Health Communication in the Time of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Analysis of Italian Advertisements.

In the climate of great uncertainty characterizing the COVID-19 pandemic, health communication played a significant role: several communicative strategies and channels were used to inform, educate and alert. Entropy-related risks were soon translated into the "infodemic", a wide-spread phenomenon with psychosocial and cultural roots. Therefore, new challenges for public institutions occurred: public health communication, especially expressed through advertising and audiovisual spots, was engaged to offer key support in combatting the disease, mitigating its effects and supporting health and psychological wellbeing. This work aims to investigate how the Italian public institutions addressed those challenges by employing institutional spots. We tried to answer two main research questions: (a) in line with the literature concerning persuasive communication, what were the main variables that social advertising concerning health attitudes and behaviors relied on; and (b) how the different variables were combined to propose specific communicative pathways following both the different waves/phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and the elaboration likelihood model. To answer these questions, 34 Italian spots were analyzed by means of qualitative multimodal analysis (including scopes, major narratives themes, central and peripheral cues). The results enabled us to individuate different communicative pathways, oriented by inclusivity, functionality and contamination, in line with different rounds as well as with the holistic configurations of cultural narratives, central and peripheral cues.

Faking and Conspiring about COVID-19: A Discursive Approach

In the more general climate of post-truth - a social trend reflecting a disregard for reliable ways of knowing what is true, mostly acted through massive use of misinformation and rhetoric calling for emotions - an alarming "infodemic" accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting healthy attitudes and behaviors and further lessening trust in science, institutions, and traditional media. Its two main representative items, fake and conspiracy news, have been widely analyzed in psycho-social research, even if scholars mostly acknowledged the cognitive and social dimensions of those items and devoted less attention to their discursive construction. In addition, these works did not directly compare and differentiate fake and conspiracy pathways. In order to address this gap and promote a wider understanding of these matters, a qualitative investigation of an Italian sample of 112 fake and conspiracy news articles, mostly spread during the first two COVID-19 "waves" (from March 2020 to January 2021) was realized. Our sample gathered news specifically coming from social media posts, representing easy and fast channels for viral content diffusion. We analyzed the selected texts by means of Diatextual Analysis and Discursive Action Model models, aimed to (a) offer "in depth" fine-grained analysis of the psycholinguistic and argumentative features of fake and conspiracy news, and (b) differentiate them in line with the classical Aristotle's rhetoric stances of logos, ethos, and pathos, thus bridging traditional and current lines of thinking. Even though they may share common roots set in the post-truth climate, fake and conspiracy news engage in different rhetoric patterns since they present different enjeu and construct specific epistemic pathways. Implications for health- and digital-literacy are debated.

The Humble Charisma of a White-Dressed Man in a Desert Place: Pope Francis' Communicative Style in the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The context of deep uncertainty, fear, and "social distancing" characterizing the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a need for cultural anchorages and charismatic leaders who may conjointly and effectively support human beings, strengthen their identity, and empower social commitment. In this perspective, the charismatic leadership of Pope Francis, which is widely shared not only within the religious world, may play a crucial role in facing emergency with existential reasons and psychological resources. The general aim of this work is to shed light on the communicative features of the charismatic leadership of Pope Francis during the pandemic emergency; in order to better understand his effectiveness, we analyzed both the core issues and his multimodal body signals in the global TV event of the Universal Prayer with the Urbi et Orbi Blessing. The multimodal and discursive analyses of the homily enabled us to define the "humble" charisma of the Pope, which is based upon on authentic and informal presence, manifested emotional signals (and, in particular commotion) showing features of equity and familiarity. From a discursive point of view, the common and overarching affiliation is constructed through a multiple focus on the "we" pronoun, which is constructed through socio-epistemic rhetoric. The results show how this integrated methodological perspectives, which is multimodal and discursive, may offer meaningful pathways detection of effective and persuasive signals.

The effects of COVID-19 on IBD prescribing and service provision in a UK tertiary centre.

BACKGROUND: To quantify the effects of COVID-19 on our inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) unit, including service provision, prescribing practices and use of therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). METHODS: We performed a single centre retrospective observational cohort study. Data was extracted from our IBD database, electronic patient records and radiology/endoscopy reporting systems between 16/3/20-17/4/20 and the corresponding period in 2019. RESULTS: A similar number of patients commenced biologic therapy before COVID-19 (n = 37) and during the pandemic (n = 36). Patients in the pre-COVID-19 cohort were older (median 36 vs 29 years, P = 0.009) with a longer median disease duration (9.3 vs 5.2 years, P = 0.02). During COVID-19 there was a nonsignificant increase in prescribing of vedolizumab (8/37, 22% vs 14/36, 39%, P = 0.13) and a higher proportion of patients were anti-TNF-naïve (3/17, 18% vs 18/24, 74%, P = 0.0004). There was a reduction in use of concomitant immunomodulators (22/29, 76% vs 4/34, 12%, P < 0.0001) and increased biologic use in thiopurine-naïve patients (3/37, 8% vs 15/36, 42%, P = 0.001). Use of TDM fell by 75% (240 vs 59 tests). Outpatient appointments fell by 68% and were conducted via telemedicine. MRI scanning, endoscopy, luminal surgery and inpatient numbers fell by 87%, 85%, 100% and 82% respectively. IBD Clinical Nurse Specialist and Pharmacist helpline contacts increased by 76% and 228% respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We observed prescribing differences during COVID-19, bypassing the initiation of immunomodulators and/or anti-TNF therapy in favour of vedolizumab with a reduction in immunomodulator prescribing. We also observed a rapid reorganisation of service provision, including a shift towards telemedicine and online solutions.

Chest Computed Tomography Scoring in Patients With Novel Coronavirus-infected Pneumonia: Correlation With Clinical and Laboratory Features and Disease Outcome.

BACKGROUND/AIM: This study investigated the correlation of chest computed tomography (CT), findings, graded using two different scoring methods, with clinical and laboratory features and disease outcome, including a novel clinical predictive score, in patients with novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia (NCIP). PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this retrospective, observational study, CT scan of 92 NCIP patients admitted to Policlinico Tor Vergata, were analyzed using a quantitative, computed-based and a semiquantitative, radiologist-assessed scoring system. Correlations of the two radiological scores with clinical and laboratory features, the CALL score, and their association with a composite adverse outcome were assessed. RESULTS: The two scores correlated significantly with each other (ρ=0.637, p<0.0001) and were independently associated with age, LDH, estimated glomerular filtration rate, diabetes, and with the composite outcome, which occurred in 24 patients. CONCLUSION: In NCIP patients, two different radiological scores correlated with each other and with several clinical, laboratory features, and the CALL score. The quantitative score was a better independent predictor of the composite adverse outcome than the semiquantitative score.