ABSTRACT
The police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and other Black people in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the largest mass protests against structural racism since the 1960s. These interlocking crises also encouraged higher education scholars and instructors to reassess how to teach social justice in virtual settings. Drawing from political education programs, past and present, and higher education scholars' and experts' insights on online instruction and community building, I reconceive a class I taught, "Resisting State Violence: Race, Policing, and Social Justice in Twentieth Century America,” as a synchronous virtual course. In this chapter, I illustrate how historians and other instructors in higher education could teach students histories of oppression and resistance, but also to develop organizing tools to engage their environments in-person or virtually. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2022.
ABSTRACT
Background: After the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth became a vital component of the medical care for patients (pts) with liver disease. As telehealth evolves, video telehealth visits will likely be part of the future of healthcare. In this study, we evaluated the success rates and predictors for video telehealth visits for pts in general hepatology (GH) and liver transplant clinics (LTC). Methods: From April to July 2020, all visits were transitioned to telehealth at a large tertiary care referral center. This retrospective study evaluated pts with telehealth visits within GH and LTC. The clinic had a defined protocol to prepare pts for their visit. All telehealth visits were first attempted within the video conference platform Zoom with access embedded within the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). If the video telehealth visit failed, providers attempted a phone call only encounter. The primary outcome was a successful video telehealth visit. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed to determine factors associated with a successful video telehealth visit. Results: Between April and July 2020 1,095 telehealth visits were scheduled for adult GH and LTC pts with 1,054 visits (93%) successfully completed by either video or phone. Of successful telehealth visits, 92% were video telehealth and 8% were phone only. The median age was 56 years old and 577 (53%) were female. 53% of the visits were conducted with pts with commercial insurance, 35% with Medicare, 7% with Medicaid, and 5% with other insurance. Seventy eight percent identified as Caucasian, 4% Black, 2% Other, and 16% Unknown. Seventy eight percent of pts were seen in GH, 22% in LTC. Results of the multivariate analysis are summarized in Table 1. Increasing age range and Medicaid Insurance were associated with a higher chance of failed video telehealth visit. Sex and race were not associated with failed video telehealth visits. The same patterns persisted when restricted to either the GH or LTC visits. Conclusion: This study shows a high rate of successful video telehealth visits within general hepatology and liver transplant clinics with a defined clinic protocol for patient preparation. Our study shows increasing age and Medicaid insurance significantly increase the risk of failure to a successful telehealth video visit. This warrants more intensive pre-visit education about the video conference platform in these subgroups.
ABSTRACT
Several alternative social media platforms have emerged in response to perceptions that mainstream platforms are censoring traditional conservative ideologies. However, many of these alternative social media platforms have evolved to be outlets for hate speech and violent extremism. This study examines hate-based channels on Telegram from a US perspective. While Telegram has often been studied in relation to ISIS, less is known about its usage by US extremist users and movements. The authors used OSINT and observational methods on a sample of 125 Telegram channels containing hate speech and violent extremist content from far-right and far-left perspectives. The authors hypothesized that there would be a greater and growing presence of far-right activity compared to farleft activity due to current migration trends away from mainstream social media by the far-right. The authors also sought to observe the presence of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and accelerationism on Telegram. This study had four major findings: (1) the findings supported the hypothesis that more channels were host to farright dialogues, yet there were several far-left channels present, (2) 64.8% of the channels grew in size over a oneweek period, (3) 47 of the 125 channels were connected to well-known violent extremist movements or hate groups, and (4) QAnon and the COVID-19 pandemic were the most prominent sources of disinformation and conspiracy theories on Telegram. The findings of this study highlight that alternative social media platforms are a growing environment for a range of hateful ideologies and are aiding the spread of disinformation campaigns. This study concludes with a discussion on future strategies to combat the influence of the Internet on radicalization outcomes. © 2021. All Rights Reserved.