How Rally-Round-the-Flag Effects Shape Trust in the News Media: Evidence from Panel Waves before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis

In this study, we extend the literature on the rally ‘round the flag phenomenon, that is, that international crises tend to cause an increase in citizens' approval of political institutions. We advance this literature and highlight its relevance for political communication research in three ways: 1) by theorizing and empirically testing two arguments for why rally effects should extend to trust in the news media on the institutional level, 2) by providing empirical evidence on how rally effects on trust in the media develop over time during an international crisis, and 3) by theorizing and testing the conditions under which rally effects on media trust are more likely to occur by studying heterogeneous effects. Through a panel design with a pre-crisis baseline of Norwegian citizens' trust in news media, we find evidence to suggest that the compound effect of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis caused a long-lasting increase in trust in the news media in Norway, and that the degree of increase varied by citizens' education and whether they belonged to a "high-risk” group. We also provide evidence to suggest that rally effects on news media trust are contingent on how important the news media is as a source of information about the crisis and the "trust nexus” between media trust and political trust. These insights extend our current understanding of how times of crisis affect trust in the news media. © 2023 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Cybercompetitions: A survey of competitions, tools, and systems to support cybersecurity education.

Over the last decade, industry and academia have worked towards raising students' interests in cybersecurity through game-like competitions to fill a shortfall of cybersecurity professionals. Rising interest in video games in combination with gamification techniques make learning fun, easy, and addictive. It is crucial that cybersecurity curricula enhance and expose cybersecurity education to a diversified student body to meet workforce demands. Gamification through cybercompetitions is one method to achieve that. With a vast list of options for competition type, focus areas, learning outcomes, and participant experience levels we need to systematize knowledge of attributes that ameliorate cybercompetitions. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and global lock-downs, competition hosts scrambled to move platforms from local to online infrastructure due to poor interoperability between competition software. We derive a list of takeaways including the lack of interoperability between state-of-the-art competition systems, breaking the high knowledge barrier to participate, addressing competition type diversity, then suggest potential solutions and research questions moving forward. Our paper aims to systematize cybersecurity, access control, and programming competitions by surveying the history of these events. We explore the types of competitions that have been hosted and categorize them based on focus areas related to the InfoSEC Color Wheel. We then explore state-of-the-art technologies that enable these types of competitions, and finally, present our takeaways.

Opposition parties in times of pandemics

The first political casualties of crises are often opposition parties. In such times, there is a tendency to rally around leadership and value collective solidarity above all partisan considerations. We use data from parliamentary speeches, media interventions, and a series of interviews with key Quebec provincial parliamentarians to test whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the strategies of opposition critics in the context of a Westminster system. Focusing on the Quebec Legislative Assembly - but hoping to shed light on other comparable contexts - we observe a shift from critical toward rather propositional interventions, especially during the first wave of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, while there does not seem to be a differentiated strategy between the parliamentary and media interventions of opposition critics. Finally, if the reduction in personal attacks we expected is supported by the analysis of media interventions, this pattern diverges in parliament.

Nail in the Coffin or Lifeline? Evaluating the Electoral Impact of COVID-19 on President Trump in the 2020 Election.

From the onset of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in January 2020 to Election Day in November, the United States experienced over 9,400,000 cases and 232,000 deaths. This crisis largely defined the campaign between former Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, centering on the Trump administration's efforts in mitigating the number of cases and deaths. While conventional wisdom suggested that Trump and his party would lose support due to the severity of COVID-19 across the country, such an effect is hotly debated empirically and theoretically. In this research, we evaluate the extent to which the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic influenced support for President Trump in the 2020 election. Across differing modeling strategies and a variety of data sources, we find evidence that President Trump gained support in counties with higher COVID-19 deaths. We provide an explanation for this finding by showing that voters concerned about the economic impacts of pandemic-related restrictions on activity were more likely to support Trump and that local COVID-19 severity was predictive of these economic concerns. While COVID-19 likely contributed to Trump's loss in 2020, our analysis demonstrates that he gained support among voters in localities worst affected by the pandemic. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11109-022-09826-x.

Political attitude change over time following COVID-19 lockdown: Rallying effects and differences between left and right voters.

Restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19 have required widespread compliance over long periods, but citizens' attitudes to these often change over time. Here, we examine the time course of political attitudes in New Zealand over the months before and after the announcement of the country's first nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 using a large-scale national survey (Ns = 41,831-42,663). Government satisfaction increased immediately following the lockdown announcement and remained elevated 5 months later. Trust in institutions and political efficacy also increased gradually over the same period. However, these trends varied by political party vote: Compared to center-left voters who supported the largest governing party, center-right voters who supported the opposition party returned to baseline levels of government satisfaction quicker and showed more pronounced dips in their satisfaction with the economy. These same attitudes also predicted compliance with COVID-19 guidelines. Results illustrate a rally-around-the-flag effect during the pandemic and suggest that support wanes faster among center-right (opposition party) voters.

Australians’ shifting concerns about mis- and disinformation

Prior to COVID-19, trust in news was low, and Australian audiences were most concerned about mis- and disinformation from Australian political actors, followed closely by news outlets. Twelve months on trust in news had risen, and concern about misinformation from journalists and politicians had fallen dramatically. This shift followed increased news consumption and high satisfaction with the way governments managed the pandemic – prior to the immunisation roll out. This paper draws on data from five national Australian surveys conducted by the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra. The data show that changes in news consumption, trust in news, and concern about mis- and disinformation coincided with a rally-round-the-flag effect in politician approval, but this varied depending on the political orientation and age of audiences. The findings suggest that a range of media-related factors may be possible contributors to political rallying effects and warrant further investigation. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Australian Journal of Political Science 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.)

Synthesis of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) 2,4,5-trimethoxybenzaldehyde from Indonesian calamus oil and its in silico pharmacokinetic study

There is a race to search for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers due to the escalating cases of the life-threatening COVID-19 pandemic. Those current nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) used as an inflammation adjunct treatment on COVID-19 patients, including paracetamol, ibuprofen, and celecoxib, are still under dispute offering emergency development of a new potent NSAID. Meanwhile, a well-known COX-2 selective anti-inflammation 2,4,5-trimethoxybenzaldehyde (TMBA) has not been developed further in terms of its synthetic methodology and its pharmacokinetic studies. Herein, the synthesis of 2,4,5-TMBA from Indonesia sweet flag (Acorus calamus) and its pharmacokinetic properties was studied through in silico calculation. A typical Asian tetraploid calamus oil was yielded ( 90% pure) after reduced pressure distillation of the crude Indonesian sweet flag oil. Submission of that oil into a very cheap DIY ozone machine produced 95% of pure 2,4,5-TMBA just in 10 min ozonised. The in silico adsorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) prediction using the free access ADMETlab 2.0 web server strongly recommended 2,4,5-TMBA to be an orally administered NSAID candidate.

The Temporary Increase in Trust in Government and Compliance with Anti-pandemic Measures at the Start of the Covid-19 Pandemic

Public support for government institutions tends to increase in the face of threats such as armed conflict, terrorism, or natural disasters. This phenomenon, known as the 'rally-'round-the-flag' effect, has also been observed as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic in many countries. Citizens' trust in the government's good intentions and ability to handle a crisis is very important, as it gives government the legitimacy to take strong measures. High trust in government also increases citizens' willingness to comply with these measures. The aim of this study is to examine the 'rally-'round-the-flag' effect in the Czech Republic, analyse the characteristics related to the increase in trust in government, and test the relationship between trust in government and compliance with anti-pandemic measures. The analysis uses data from five waves of the Czech Household Panel Study (2016-2020) and finds a dramatic increase in trust in government in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. A relatively higher increase in trust in government was observed among people with a low level of education and low social trust. Overall, however, the rise in trust in government is more of a general tendency across society than it is an increase in one specific group of the population. Trust in government is also linked to compliance with anti-pandemic measures. © 2022 Sociologicky Ustav. All rights reserved.

Lessons Learnt Conducting Capture the Flag CyberSecurity Competition during COVID-19

This innovative practice full paper describes our experiences conducting cybersecurity capture the flag (CTF) competition for cybersecurity enthusiast participants (inclusive of both tertiary students and working professionals) local and abroad during the COVID-19 pandemic. Learning and appreciation of cybersecurity concepts for our participants with little to no technical background can be challenging. Gamification methods such as capture the flag competition style is a popular form of cybersecurity education to help participants overcome this challenge and identify talents. Participants get to apply theoretical concepts in a controlled environment, solve hands-on tasks in an informal, game-like setting and gain hands-on active learning experience. CTF competitions can be held at physical locations or virtually. However, the COVID-19 pandemic catalyses all major events that are traditionally held physically to go virtual (likewise for physical CTF events). The pandemic limits our physical interactions, changes the dynamics of our engagements with the participants and how participants learn. We have to adapt our CTF competition design and conduct it in a virtual format during the COVID-19 pandemic that is compliant with local pandemic regulations as well. This paper describes these adaptations for a semi-international CTF competition conducted for our participants. We conduct the competition entirely virtual and adapt the cybersecurity exercises to be attempted without the participant's physical presence. While we devise ways to validate participants' involvement, it is still more challenging to limit cheating than in a physical environment. However, with appropriate mitigating controls in place (reducing risks to acceptable levels), we were able to achieve similar outcomes compared to a physical event despite the lack of physical interactions. Over 1400 participants registered for our competition, and with the help of over 40 staff, we successfully conducted this 48 hours virtual CTF competition. We further analyse the participants' online activity during the competition, their survey responses after the competition and derive our lessons learnt. We hope that these experiences, analysis and findings are useful for educators or organisers who wish to adopt online CTF to improve the learning outcomes of teaching cybersecurity education.

Pulsatile Tinnitus after Covid-19 Affection Case Report

After being affected by Covid-19 a month before, a patient presented with ongoing symptoms of extreme headache, pain in the region of the neck and a very disturbing, pulse-synchronous (pulsatile) tinnitus (NRS 6-7/10). In the course of physiotherapeutic assessment, it transpires that the patient should not receive any physiotherapeutic treatment without previous medical clearance. After clearance is given to go ahead with physiotherapy, a treatment plan is developed, focusing primarily on the patient's stress coping strategies. This is supported by educational measures as well as manual therapy techniques directed at the cervical spine and the mandibular region. Owing to a fruitful collaboration between medical clearance, physiotherapy and psychotherapy as well as good patient communication, the patient can be treated successfully and his symptoms are reduced significantly.

Rally-around-the-organizational-flag? Internal communication in a professional organization during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis

Purpose This study aims, first, to explore and analyze if and how organizational members' professions or occupations influence perceptions of internal crisis communication. The second, related, aim is to discuss the role of internal communication in creating a strong organizational identity during a prolonged crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach This study is mainly conceptual but uses quantitative data from a survey conducted in a health-care organization in late 2020 to illustrate the theoretical reasoning. Findings The results show that the administrative groups perceive factors in the internal crisis communication more favorably than the professional groups. The study suggests that organizational members perceive internal crisis communication differently depending on which intra-organizational group they belong to. This further points to the absence of a "rally-around-the-flag" effect and highlights the importance of working proactively with professionals and in internal crisis communication. Originality/value This study highlights the role of professionals in crisis communication, which is an aspect that so far has been ignored. The internal professionalization processes and an intriguing power struggle between professions have obvious consequences for crisis communication. As shown in the overview of earlier research on internal communication, leadership and professional organizations, the prerequisites for creating an increased organizational unity among coworkers are challenging. The idea that a crisis may, as in certain political situations in society, create a "rally-around-the-flag" effect is still relevant, even if the case study is an example of how this did not happen.

Work in Progress: Leveraging a Virtual Precollege Summer Coding Day Camp to Promote DEI in Recruiting Students to Computer Science and Information Technology

As part of an ongoing initiative to recruit students to the Computer Science and Information Technology degree programs at Southeastern Louisiana University, a summer coding day camp was formed beginning in the summer of 2019 through a grant with Louisiana Economic Development Fast Start. The 2019 camp was a two-week on-campus experience. In the success of the first year, expansion, to include a satellite campus, was planned for year two. This was never realized due to COVID-19. The summer 2020 delivery and curriculum was redesigned two short months before delivery. The decision was made to offer a much abbreviated online version of the camp, while maintaining the maximum capacity. Through a partnership with cyber.org, curriculum was selected and a virtual capture-the-flag was offered. The capture-the-flag competition served to promote participation in the recruitment activities. Through the use of pre and post tests, data was collected as to familiarity with the university, the Department of Computer Science degree offerings, job opportunities in the field, and intention to attend college. Additionally, student surveys were administered to collect demographic information. This paper details the experience of offering a virtual summer coding camp and explores both the challenges and opportunities that were encountered. Details into the specifics of how the camp was administered and recruiting activities are presented as are the results of the survey findings. It is concluded that the experience was a success, reaching maximum enrollment within 48 hours and achieving a wait-list of over 80. Of the students enrolled in the camp, women and minorities represented 50% of the students and the 80% of the students reported that their expectations were met or exceeded. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021

FROM THE "RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG" EFFECT TO A SOCIAL CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE. POLAND AND SLOVAKIA IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The pandemic COVID-19 became a challenge for both societies and governments. While most countries and citizens reacted similarly to the unknown strength of the virus at the start of the pandemic, the situation in each country began to vary more and more each month. Poland and Slovakia are interesting cases in this context. One year after the WHO declared a pandemic, these countries are experiencing one of the worst crises in history. In Poland, despite the initial social mobilisation, after a very short time, many government decisions ceased to be perceived as protecting citizens. In the first period of the pandemic, the Slovak government coped with the situation much better, which changed significantly in the autumn of 2020. The article aims to analyse how an active "rally 'round the flag" effect and the resulting natural potential for social mobilisation to fight the pandemic were wasted in Poland and Slovakia due to irresponsible political decisions undermining the citizens 'trust in the governments' good intentions.

Science-related populism declining during the COVID-19 pandemic: A panel survey of the Swiss population before and after the Coronavirus outbreak.

In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased public support for societal institutions including science, a phenomenon described as "rally-round-the-flag" dynamic. However, it is unclear if this dynamic has also reduced public resentment toward science such as science-related populist attitudes, that is, the preference of people's common sense over allegedly elitist scientific knowledge. We test this, relying on individual-level data from panel surveys before and during the pandemic in Switzerland. Results show that science-related populist attitudes decreased after the pandemic started. The decrease was more pronounced among people who had been strong supporters of science-related populism prior to the pandemic, but otherwise spread equally across different sociodemographic and attitudinal segments of the Swiss population. This shows that the Coronavirus outbreak has the potential to undermine persistent (populist) resentments toward science and its epistemology among the general population.

CRISPR-based peptide library display and programmable microarray self-assembly for rapid quantitative protein binding assays.

CRISPR-inspired systems have been extensively developed for applications in genome editing and nucleic acid detection. Here, we introduce a CRISPR-based peptide display technology to facilitate customized, high-throughput in vitro protein interaction studies. We show that bespoke peptide libraries fused to catalytically inactive Cas9 (dCas9) and barcoded with unique single guide RNA (sgRNA) molecules self-assemble from a single mixed pool to programmable positions on a DNA microarray surface for rapid, multiplexed binding assays. We develop dCas9-displayed saturation mutagenesis libraries to characterize antibody-epitope binding for a commercial anti-FLAG monoclonal antibody and human serum antibodies. We also show that our platform can be used for viral epitope mapping and exhibits promise as a multiplexed diagnostics tool. Our CRISPR-based peptide display platform and the principles of complex library self-assembly using dCas9 could be adapted for rapid interrogation of varied customized protein libraries or biological materials assembly using DNA scaffolding.

Multidisciplinary Approaches for Transthyretin Amyloidosis.

Amyloidosis caused by systemic deposition of transthyretin (TTR) is called ATTR amyloidosis and mainly includes hereditary ATTR (ATTRv) amyloidosis and wild-type ATTR (ATTRwt) amyloidosis. Until recently, ATTRv amyloidosis had been considered a disease in the field of neurology because neuropathic symptoms predominated in patients described in early reports, whereas advances in diagnostic techniques and increased recognition of this disease revealed the presence of patients with cardiomyopathy as a predominant feature. In contrast, ATTRwt amyloidosis has been considered a disease in the field of cardiology. However, recent studies have suggested that some of the patients with ATTRwt amyloidosis present tenosynovial tissue complications, particularly carpal tunnel syndrome, as an initial manifestation of amyloidosis, necessitating an awareness of this disease among neurologists and orthopedists. Although histopathological confirmation of amyloid deposits has traditionally been considered mandatory for the diagnosis of ATTR amyloidosis, the development of noninvasive imaging techniques in the field of cardiology, such as echocardiography, magnetic resonance imaging, and nuclear imaging, enabled nonbiopsy diagnosis of this disease. The mechanisms underlying characteristic cardiac imaging findings have been deciphered by histopathological studies. Novel disease-modifying therapies for ATTR amyloidosis, such as TTR stabilizers, short interfering RNA, and antisense oligonucleotides, were initially approved for ATTRv amyloidosis patients with polyneuropathy. However, the indications for the use of these disease-modifying therapies gradually widened to include ATTRv and ATTRwt amyloidosis patients with cardiomyopathy. Since the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, occurred, the minimization of hospital visits and telemedicine have become increasingly important. As older age and cardiovascular disease are major factors associated with increased disease severity and mortality of COVID-19, many ATTR amyloidosis patients are at increased risk of disease aggravation when they are infected with SARS-CoV-2. From this viewpoint, close interspecialty communication to determine the optimal interval of evaluation is needed for the management of patients with ATTR amyloidosis.

The complex problem of identifying serious pathology in Musculoskeletal care: Managing clinical risk during the COVID pandemic and beyond.

The expanding scope of physiotherapists has come with an increased level of responsibility to identify 'red flag' signs and symptoms. Red flags can indicate the presence of serious pathology but are notoriously unreliable. This leaves diagnosis heavily reliant on diagnostic investigations which are generally a finite resource within healthcare organisations. The COVID pandemic seems to have further compounded the problem and the possibility of 'missed' or 'delayed' diagnosis is ever-present. This may present a threat to patients' lives, to clinicians' careers and wellbeing, and to organisations' finances and reputations. Although clinical risk in musculoskeletal physiotherapy may never be eliminated, there are opportunities to work towards minimising it. This professional issue will explore the complex problem of identifying serious pathology in musculoskeletal care and will propose strategies to manage the associated risks during the COVID pandemic and beyond. A video abstract is included in Appendix A.

The Emotional Foundations of Political Support: How Fear and Anger Affect Trust in the Government in Times of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Crises like the current coronavirus pandemic evoke negative emotions in the general public. To date, however, little research has been conducted on the influence of these mental states on trust in the government - the uncontested key player in times of crises. Drawing on the appraisal and affective intelligence theories of emotions, we argue that fear and anger as the two crucial negative emotions in times of crises have divergent effects on trust in the government: Whereas fear leads to a rally-'round-the-flag effect increasing trust in the government, anger attributes blame for the adverse circumstances to the government. We present empirical evidence for our arguments with an original three-wave online panel survey of 1'600 Swiss residents during the unprecedented times of the coronavirus pandemic. Our analysis provides empirical support for our arguments and further shows that the relationship is strongest for right-wing respondents.

Des crises telles que l'actuelle pandémie de Covid­19 suscitent des émotions négatives dans le grand public. Cependant, peu de recherches ont été menées jusqu'à présent concernant la manière dont ces émotions affectent la confiance dans le gouvernement ­ le facteur clé incontesté en temps de crise. En s'appuyant sur la 'appraisal theory' et la 'affective intelligence theory', nous soutenons que la peur et la colère, qui sont les deux principales émotions négatives en temps de crise, ont des effets divergents sur la confiance dans le gouvernement : alors que la peur entraîne un effet 'rally­'round­the­flag' et augmente ainsi la confiance dans le gouvernement, la colère impute au gouvernement la responsabilité des conditions défavorables. À l'aide de notre propre enquête de panel en trois vagues menée en ligne pendant la crise auprès de 1'600 participants issus de la population résidente suisse, nous fournissons des preuves empiriques qui étayent nos arguments. Notre analyse apporte un soutien empirique à nos arguments et montre en outre que la relation est la plus forte pour les répondants de droite.