ABSTRACT
Apart from the severe impact on public health and well-being, the chain effect resulting from the COVID-19 health crisis is a profound disruption for various other sectors, notably in education. COVID-19 has driven massive transformation in many aspects of the educational landscape, particularly as teaching and learning shifted online due to school closure. Despite the many impacts of the health crises on school populations, a systematic review regarding this particular issue has yet to be conducted. This study, therefore, attempts to comprehensively review the impact of health crises on school populations (student, teacher, parent, and school administration). An extensive literature search guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) reporting checklist was performed in two selected databases, namely Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus to identify how this particular topic was previously studied. Exclusion and inclusion criteria were set to ensure that only research papers written in English from the year 2000 to the present (April 2021) were included. From a total of 457 studies screened, only 41 of them were deemed eligible to be included for qualitative synthesis. The findings revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic was the only health crisis discussed when it comes to investigating the impact of health crises on school populations. This study found four notable consequences of health crises on school populations, which are impacts on mental health, teaching and learning, quality of life, and physical health. Among factors associated with the impact of the health crises are; demographic factors, concerns about the pandemic, education-related factors, health-related factors, geographic factors, economic concerns, teaching challenges, and parenting in the pandemic. This study is expected to be a reference for future works in formulating crises mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of health crises on schools by exploring the contexts of the crises.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , COVID-19/epidemiology , Humans , Pandemics , Quality of Life , Schools , StudentsABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Stigma relating to health can result in a broad range of vulnerabilities and risks for patients and healthcare providers. The media play a role in people's understanding of health, and stigma is socially constructed through many communication channels, including media framing. Recent health issues affected by stigma include monkeypox and COVID-19. OBJECTIVES: This research aimed to examine how The Washington Post (WP) framed the stigma around monkeypox and COVID-19. Guided by framing theory and stigma theory, online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19 was analyzed to understand the construction of social stigma through media frames. METHODS: This research used qualitative content analysis to compare news framings in The Washington Post's online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19. RESULTS: Using endemic, reassurance, and sexual-transmission frames, The Washington Post predominantly defined Africa as the source of monkeypox outbreaks, indirectly labeled gays as a specific group more likely to be infected with monkeypox, and emphasized that there was no need to worry about the spread of the monkeypox virus. In its COVID-19 coverage, The Washington Post adopted endemic and panic frames to describe China as the source of the coronavirus and to construct an image of panic regarding the spread of the virus. CONCLUSIONS: These stigma discourses are essentially manifestations of racism, xenophobia, and sexism in public health issues. This research confirms that the media reinforces the stigma phenomenon in relation to health through framing and provides suggestions for the media to mitigate this issue from a framing perspective.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Monkeypox , Male , Humans , Mass Media , Washington , Social StigmaABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: This study explored exposure to misinformation, COVID-19 risk perception, and confidence towards the government as predictors of negative attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was carried out from 30 June to 30 August 2021 involving 775 respondents. The survey instrument for the questionnaire was an adaptation from various different studies consisting of five main variables: (1) misinformation about vaccination; (2) risk perception toward COVID-19; (3) attitudes toward the vaccination programme; (4) intention to get vaccinated; and (5) public confidence in the government in executing the vaccination programme. RESULTS: The results of this study indicate that higher exposure to misinformation led to higher levels of negative attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine. When the perceived risk of COVID-19 infection was high, mistrust of vaccine benefits was low but there were also higher worries about the future effects of the vaccine. Confidence in the government was associated with lower negative attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine. CONCLUSION: The results of this study may help develop an understanding of negative attitudes toward vaccinations in Malaysia and its contributing factors.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Vaccines , Humans , COVID-19 Vaccines , Cross-Sectional Studies , COVID-19/prevention & control , Malaysia , Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice , Vaccination , Government , Communication , PerceptionABSTRACT
Background: One of the successful measures to curb COVID-19 spread in large populations is the implementation of a movement restriction order. Globally, it was observed that countries implementing strict movement control were more successful in controlling the spread of the virus as compared with those with less stringent measures. Society's adherence to the movement control order has helped expedite the process to flatten the pandemic curve as seen in countries such as China and Malaysia. At the same time, there are countries facing challenges with society's nonconformity toward movement restriction orders due to various claims such as human rights violations as well as sociocultural and economic issues. In Indonesia, society's adherence to its large-scale social restrictions (LSSRs) order is also a challenge to achieve. Indonesia is regarded as among the worst in Southeast Asian countries in terms of managing the spread of COVID-19. It is proven by the increased number of daily confirmed cases and the total number of deaths, which was more than 6.21% (1351/21,745) of total active cases as of May 2020. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore public sentiments and emotions toward the LSSR and identify issues, fear, and reluctance to observe this restriction among the Indonesian public. Methods: This study adopts a sentiment analysis method with a supervised machine learning approach on COVID-19-related posts on selected media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube). The analysis was also performed on COVID-19-related news contained in more than 500 online news platforms recognized by the Indonesian Press Council. Social media posts and news originating from Indonesian online media between March 31 and May 31, 2020, were analyzed. Emotion analysis on Twitter platform was also performed to identify collective public emotions toward the LSSR. Results: The study found that positive sentiment surpasses other sentiment categories by 51.84% (n = 1,002,947) of the total data (N = 1,934,596) collected via the search engine. Negative sentiment was recorded at 35.51% (686,892/1,934,596) and neutral sentiment at 12.65% (244,757/1,934,596). The analysis of Twitter posts also showed that the majority of public have the emotion of "trust" toward the LSSR. Conclusions: Public sentiment toward the LSSR appeared to be positive despite doubts on government consistency in executing the LSSR. The emotion analysis also concluded that the majority of people believe in LSSR as the best method to break the chain of COVID-19 transmission. Overall, Indonesians showed trust and expressed hope toward the government's ability to manage this current global health crisis and win against COVID-19. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Background: The COVID-19 health crisis has posed an unprecedented challenge for governments worldwide to manage and communicate about the pandemic effectively, while maintaining public trust. Good leadership image in times of a health emergency is paramount to ensure public confidence in governments' abilities to manage the crisis. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify types of image repair strategies utilized by the Malaysian government in their communication about COVID-19 in the media and analyze public responses to these messages on social media. Methods: Content analysis was employed to analyze 120 media statements and 382 comments retrieved from Facebook pages of 2 mainstream newspapers-Berita Harian and The Star. These media statements and comments were collected within a span of 6 weeks prior to and during the first implementation of Movement Control Order by the Malaysian Government. The media statements were analyzed according to Image Repair Theory to categorize strategies employed in government communications related to COVID-19 crisis. Public opinion responses were measured using modified lexicon-based sentiment analysis to categorize positive, negative, and neutral statements. Results: The Malaysian government employed all 5 Image Repair Theory strategies in their communications in both newspapers. The strategy most utilized was reducing offensiveness (75/120, 62.5%), followed by corrective action (30/120, 25.0%), evading responsibilities (10/120, 8.3%), denial (4/120, 3.3%), and mortification (1/120, 0.8%). This study also found multiple substrategies in government media statements including denial, shifting blame, provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intention, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attacking accuser, resolve problem, prevent recurrence, admit wrongdoing, and apologize. This study also found that 64.7% of public opinion was positive in response to media statements made by the Malaysian government and also revealed a significant positive association (P = .04) between image repair strategies utilized by the Malaysian government and public opinion. Conclusions: Communication in the media may assist the government in fostering positive support from the public. Suitable image repair strategies could garner positive public responses and help build trust in times of crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
ABSTRACT
Apart from the severe impact on public health and well-being, the chain effect resulting from the COVID-19 health crisis is a profound disruption for various other sectors, notably in education. COVID-19 has driven massive transformation in many aspects of the educational landscape, particularly as teaching and learning shifted online due to school closure. Despite the many impacts of the health crises on school populations, a systematic review regarding this particular issue has yet to be conducted. This study, therefore, attempts to comprehensively review the impact of health crises on school populations (student, teacher, parent, and school administration). An extensive literature search guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) reporting checklist was performed in two selected databases, namely Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus to identify how this particular topic was previously studied. Exclusion and inclusion criteria were set to ensure that only research papers written in English from the year 2000 to the present (April 2021) were included. From a total of 457 studies screened, only 41 of them were deemed eligible to be included for qualitative synthesis. The findings revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic was the only health crisis discussed when it comes to investigating the impact of health crises on school populations. This study found four notable consequences of health crises on school populations, which are impacts on mental health, teaching and learning, quality of life, and physical health. Among factors associated with the impact of the health crises are;demographic factors, concerns about the pandemic, education-related factors, health-related factors, geographic factors, economic concerns, teaching challenges, and parenting in the pandemic. This study is expected to be a reference for future works in formulating crises mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of health crises on schools by exploring the contexts of the crises.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 health crisis has posed an unprecedented challenge for governments worldwide to manage and communicate about the pandemic effectively, while maintaining public trust. Good leadership image in times of a health emergency is paramount to ensure public confidence in governments' abilities to manage the crisis. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to identify types of image repair strategies utilized by the Malaysian government in their communication about COVID-19 in the media and analyze public responses to these messages on social media. METHODS: Content analysis was employed to analyze 120 media statements and 382 comments retrieved from Facebook pages of 2 mainstream newspapers-Berita Harian and The Star. These media statements and comments were collected within a span of 6 weeks prior to and during the first implementation of Movement Control Order by the Malaysian Government. The media statements were analyzed according to Image Repair Theory to categorize strategies employed in government communications related to COVID-19 crisis. Public opinion responses were measured using modified lexicon-based sentiment analysis to categorize positive, negative, and neutral statements. RESULTS: The Malaysian government employed all 5 Image Repair Theory strategies in their communications in both newspapers. The strategy most utilized was reducing offensiveness (75/120, 62.5%), followed by corrective action (30/120, 25.0%), evading responsibilities (10/120, 8.3%), denial (4/120, 3.3%), and mortification (1/120, 0.8%). This study also found multiple substrategies in government media statements including denial, shifting blame, provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intention, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attacking accuser, resolve problem, prevent recurrence, admit wrongdoing, and apologize. This study also found that 64.7% of public opinion was positive in response to media statements made by the Malaysian government and also revealed a significant positive association (P=.04) between image repair strategies utilized by the Malaysian government and public opinion. CONCLUSIONS: Communication in the media may assist the government in fostering positive support from the public. Suitable image repair strategies could garner positive public responses and help build trust in times of crisis.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Social Media , Communication , Government , Humans , Public Opinion , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: There are multiple media platforms and various resources available for information on COVID-19. Identifying people's preferences is key to building public confidence and planning for successful national health intervention strategies. OBJECTIVE: This study examines the sources of information for COVID-19 used by the Malaysian public and identifies those that are associated with building public confidence and positive perceptions toward the Malaysian government. METHODS: A cross-sectional online survey of 4850 Malaysian residents was conducted. Participant demographics, media use, information sources, and attitudes surrounding COVID-19 were assessed. Descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to gauge the relationship between demographics, information sources, and attitudes toward COVID-19. RESULTS: Malaysians primarily used television and internet news portals to access information on COVID-19. The Malaysian Ministry of Health was the most preferred source of COVID-19 information. Respondents who referred to the Ministry of Health, television, and the Malaysian National Security Council for information were more likely to believe that the country could win the battle against COVID-19 and that the government was handling the health crisis well compared to those who referred to other information sources. Those who used the World Health Organization, friends, YouTube, family, and radio as sources of information were less likely to harbor confidence and positive belief toward combating COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: Managing information and sustaining public confidence is important during a pandemic. Health authorities should pay considerable attention to the use of appropriate media channels and sources to allow for more effective dissemination of critical information to the public.