Disaster, health, and panic buying

Disasters have complex direct and indirect effects on population health and healthcare systems. Direct effects include risk of death, acute injuries, and destruction of healthcare infrastructure, while indirect effects include risk of communicable diseases and scarcity of food, water, medicines, and essential commodities. A disaster that threatens health, disrupts social order, and provokes shortage of commodities may precipitate behavior changes in population. One such behavior change is the well-documented phenomenon of panic buying where individuals buy unusually large quantities of goods that are perceived as necessary in anticipation of price rise or scarcity. It has received increasing attention during the COVID-19 pandemic due to its resurgence. The phenomenon has significant negative implications for population health and disease control. Attempts to control panic buying are more likely to succeed if they are predicated upon insights from an integrated biopsychosocial model. The chapter will assist readers in comprehending the complex relationships between disaster, health, and panic buying. This has important implications for prevention, public health, and policy planning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Newspaper coverage on solidarity and personal responsibility in the COVID-19 pandemic: A content analysis from Germany and German-speaking Switzerland.

Solidarity and personal responsibility have been repeatedly called upon during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study quantifies and contextualizes the use of these terms in newspaper coverage in Germany and German-speaking Switzerland based on n = 640 articles from six functionally equivalent newspapers. The term solidarity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic was mentioned in 541/640 articles (84.5%) and was primarily used during phases with high death rates and comparatively stringent policies in place, supporting the idea that solidarity was used to explain restrictive measures to the population and motivate people to comply with these measures. German newspapers published more articles on solidarity than Swiss-German newspapers, consistent with more stringent COVID-19 policies in Germany. Personal responsibility was mentioned in 133/640 articles (20.8%), meaning that the term was less frequently discussed than solidarity. Articles covering personal responsibility included more negative evaluations during phases of high infection rates as compared to phases of low infection rates. Findings indicate that the two terms were, at least to some extent, used in newspaper reporting to contextualize and justify COVID-19 policy during phases of high infection rates. Moreover, the term solidarity was used in a high variety of different contexts and the inherent limits of solidarity were rarely mentioned. Policymakers and journalists need to take this into account for future crises to not jeopardize the positive effects of solidarity.

Disaster, health, and panic buying

Disasters have complex direct and indirect effects on population health and healthcare systems. Direct effects include risk of death, acute injuries, and destruction of healthcare infrastructure, while indirect effects include risk of communicable diseases and scarcity of food, water, medicines, and essential commodities. A disaster that threatens health, disrupts social order, and provokes shortage of commodities may precipitate behavior changes in population. One such behavior change is the well-documented phenomenon of panic buying where individuals buy unusually large quantities of goods that are perceived as necessary in anticipation of price rise or scarcity. It has received increasing attention during the COVID-19 pandemic due to its resurgence. The phenomenon has significant negative implications for population health and disease control. Attempts to control panic buying are more likely to succeed if they are predicated upon insights from an integrated biopsychosocial model. The chapter will assist readers in comprehending the complex relationships between disaster, health, and panic buying. This has important implications for prevention, public health, and policy planning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Mass media and panic buying

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into light several erratic human behaviors. Panic buying is one of them. There is a dearth of evidence exploring the relationship between panic buying and other environmental issues. Nevertheless, media has a bidirectional relationship with the behaviors attributing as a spreading factor vis-a-vis a preventive factor. Spreading fear, rumor, scarcity, price hike, and supply hindrance heralded to panic buying. On the other hand, disseminating the government's action, expert opinions, underlying psychology, remedial measures, and its impact prevent the behavior. Drawing upon various media, communication, and social psychology theories such as agenda-setting theory, framing theory, priming theory, cultivation theory, social cognition theory, and risk perception, this chapter offers an understanding of the causative and preventive role of mass media in panic buying behavior during emergencies and uncertain situations among people. Finally, it provides some recommendations for policymakers and media managers on controlling panic buying. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Do We Need Media Guidelines When Reporting on Panic Buying? An Analysis of the Content of News Reports During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its attendant supply chain disruptions and restrictions on internal movement, has been associated with frequent episodes of panic buying both in its initial phase and in subsequent waves. Empirical evidence suggests that news media content and consumption are important determinants of attitudes and behavior during the pandemic, and existing research both before and during the pandemic suggests that panic buying can be influenced by both exposure to media reports and their specific content. This pilot study was conducted to assess the quality of media reports of panic buying during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, using two independent measures of news article quality. Seventy news reports of panic buying across 12 countries, covering the "second wave" of the pandemic from January 1 to December 31, 2021, were collected through an online search of media outlets using the Google News aggregator. These reports were analyzed in terms of the content of their reporting, based on existing research of the factors driving panic buying during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each report was scored for quality using two different systems: one based on an existing WHO guideline, and one based on the work of a research group which has published extensive work related to panic buying during this pandemic. It was observed that a significant number of reports contained elements that were likely to amplify, rather than attenuate, panic buying behavior, and that the quality of news reports was generally poor regardless of pandemic severity, cultural values, or freedom of the press. On the basis of this evidence, suggestions are offered to improve the media reporting of panic buying and minimize the risk of fear contagion and imitation.

Epistemic and Ethical Risks Of Media Reporting in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic, as Challenges for the Development Of Journalistic Practice

In this article, the authors intend to analyse risks related to media information in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and identify demands in terms of the nature and development of journalistic practice in the post-covid time. The first part focuses on journalists in terms of their fitness for professional performance, revealing particularly their epistemic, or cognitive and ethical insufficiency that may be caused also by (conscious and unethical) inadequate preparation for the profession. Here, the authors notice a general professional crisis in journalism, particularly the long-standing imminent crisis of its (epistemic and ethical) normativity, greatly influenced by digital technology in journalistic practice. The authors take these phenomena as signals for further development of journalism as a socially valuable profession, particularly in the long- neglected science journalism. The second part of this article is dedicated to the outline of journalistic expertise in terms of knowledge-based journalism. They describe some basic prerequisites, namely the journalist's ability to use knowledge in the process of their professional assessment and practice, and balanced journalistic competence that incorporates skills, expertise and ethos. Pursuing a better quality performance of journalism, they emphasize the need to accept the principle of a close link between epistemic and ethical professional excellence of journalists that includes epistemic and moral virtues. In the third part, they describe the development of journalistic expertise and training - epistemic, or cognitive and moral development, as well as the development of journalistic (communication and media) skills, especially digital competence in the context of scientific evidence. Finally, in terms of academic (or professional) training, they emphasise a combination of reflexive practice and applied theory.

Comparation and Sentiment Analysis Method of Chinese and Western Media's COVID-19 Reports on Various Countries

Media plays an important role in the information society and therefore, it should be fair, just, and objective. Media has been influencing the public's cognition of COVID-19 and their views of the actions taken by the government of different countries in 2020. After analyzing more than 260 thousand reports collected from search engines and published by both the Chinese and Western media about 10 countries, we found that Western media has prejudice when reporting the epidemic in China, and there exist obvious abnormal features when they reporting the epidemic in the United States. In addition, compared to Western media, Chinese media are more consistent and objective with the actual development of the epidemic in different countries. © 2022, Science Press. All right reserved.

Discrete epidemic modelling of COVID-19 transmission in Shaanxi Province with media reporting and imported cases.

The large-scale infection of COVID-19 has led to a significant impact on lives and economies around the world and has had considerable impact on global public health. Social distancing, mask wearing and contact tracing have contributed to containing or at least mitigating the outbreak, but how public awareness influences the effectiveness and efficiency of such approaches remains unclear. In this study, we developed a discrete compartment dynamic model to mimic and explore how media reporting and the strengthening containment strategies can help curb the spread of COVID-19 using Shaanxi Province, China, as a case study. The targeted model is parameterized based on multi-source data, including the cumulative number of confirmed cases, recovered individuals, the daily number of media-reporting items and the imported cases from the rest of China outside Shaanxi from January 23 to April 11, 2020. We carried out a sensitivity analysis to investigate the effect of media reporting and imported cases on transmission. The results revealed that reducing the intensity of media reporting, which would result in a significant increasing of the contact rate and a sizable decreasing of the contact-tracing rate, could aggravate the outbreak severity by increasing the cumulative number of confirmed cases. It also demonstrated that diminishing the imported cases could alleviate the outbreak severity by reducing the length of the epidemic and the final size of the confirmed cases; conversely, delaying implementation of lockdown strategies could prolong the length of the epidemic and magnify the final size. These findings suggest that strengthening media coverage and timely implementing of lockdown measures can significantly reduce infection.

Suicide among Ugandan university students: evidence from media reports for 2010-2020.

University students are in transition to adulthood and face multiple challenges that may lead to suicide. They are reported to have a higher risk of suicide by the World Health Organization. As there is no national suicide database in Uganda, we analysed student suicide using the press/media reports of suicides published between 2010 and 2020. A total of deaths by 23 suicide were identified: 19 were males, relationship problems were the main suicide reason (n = 6) and hanging was the most frequently used suicide method (n = 7). A strategic intervention to tackle suicide risk among university students is warranted.

Application of a Scorecard Tool for Assessing and Engaging Media on Responsible Reporting of Suicide-Related News in India.

BACKGROUND: Each year there are more than 800,000 deaths by suicide across the world, while India alone accounts for one third of female suicides and one fourth of male suicides worldwide. Responsible media reporting of suicide is an important suicide prevention intervention at the population level. There is sufficient evidence to show that the way suicide is reported and portrayed in the media can have a significant impact on individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Recognizing the important role of the media in suicide prevention, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued guidelines for responsible reporting of suicides by the media. The Press Council of India, in 2019 endorsed WHO's guidelines for media reporting of suicides, however there is no evidence that the Indian media is complying with these guidelines. METHODS: To encourage responsible media reporting, we developed a scorecard to assess and rate media reports on suicide. We reviewed several resource documents that contained guidelines on responsible reporting of suicide. After consulting with a team of experts, we arrived at a scorecard that consisted of 10 positive and 10 negative parameters. RESULTS: We applied the scorecard to 1318 reports on suicide from 9 English language newspapers, with the highest readership in India between the dates of 1 April to 30 June 2020. For the articles analyzed, the average positive score across all newspapers was 1.32 and the average negative score was 3.31. DISCUSSION: The scorecard can be a useful tool to assess media reports on suicide and provide metrics for the same. It can facilitate improved monitoring and engagement with media organizations, who can quickly check their own reporting compliance to the WHO guidelines and compare how well they are performing compared to their peers over time.

Aggregated COVID-19 suicide incidences in India: Fear of COVID-19 infection is the prominent causative factor.

Many Indian COVID-19 suicide cases are turning the press-media attention and flooding in the social media platforms although, no particular studies assessed the COVID-19 suicide causative factors to a large extent. Therefore, the present study presents 69 COVID-19 suicide cases (aged 19 to 65 years; 63 cases were males). The suicide causalities are included as follows - fear of COVID-19 infection (n=21), followed by financial crisis (n=19), loneliness, social boycott and pressure to be quarantine, COVID-19 positive, COVID-19 work-related stress, unable to come back home due to lockdown, unavailability of alcohol etc. Considering the extreme psychological impacts related to COVID-19, there emerges a need for countrywide extensive tele-mental health care services.

Effects of media reporting on mitigating spread of COVID-19 in the early phase of the outbreak.

The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is running rampantly in China and is swiftly spreading to other countries in the world, which causes a great concern on the global public health. The absence of specific therapeutic treatment or effective vaccine against COVID-19 call for other avenues of the prevention and control measures. Media reporting is thought to be effective to curb the spreading of an emergency disease in the early stage. Cross-correlation analysis based on our collected data demonstrated a strong correlation between media data and the infection case data. Thus we proposed a deterministic dynamical model to examine the interaction of the disease progression and the media reports and to investigate the effectiveness of media reporting on mitigating the spread of COVID-19. The basic reproduction number was estimated as 5.3167 through parameterization of the model with the number of cumulative confirmed cases, the number of cumulative deaths and the daily number of media items. Sensitivity analysis suggested that, during the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, enhancing the response rate of the media reporting to the severity of COVID-19, and enhancing the response rate of the public awareness to the media reports, both can bring forward the peak time and reduce the peak size of the infection significantly. These findings suggested that besides improving the medical levels, media coverage can be considered as an effective way to mitigate the disease spreading during the initial stage of an outbreak.