ABSTRACT
Dispositional communication competencies can be assessed in (a) a generic form that does not include any reference to a particular medium of interaction or in (b) a communication medium-specific version. To date, little is known about the specific media that individuals use as a reference and the weights they assign to them when responding to generic communication items - an important research gap because the use of diverse communication media has risen considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on media theories, two hypotheses were derived: Generic ratings contain a "hidden" face-to-face (FtF) communication framing that is dominant in the cognitive processing (media naturalness perspective) versus media are equally weighted in the mental aggregate of respondents (adaptation perspective). According to a preregistered study plan, generic and medium-specific communication items were assessed to investigate these hypotheses (referencing FtF, videoconferencing, chat, and e-mail interaction contexts). Training (n = 200) and test (n = 389) datasets were analyzed using latent variable modeling. Results indicated that generic ratings have a strong hidden FtF framing. These hidden framings impact the predictive power of the competencies to explain communication criteria (i.e. communication satisfaction). Exploratory analyses indicated that individual differences in media experience may affect the framings.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, a system dynamics model depicts the viral growth of COVID-19 at an exponential rate. The outbreak of Corona virus was started from the Feb 26, 2020 when the first case was reported in Pakistan. Local bodies and law enforcing agencies had taken initial preventive measures to restrict the COVID-19 to a particular locality but all in vain. The infected people were increasing every day rising the stocks of recoveries and deaths. Numbers of infected people were alarming and a need was felt to develop the model to calculate the existing reproduction number and transmission rate and highlight its varied values in coming days. People-oriented measures and government-based policies must be explored to fight against this deadly disease. This paper aims the development of epidemic model using the system dynamic framework on simulation software STELLA. The objective of the research is to experiment with the model to replicate the progression of the communicable disease and probe the multiple combinations of the people-based and government-based measures to reduce its spread. The containment measures are of two types;people-based measures and government-based measures and both directly affect the reproduction number and infection growth fraction for mitigating the spread of deadly coronavirus. Combined efforts of public and government can combat this pandemic. Reduced degree of reproduction number and infection growth fraction are the key metrics to judge and evaluate the effectiveness of containment measures. This research points to more holistic combination of public and government-oriented measures that play the vital role to flatten the curve and reduce its spread affecting the reproduction number. Simulation results have been traced to replicate the real-life settings against four combinations of containment measures in tabular form and graphical form. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
The article substantiates the influence of digitalization on human development in the process of constructing a welfare economy. The task of constructing a welfare economy cannot be fulfilled without providing human development. Simultaneously digitalization pushed by the spread of the pandemic of corona virus became the worldwide trend and changed the essence of production relations. Because of the fact that development of human capital is always connected to the development of production relations it is relevant in current conditions to look for the connection between human development and the process of digitalization. It should be admitted that human capital continuously obtains new digital skills and because of the fact that these skills cannot be separated from the persons-carriers the diffusion of innovations is fulfilled in the economy with the movement of the qualified work resources from one place of occupation to another. The more knowledge and digital aimed the human resources are the better the chances to construct a welfare economy in some country become. In this connection the dynamics of the indices indicating the innovations and the human development are important to measure welfare. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.