Propagandization of Relative Gratification: How Chinese State Media Portray the International Pandemic

While many previous studies have investigated propaganda in connection with misinformation, disinformation, or "fake news” campaigns, they have given insufficient attention to the political messages which are not squarely factually inaccurate but manipulated. This study identifies a political communication strategy, the propagandization of relative gratification, through which propaganda media 1) highlight global chaos to nudge the public's downward comparison to a relatively stable domestic situation;2) portray the nation's adversaries as worse than its allies;and 3) leverages the public's anti-foreign attitude. This study empirically examines Chinese state media's approach to the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in 46 countries in 2020 by analyzing more than 3 million Chinese social media posts using the semantic similarity found in word embedding models. The results reveal that the global pandemic was depicted by the state media as generally more severe than China's domestic situation. The more distant a foreign country's relationship with China, the more severe its COVID-19 representation in China's propaganda, deviating from the country's actual epidemiological severity and what the Chinese general public thinks about it, indicating that a country's relationship with China is an important predictor of how its COVID-19 severity was presented in China's state media. This study extends the understanding of the sophisticated nature of propaganda in the current era. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Political Communication is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Using Latent Class Analyses to Examine Health Disparities among Young Children in Socially Disadvantaged Families during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Rising income inequality is strongly linked to health disparities, particularly in regions where uneven distribution of wealth and income has long been a concern. Despite emerging evidence of COVID-19-related health inequalities for adults, limited evidence is available for children and their parents. This study aimed to explore subtypes of families of preschoolers living in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Hong Kong based on patterns of family hardship and to compare their patterns of parenting behavior, lifestyle practices, and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 1338 preschoolers and their parents during March to June 2020. Latent class analysis was performed based on 11 socioeconomic and disease indicators. Multivariate logistic regressions were used to examine associations between identified classes and variables of interest during the COVID-19 pandemic. Four classes of family hardship were identified. Class 1 (45.7%) had the lowest disease and financial burden. Class 2 (14.0%) had the highest financial burden. Class 3 (5.9%) had the highest disease burden. Class 4 (34.5%) had low family income but did not receive government welfare assistance. Class 1 (low hardship) had lower risks of child maltreatment and adjustment problems than Class 2 (poverty) and Class 3 (poor health). However, children in Class 1 (low hardship) had higher odds of suffering psychological aggression and poorer physical wellbeing than those in Class 4 (low income), even after adjusting for child age and gender. The findings emphasize the need to adopt flexible intervention strategies in the time of large disease outbreak to address diverse problems and concerns among socially disadvantaged families.

#WuhanDiary and #WuhanLockdown: gendered posting patterns and behaviours on Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social media can be both a source of information and misinformation during health emergencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media became a ubiquitous tool for people to communicate and represents a rich source of data researchers can use to analyse users' experiences, knowledge and sentiments. Research on social media posts during COVID-19 has identified, to date, the perpetuity of traditional gendered norms and experiences. Yet these studies are mostly based on Western social media platforms. Little is known about gendered experiences of lockdown communicated on non-Western social media platforms. Using data from Weibo, China's leading social media platform, we examine gendered user patterns and sentiment during the first wave of the pandemic between 1 January 2020 and 1 July 2020. We find that Weibo posts by self-identified women and men conformed with some gendered norms identified on other social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic (posting patterns and keyword usage) but not all (sentiment). This insight may be important for targeted public health messaging on social media during future health emergencies.

Examining family pre-pandemic influences on adolescent psychosocial wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 lockdown, with social distancing measures in place and a decrease in social activities, emotional states are more likely to be transferred between family members via increased interactions and communication. However, longitudinal evidence, particularly for early adolescents, is lacking. This study investigated family pre-pandemic influences on parental stress and adolescent psychosocial wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 233 adolescents and their parents before and during the initial phase of the pandemic. Parents reported their own stress level and perception of adolescent adjustment problems, whereas adolescents reported their own psychological distress level. In addition, adolescents also reported their satisfaction with family life in the pre-pandemic survey. Cross-lagged path models indicated reciprocal associations between parental stress and perception of adolescent adjustment problems. Compared to adolescents low in pre-pandemic family life satisfaction, those adolescents with higher levels of family life satisfaction before the pandemic reported lower levels of anxiety and stress only when parental stress showed no increase during the pandemic. Findings provide support for the mutual influences between parental stress and perceived adolescent adjustment problems during the pandemic. Special attention should be paid to those adolescents who undergo significant family life changes during the pandemic.

A tale of two city-states: A comparison of the state-led vs civil society-led responses to COVID-19 in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The East Asian experience in tackling COVID-19 has been highly praised, but this high-level generalisation neglects variation in pandemic response measures adopted across countries as well as the socio-political factors that shaped them. This paper compares the early pandemic response in Singapore and Hong Kong, two Asian city-states of similar sizes, a shared history of SARS, and advanced medical systems. Although both were able to contain the virus, they did so using two very different approaches. Drawing upon data from a cross-national, probability sample Internet survey conducted in May 2020 as well as media and mobility data, we argue that the different approaches were the result of the relative strength of civil society vs. the state at the outset of the outbreak. In protest-ridden Hong Kong, low governmental trust bolstered civil society, which focused on self-mobilisation and community mutual-help. In Singapore, a state-led response model that marginalised civil society brought early success but failed to stem an outbreak among its segregated migrant population. Our findings show that an active civil society is pivotal to effective outbreak response and that trust in government may not have been as important as a factor in these contexts.

Multilevel Factors Affecting Healthcare Workers' Perceived Stress and Risk of Infection During COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objectives: This study aimed to identify key factors affecting Healthcare workers (HCWs) perceived stress and risk of contracting COVID-19 among themselves and their family members during the pandemic. Methods: A cross-sectional online questionnaire study was conducted between 19 March and April 5, 2020 in Hong Kong. HCWs from public hospitals and private dentists, and their family members participated. Results: A total of 747 HCWs and 245 family members participated. Higher perceived stress in HCWs was associated with more negative changes in family relationship (p = 0.025). The HCWs' perceived stress, however, was positively associated with family cohesion (p = 0.033) and stress levels of family members (p < 0.001). The level of HCWs' satisfaction toward the hospital policies in response to the COVID-19 outbreak was associated with lower levels of perceived stress and risk of themselves or their family members contracting COVID-19. HCWs' previous frontline experience of SARS was significantly associated with less perceived risk of themselves or their family members contracting COVID-19. Conclusion: Hospital policies addressing HCWs' needs, frontline experience of SARS, and family relationship influenced psychological wellbeing of HCWs during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Limited Early Warnings and Public Attention to Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China, January-February, 2020: A Longitudinal Cohort of Randomly Sampled Weibo Users.

OBJECTIVE: Awareness and attentiveness have implications for the acceptance and adoption of disease prevention and control measures. Social media posts provide a record of the public's attention to an outbreak. To measure the attention of Chinese netizens to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a pre-established nationally representative cohort of Weibo users was searched for COVID-19-related key words in their posts. METHODS: COVID-19-related posts (N = 1101) were retrieved from a longitudinal cohort of 52 268 randomly sampled Weibo accounts (December 31, 2019-February 12, 2020). RESULTS: Attention to COVID-19 was limited prior to China openly acknowledging human-to-human transmission on January 20. Following this date, attention quickly increased and has remained high over time. Particularly high levels of social media traffic appeared around when Wuhan was first placed in quarantine (January 23-24, 8-9% of the overall posts), when a scandal associated with the Red Cross Society of China occurred (February 1, 8%), and, following the death of Dr Li Wenliang (February 6-7, 11%), one of the whistleblowers who was reprimanded by the Chinese police in early January for discussing this outbreak online. CONCLUSION: Limited early warnings represent missed opportunities to engage citizens earlier in the outbreak. Governments should more proactively communicate early warnings to the public in a transparent manner.

Vulnerability and resilience in children during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having a profound impact on the health and development of children worldwide. There is limited evidence on the impact of COVID-19 and its related school closures and disease-containment measures on the psychosocial wellbeing of children; little research has been done on the characteristics of vulnerable groups and factors that promote resilience. METHODS: We conducted a large-scale cross-sectional population study of Hong Kong families with children aged 2-12 years. Parents completed an online survey on family demographics, child psychosocial wellbeing, functioning and lifestyle habits, parent-child interactions, and parental stress during school closures due to COVID-19. We used simple and multiple linear regression analyses to explore factors associated with child psychosocial problems and parental stress during the pandemic. RESULTS: The study included 29,202 individual families; of which 12,163 had children aged 2-5 years and 17,029 had children aged 6-12 years. The risk of child psychosocial problems was higher in children with special educational needs, and/or acute or chronic disease, mothers with mental illness, single-parent families, and low-income families. Delayed bedtime and/or inadequate sleep or exercise duration, extended use of electronic devices were associated with significantly higher parental stress and more psychosocial problems among pre-schoolers. CONCLUSIONS: This study identifies vulnerable groups of children and highlights the importance of strengthening family coherence, adequate sleep and exercise, and responsible use of electronic devices in promoting psychosocial wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic.