal, educational and work level;and (c) analyse the information gathered from a gender and intersectional analysis that allows identifying and systematizing the differences and inequalities between the genders in all the selected aspects. The study also inquired about the opinions and explanations of rural youth about different aspects of the COVID 19 pandemic, among others, ideas about its "origin", the consequences at the social and environmental levels, and prioritized means of obtaining information, with the purpose of highlighting the frameworks of meaning that are built on this stage.
ABSTRACT
The spreading of geo-location technologies embedded in digital devices and their use on social media platforms has made many location-related data available, enabling the digital study of social phenomena. Due to the COVID-19 health emergency, the reality of lockdowns in many countries prevented people from meeting and aggregating in real places. Expressive geo-tags such as fictitious quarantine places sprung on Instagram as a means to create a new kind of aggregation. Design techniques and methodologies have proven to adequately translate available data sources into usable knowledge by visualising the data and information in moderately effective ways. Thus, by exploiting the Instagram platform's affordances, the paper proposes a data visualisation approach that gives dignity to the expressive quarantine locations and enables lay users to understand the observed phenomenon's thought, process, and implication. © 2021 ACM.
ABSTRACT
Aims This is a prospective observational web-based survey aimed to assess the impact of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic onGastroenterology Units in Italy. Methods All members of the Italian Society of Gastroenterology (SIGE) were invited to answer a 39-point multiple-choiceweb-based survey between March 30 thand April 7 th2020. Results Data of 121 hospitals from all 20 Italian regions were analyzed. Overall, 10.7 % of Gastroenterology divisions havebeen converted to COVID Units. Outpatients consultations, endoscopic and ultrasound procedures were limited to urgenciesand oncology indications in 85.1 %, 96.2 % and 72.2 % of Units, respectively, and 46.7 % of Units suspended the screeningfor colorectal cancer.In order to guarantee the ordinary follow-up of outpatients, 83/121 (68.6 %) divisions activated aremote consultancy service (63.9 % by phone, 31.3 % by email, 4.8 % by video). Overall, 112/121 (92.6 %) GI Units issued and followed a specific protocol for the management of patients with suspectedor confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The 72.2 % of the staff received proper training for the use of personal protective equipment, although 45.5 % did not havesufficient devices for an adequate replacement. With regard to PPE availability, N95/FFP2-3 masks were available in 91/121 (75.2 %), surgical masks in 115/121 (95.0 %),gloves in 117/121 (96.7 %), disposable gown in 100/121 (82.6 %), hairnet in 104/121 (85.9 %), goggles in 78/121 (64.5 %)and boots in 57/121 (47.1 %) of divisions. Finally, in 41/121 GI divisions (33.9 %) there was at least one healthcare professional who got infected, in a total of 132subjects, of which 121/132 from divisions not-converted to COVID Units and 75/132 from high-prevalence areas. Conclusions Substantial changes of practice and reduction of procedures have been recorded in the entire country duringthe first wave of the pandemic. The long-term impact of such modifications is difficult to estimate but potentially very riskyfor many digestive diseases.