Politics Go "Viral": A Computational Text Analysis of the Public Attribution and Attitude Regarding the COVID-19 Crisis and Governmental Responses on Twitter

The U.S. confronts an unprecedented public health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, in the presidential election year in 2020. In such a compound situation, a real-time dynamic examination of how the general public ascribe the crisis responsibilities taking account to their political ideologies is helpful for developing effective strategies to manage the crisis and diminish hostility toward particular groups caused by polarization. Social media, such as Twitter, provide platforms for the public's COVID-related discourse to form, accumulate, and visibly present. Meanwhile, those features also make social media a window to monitor the public responses in real-time. This research conducted a computational text analysis of 2,918,376 tweets sent by 829,686 different U.S. users regarding COVID-19 from January 24 to May 25, 2020. Results indicate that the public's crisis attribution and attitude toward governmental crisis responses are driven by their political identities. One crisis factor identified by this study (i.e., threat level) also affects the public's attribution and attitude polarization. Additionally, we note that pandemic fatigue was identified in our findings as early as in March 2020. This study has theoretical, practical, and methodological implications informing further health communication in a heated political environment. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Social Science Computer Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

Pandemic techno-politics in the global South

Brazil has been standing out as one of the worst places on Earth to be during a global health crisis, especially for those whose struggle for basic humanitarian rights is already routine. How do the political environment and historical inequalities in countries like Brazil affect the ways in which public policy and technologies are framed as responses for the pandemic crisis? In this paper we aim to present the sequence of actions and omissions in the fight against sars-cov2 in Brazil, concentrating on measures based on the use of digital technologies and the sociotechnical arrangements unfolding in materialities that give shape to such measures. We will also discuss possible repercussions of the widespread adoption of surveillance technologies as a quick fix to the effects of the pandemic. Our focus is to explain how the materiality of the virus and its political as well as territorial effects are combined with digital technologies as responses (or lack of them) in the fields of healthcare, education, communication and labour in the context of the global South. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Information Polity: The International Journal of Government & Democracy in the Information Age is the property of IOS Press 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.)

Management issues in police organizations during a health crisis

• The COVID-19 health crisis resulted in significant challenges for public security institutions. Police organizations had to quickly adapt and mobilize given their responsibilities in the fight against the pandemic. This paper explored management issues within police organizations during a health crisis, employing qualitative methodology towards this objective. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight policewomen and 26 police officers working in different regions of the province of Quebec. Of these, 15 worked as a patroller, nine were linked to investigative units and ten were identified as occupying a supervisory role. The material reduction method was guided by techniques specific to thematic content analysis. The main results highlight management issues at the communication level (e.g.: the rapid evolution of directives to be transmitted for the application of public health rules), as well in relation to personnel management (e.g. imposing fixed teams to reduce contacts between employees), logistics (e.g. reassignment of functions), the clarity of directives resulting from public health measures (e.g. enforcement of exceptional cases) and the training of managers (e.g. lack of knowledge regarding public health issues). The results of this study add to the body of knowledge regarding the understanding of management issues in police organizations during a health crisis such as this. A series of lessons to be learned on a practical level are also noted. © The Author(s) 2022.

Local governments' use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Portugal.

While the use of social media by local governments has gained relevance in recent years, crises are critical situations that reinforce the need to reach citizens to disclose information, demonstrate the government's commitment, and increase the citizens' level of preparedness and awareness of resources. This paper examines the factors that influenced local governments' e-disclosure during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. To accomplish this objective, we systematically tracked every post published by the official Facebook page of 304 Portuguese municipalities between March 2 and July 5, 2020. The findings show that financial autonomy is the main predictor of e-disclosure, factors varied on the different phases of the pandemic's first wave, and sociodemographic factors became more prevalent as explanatory factors when the crisis worsened. Our study may help increase the level of preparedness during possible future crises. In particular, establishing communication strategies for prolonged public health crises, making financial resources available for the accomplishment of such strategies, and reducing the digital divide can contribute to more effective disclosure. Future research should explore the dynamics of disclosure during public health crises. This study also highlights the need to incorporate time in research that focuses on the determinants of e-disclosure that could also be tested in normal times.

Social Media Insights During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infodemiology Study Using Big Data.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic is still undergoing complicated developments in Vietnam and around the world. There is a lot of information about the COVID-19 pandemic, especially on the internet where people can create and share information quickly. This can lead to an infodemic, which is a challenge every government might face in the fight against pandemics. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to understand public attention toward the pandemic (from December 2019 to November 2020) through 7 types of sources: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, news sites, forums, and e-commerce sites. METHODS: We collected and analyzed nearly 38 million pieces of text data from the aforementioned sources via SocialHeat, a social listening (infoveillance) platform developed by YouNet Group. We described not only public attention volume trends, discussion sentiments, top sources, top posts that gained the most public attention, and hot keyword frequency but also hot keywords' co-occurrence as visualized by the VOSviewer software tool. RESULTS: In this study, we reached four main conclusions. First, based on changing discussion trends regarding the COVID-19 subject, 7 periods were identified based on events that can be aggregated into two pandemic waves in Vietnam. Second, community pages on Facebook were the source of the most engagement from the public. However, the sources with the highest average interaction efficiency per article were government sources. Third, people's attitudes when discussing the pandemic have changed from negative to positive emotions. Fourth, the type of content that attracts the most interactions from people varies from time to time. Besides that, the issue-attention cycle theory occurred not only once but four times during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. CONCLUSIONS: Our study shows that online resources can help the government quickly identify public attention to public health messages during times of crisis. We also determined the hot spots that most interested the public and public attention communication patterns, which can help the government get practical information to make more effective policy reactions to help prevent the spread of the pandemic.

How Can Health Systems Better Prepare for the Next Pandemic? Lessons Learned From the Management of COVID-19 in Quebec (Canada).

The magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged societies around our globalized world. To contain the spread of the virus, unprecedented and drastic measures and policies were put in place by governments to manage an exceptional health care situation while maintaining other essential services. The responses of many governments showed a lack of preparedness to face this systemic and global health crisis. Drawing on field observations and available data on the first wave of the pandemic (mid-March to mid-May 2020) in Quebec (Canada), this article reviewed and discussed the successes and failures that characterized the management of COVID-19 in this province. Using the framework of Palagyi et al. on system preparedness toward emerging infectious diseases, we described and analyzed in a chronologically and narratively way: (1) how surveillance was structured; (2) how workforce issues were managed; (3) what infrastructures and medical supplies were made available; (4) what communication mechanisms were put in place; (5) what form of governance emerged; and (6) whether trust was established and maintained throughout the crisis. Our findings and observations stress that resilience and ability to adequately respond to a systemic and global crisis depend upon preexisting system-level characteristics and capacities at both the provincial and federal governance levels. By providing recommendations for policy and practice from a learning health system perspective, this paper contributes to the groundwork required for interdisciplinary research and genuine policy discussions to help health systems better prepare for future pandemics.

Adaptation of the National Plan for the Prevention and Fight Against Pandemic Influenza to the 2020 COVID-19 Epidemic in France.

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020, at noon, France became the third European country to impose a nationwide containment policy in the fight against epidemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) viral infection. Announcing that the country was at "war," President Macron called upon all to play a role in mitigating against further development of contagion. This extreme measure never seen before during peace time was the result of adapting not only the French Pandemic Influenza Plan (PIP) being applied to the national context but also real-time clinical, epidemiological, and scientific information about the evolution of COVID-19 infection in the country. The situation was further complicated by local municipal elections and political agendas by populist opinions. Despite mass communication about the importance of individual behavioral attitudes to counter disease propagation, few heeded government advice. Consequently, the situation rapidly deteriorated with increasing number of cases that started to overwhelm health services. As a result, decisive and immediate action was taken by the State for the national public health interest. This report from the field details the timely events that contributed to this extreme policy decision taken by France. A policy decision that other Western democracies have since applied as the pandemic disseminated across the globe.