ABSTRACT
Public health emergencies pose considerable threats to global health and safety. The control of these emergencies requires the efforts of healthcare professionals and calls for the public to take protective actions. The present study not only puts fear back in the extended parallel process model (EPPM) but also considers another similarly productive emotion: hope. We examined the mechanisms behind the effects of four cognitive perceptions on protective actions (i.e., danger control) and information avoidance (i.e., fear control). A national online survey was conducted with 1676 participants during the outbreak of COVID-19 in China from February 1 to 29, 2020. The results revealed that perceived severity and susceptibility could lead to fear, positively affecting protective actions. On the other hand, perceived response efficacy and self-efficacy induced hope, which was positively associated with protective actions but negatively associated with information avoidance. Furthermore, the mechanisms behind the relationships among cognitions, emotions, and behaviors varied across levels of trust in healthcare systems.
ABSTRACT
News-finds-me (NFM) perception is a belief that, in the era of social media, individuals can remain adequately well-informed about current events even if they do not actively seek news. While it has been examined in the context of general and political news, NFM perception has not been explored in the context of other genres of news. Through an online survey involving 1,001 Singaporeans, with the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model, this study examines how NFM perception is related to information seeking and COVID-19 knowledge. An issue-specific NFM perception was also proposed and tested in order to determine whether NFM perception and its associated effects differ when operationalized as general news exposure or issue-specific news relating to COVID-19. The negative relationship between general NFM perception and knowledge and the mediating role of information seeking on social media in this relationship are detected. It is also found that when the NFM perception is issue-specific (i.e. COVID-NFM perception), information insufficiency and intentions of information seeking on social media fully mediated the relationship between NFM perception and knowledge. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
ABSTRACT
As an emerging audience engagement channel for news organizations, news chatbots can interact with and attract audiences in a conversational manner. The present study applies the comparative digital journalism frameworks and examines how society-level factors-such as media systems and information communication technology's development-explain chatbot implementation on social media platforms. We surveyed 365 news organizations across 38 countries or regions and inspected their Facebook Messenger accounts with a mixed-methods approach. We found that less than half of the surveyed news organizations implemented Messenger, and only 67 Messengers were responsive-i.e. able to produce at least one response. We used the walkthrough method to interact with the Messengers with 22 pre-defined search queries on information seeking and navigation related to COVID-19. Then we used qualitative content analysis to examine the contents generated by the Messengers. Some Messengers are out of service or could only provide limited services (e.g. generating templated responses or closed-ended options). The Messengers in different news organizations demonstrated great variations in their capacity to understand the queries and interact with the audiences and reparative strategies to handle search failure. We proposed a three-category typology of news chatbots and offered practical and constructive suggestions for news organizations.