Does social media usage boost career prospects of women: an exploratory study in the academia

PurposeThis paper draws on the affordance perspective, to explore the social media (SM) usage experiences that might render valuable for academic women professionals, for knowledge exchange, networking and success. Owing to the increased SM usage during COVID-19 pandemic, this paper tries to find out that in what ways do SM affordances facilitate the underprivileged group of women professionals to grow in their careers in a masculine, conservative society through knowledge exchange.Design/methodology/approachBy utilizing qualitative study design, the authors collected data from 31 women employed in Pakistani universities, through unstructured questionnaires. The responses were analyzed through Nvivo.FindingsThe generated themes suggested that women in Pakistan are aware of SM's potential for knowledge exchange among fellow professionals. They use it to aid them in communication, collaboration and networking. Additionally, they utilize it to share knowledge and build networks that are vital for career progression and success.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper concludes with the implications for practitioners that would aid them in boosting career prospects for women academicians through SM usage in a developing country Pakistan;where women's career outlooks are not as promising as for men;or as bright as for women working in the developed economies.Originality/valueThis a unique attempt to explore knowledge exchange dimensions with the help of SM in the context of working women by the deploying the phenomenological approach.

COVID-19, Anti-Intellectualism, and Health Communication: Assessing the Chinese Social Media Platform Sina Weibo.

In the digital media era, new media platforms have become the main channels for transmitting medical and health information in China. However, anti-intellectualism limits the effectiveness of disseminating health information. Therefore, in China, the government and health departments have made efforts to determine how to control anti-intellectualism to effectively disseminate medical and health information, given the situation of a global pandemic and its counter-measures. Against this backdrop, this study applied textual analysis to explore the manifestations of anti-intellectualism in network platforms. The key findings indicate that the irrational behavior of anti-intellectuals is manifested in emotional dominance, abusive behavior, overconfidence and trusting rumors. Based on these results, the authors propose some measures to balance the relationship between anti-intellectualism and health communication. The findings of the study have significant implications for improving the effectiveness of health communication in China.

Assessing the impact of green finance and urbanization on the tourism industry-an empirical study in China.

There is a dearth of empirical studies looking at the link between green economic development and tourism in quantifiable terms. Using panel data from China's 30 provinces from 2005 to 2018, this study investigates the impact of green finance on China's tourism industry. Using renewable energy, income per capita, carbon emissions, and urbanizations as explanatory factors is also utilized. According to estimation, the findings reveal that green finance substantially impacts the tourism business. This positive effect is more pronounced in provinces where economic and social conditions are better, thus boosting the region's tourism industry. The same holds for income per capita, renewable energy, and environmental factors. In addition, urbanization has a negligible effect on the variable being studied. A further way to boost the growth of tourism is through the use of green finance. The empirical findings can benefit China's green financial planning and environmental sustainability.

The Influence of E-Learning and Emotional Intelligence on Psychological Intentions: Study of Stranded Pakistani Students.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the government to close the educational institutions globally, to contain the infection of the disease, which has affected the academic activities of local and international students significantly. This unexpected shift from offline classes to online learning has created psychological disruption among the students. At that backdrop, this study aims to investigate the influence of e-learning and emotional intelligence (EI) on the study stress, burnout, and performance of Pakistani students by applying emotion regulation theory. The data (N = 387) is based on international students, enrolled in 10 different universities in China. The results indicate that both e-learning and EI have significantly affected perceived study stress, burnout, and performance of students. These findings have provided evidence that online classes and EI can influence study stress, burnout, and performance of students. The study concludes that EI has significant impact on the psychological pressure of a student.

A Citywide 'Virus Testing': Chinese Government's Response to Preventing and Controlling the Second Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2.

Containing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is a daunting challenge globally. China, as well as a handful of other countries, has, for the most part, contained it by implementing strict policies. Wuhan's citywide virus-testing program presents a way forward in preventing and controlling the uncertainty, anxiety, instability and complexity it faces over the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2. Inarguably, the health crisis requires time-tested strategies and tactics for coordinating governments' and social entities' response to the health crisis, with a goal toward having and ensuring sustained effectiveness. Because of a possible recurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, the Prevention and Control Headquarters of Wuhan on COVID-19 launched a massive virus testing of Wuhan's 11 million residents; it was completed within 10 days. In light of this unprecedented mass testing, this study applies the situational crisis communication theory to analyze this massive virus-testing process and the mechanisms involved to contain SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan. While many countries still have partial lockdowns, the second outbreak in Wuhan was an indication of what awaited all SARS-CoV-2-stricken countries post-lockdowns and after community restrictions had been lifted. Therefore, the recently implemented Wuhan control mechanism (in cities, districts and townships) may become a hortatory guide to other world regions as they contend with and consider appropriate measures to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and to ensure public safety.

Intention-Based Critical Factors Affecting Willingness to Adopt Novel Coronavirus Prevention in Pakistan: Implications for Future Pandemics.

Since human beings have a long tradition of coexistence with pandemics, which may profoundly impact them, adopting preventive measures is crucial for humankind's survival. This study explores the intention-based critical factors affecting the willingness of individuals to adopt pandemic prevention. To this end, a representative sample of 931 Pakistanis filled in an online questionnaire. However, only 828 questionnaires were found to be complete and valid for path modeling analysis. The core findings are as follows: Firstly, peer groups' beliefs, self-efficacy, perceived risk, pandemic knowledge, ease of pandemic prevention adoption, and risk-averse behavior are revealed as driving forces of the individuals' willingness to adopt pandemic prevention. Contrastingly, a lack of trust in political will and mythical attitude towards pandemics are uncovered as inhibitors. Nevertheless, moral values depict a neutral role. Secondly, the peer groups' beliefs are highest ranked, followed by the lack of trust in political will and a mythical attitude towards pandemic prevention. Finally, moral values are determined as the lowest-ranked critical factor. Based on these results, the government should promote awareness campaigns on lethality and fatality of the pandemic at both centralized and decentralized levels to win people's trust at the grass-roots level and overcome the mythical attitude of individuals at all societal levels. Besides, access to personal protective gears should be made feasible since an easier pandemic prevention adoption would increase the individuals' willingness to adopt such preventative measures.

Post-COVID 19 Tourism: Will Digital Tourism Replace Mass Tourism?

Recently, nations are struggling to mitigate the impact of the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak on their economy. Many countries have imposed traveling restrictions to reduce people’s movement in order to avoid infection transmission. Traveling restrictions have jeopardized the tourism industry around the globe. If the situation persists, it will become challenging for the nations to open tourism. For this reason, the digitalization of tourism is a viable solution for this situation. However, it is essential to map whether digital technologies can provide alternative solutions to the situation and whether digital tourism can replace conventional tourism? With that backdrop, this study has two objectives: (a) to find the future of digital tourism development beyond the COVID-19 pandemic situation, and (b) to find collaborative research work among nations to develop digital tourism after the current pandemic crisis. To achieve these objectives, we conducted a systematic literature review of past research on the development of digital tourism from 2016–2020. The study applies the PRISMA-2015 statement to select and synthesize 60 articles from Scopus and ‘Web of Science’ databases. Content analysis was performed to analyze the underlying clusters of research on digital tourism and, later, bibliometric analysis was conducted to examine collaborative research between different countries. The findings highlighted three major research clusters namely;virtual reality tourism, virtual tourism, and augmented reality. In addition, the research finding shows that virtual tourism is a practical and valuable option for mass tourism during the COVID-19 outbreak and can replace mass tourism after the pandemic. Although virtual tourism does not feel like a visit to a natural destination, it is still getting attention from tourists. Virtual spaces must develop more features and value additions to achieve tourist satisfaction in the future.

Assessing Public Willingness to Wear Face Masks during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Fresh Insights from the Theory of Planned Behavior.

Face masks are considered an effective intervention in controlling the spread of airborne viruses, as evidenced by the 2009's H1N1 swine flu and 2003's severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks. However, research aiming to examine public willingness to wear (WTW) face masks in Pakistan are scarce. The current research aims to overcome this research void and contributes by expanding the theoretical mechanism of theory of planned behavior (TPB) to include three novel dimensions (risk perceptions of the pandemic, perceived benefits of face masks, and unavailability of face masks) to comprehensively analyze the factors that motivate people to, or inhibit people from, wearing face masks. The study is based on an inclusive questionnaire survey of a sample of 738 respondents in the provincial capitals of Pakistan, namely, Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, Gilgit, and Quetta. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to analyze the proposed hypotheses. The results show that attitude, social norms, risk perceptions of the pandemic, and perceived benefits of face masks are the major influencing factors that positively affect public WTW face masks, whereas the cost of face masks and unavailability of face masks tend to have opposite effects. The results emphasize the need to enhance risk perceptions by publicizing the deadly effects of COVID-19 on the environment and society, ensure the availability of face masks at an affordable price, and make integrated and coherent efforts to highlight the benefits that face masks offer.

Analyzing COVID-2019 Impact on Mental Health Through Social Media Forum

This study aims to identify the potential association of mental health and social media forum during the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 brings a lot of challenges to government globally. Among the different strategies the most extensively adopted ones were lockdown, social distancing, and isolation among others. Most people with no mental illness history have been found with high risk of distress and psychological discomfort due to anxiety of being infected with the virus. Panic among people due to COVID-19 spread faster than the disease itself. The misinformation and excessive usage of social media in this pandemic era have adversely affected mental health across the world. Due to limited historical data, psychiatrists are finding it difficult to cure the mental illness of people resulting from the pandemic repercussion, fueled by social media forum. In this study the methodology used for data extraction is by considering the implications of social network platforms (such as Reddit) and levering the capabilities of a semi-supervised co-training technique-based use of Naïve Bayes (NB), Random Forest (RF), and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers. The experimental results shows the efficacy of the proposed methodology to identify the mental illness level (such as anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia, and OCD) of those who are in anxious of being infected with this virus. We observed 1 to 5% improvement in the classification decision through the proposed method as compared to state-of-the-art classifiers.