No Lights, No Camera, No Action: Indian Movie Industry Practitioner Perspectives on Life After the Pandemic

How does the Indian movie industry recoup, rebuild and rejuvenate post-COVID-19? Are there new pathways opening up? Is digitization one of them? These are the hot topics that are being discussed by practitioners in the Indian movie industry, since the global pandemic, COVID-19, reduced India as a nation from a thriving movie industry to a struggling movie industry. They are illustrative of entrepreneurial failure in the Indian movie industry, exposed by COVID-19. There is an urgent need to develop alternate pathways for revenue generation to protect the Indian movie industry from further decline. With close to 2000 movies being released each year, the movie industry was one of the largest employment-generating industries in India, bringing both income and joy to people's lives in a nation beset by vast differences in wealth. However, it has been based on theatrical exhibition rather than digitization, with a lukewarm response to digital providers, to its detriment. During the pandemic, lack of digital innovation flipped from `might do' to `must do' in order to ensure the many family businesses in the Indian movie industry survive and monetize developed content. Though India's poor lost out on their share of entertainment due to screen closures, digitization ensured that the growing middle class could be catered to. However, the business model is rapidly changing and the role of the producer as an entrepreneur is diminishing because artists and technicians are directly striking deals and developing content with funding from digital providers.

The Bigger Picture: Coronavirus in the Context of the History of the American Film Industry

In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, many commentators on American life predicted that people "would never” be able to do a variety of social activities again, even post-pandemic. Among these activities was going to movie theaters. Because theaters were already competing for audiences with the growing number of streaming services, and so many viewers migrated to streaming once lockdowns began, some observers argued that movie theaters would not survive the pandemic. This chapter argues that theaters will in fact survive, for two reasons: the history of the American film industry, including theatrical distribution, is a history of adaptation to threats;and human sociability will ensure that people will still go out to movies even when they can watch them at home. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Twitter User Sentiments Analysis: Health System Cyberattacks Case Study

Social media, such as Twitter, allow people to interact with ongoing events and share their sentiments. Therefore, people use social media to report and express their emotions about events they are experiencing. Furthermore, some officials take advantage of the popularity of social media to keep the public informed, especially during emergent events. Researchers have covered sentiment analysis on Twitter in many fields, such as movie reviews, stocks, politics, health, and sports. However, there is a research gap in studying the public's concerns on social media when a cybersecurity breach occurs and how people's sentiment changes over time. To fill the gap, The researchers selected the cyberattacks against Universal Health Services (UHS) during the late days of September 2020 and collected a large dataset of related tweets over five weeks. Live-streaming tweets and historical ones both were compiled. The focus while gathering tweets was in the context of cyberattacks on UHS using keywords and hashtags such as Universal Health System, UHS cyberattack, UHS Ransome, UHS security breach, and UHS locked. Then, the researchers determined tweets' sentiment classification on this developing event using deep learning of Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and their accuracies. Furthermore, the researchers performed exploratory data analysis for the dataset supplying information about how sentiment has changed over time to compare the sentiment per week since the start of these cyberattacks on UHS. This study is the first to provide an analysis of the public's sentiment toward a significant cybersecurity breach on a healthcare provider dealing with COVID-19 based on a large-scale dataset extracted from social media feeds. © 2023 IEEE.

Impact of movie-watching on cross-selling revenue in shopping malls: Implications for post-pandemic recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted consumers to postpone in-store purchases and shift to online shopping, decreasing overall retail spending. As the global lockdown eases and shoppers return to offline stores and malls, shopping malls seek to facilitate in-store consumer experiences at entertainment facilities. Given the importance of entertainment facilities to the cross-selling revenue of shopping malls, we investigate the relationship between consumers' movie-watching and subsequent (hedonistic) grocery purchases. Our analysis of a panel database that includes transaction details at the consumer level shows that movie-watching is negatively correlated with consumer spending. Furthermore, consumers' psychological states induced by content and contextual factors moderate the negative effect of movie-watching;after watching a fantasy (as compared to thriller) genre or watching a movie in a less crowded theater, consumers are more likely to make hedonic purchases at the supermarket. These findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for retail operators exploring cross-selling opportunities post-pandemic. © 2023

Impact of COVID-19 and Online Streaming Services on the Movie Theater

Movie Theaters in India face a big crisis amid COVID-19, which leads to the shutdown of Theaters for more than five months. In the meantime, Online Streaming Services are expanding their business and revenue like never before. This scenario raises the very prominent questions (1) whether the movie theater business will survive this hard time and get back to normal growth and business once COVID-19 cases will reduce. The situation gets back to `old normal'. (2) Will Online Streaming services and Movie Theater business co-exist in the future, as Satellite TV and Movie Theater exist for many decades. Based on data from an empirical survey conducted among regular moviegoers, this paper questions the claims of the industry that the Movie Theater business is in danger due to the emergence of online streaming services. It has been observed that the increase in traffic on these online streaming services is mainly because of the lockdown situation, and once theater reopens and the COVID-19 health crisis went, people will get back to Theaters in a large number. Data from the reopening of Theaters in other countries are also showing the same result.

Shaping OTT Movie Consumption through Immersive Cinema: A Qualitative Investigation of Consumer Perspectives

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the entertainment sector saw a worldwide disruption with restrictions on outdoor activities. Consequently, consumers turned towards video and music streaming services for their entertainment consumption. Several film studios have taken the digital release route on over-the-top (OTT) sites to avoid revenue losses and indefinite delays. However, these non-theatrical OTT film releases need to experiment with different strategies to bring the experiences to par with theatrical ones. This exploratory study aims to provide insights on whether Immersive Cinema can be used to imitate the physical world through digital simulation on OTT platforms to gain credibility in a competitive entertainment market. We conducted semi-structured, qualitative interviews with 21 consumers and Focus Group Discussions with 14 MBA students to understand perspectives about Immersive Cinema consumption on OTT platforms and its potential when compared to traditional theatrical releases. Using the findings of this study, OTT platforms can curate their new films as a direct alternative to theatrical releases. © 2022 MDI.

Evaluation of stress and coping skills of nursing students during a COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: The coronavirus epidemic started in Tunisia in March 2020. Health personnel have been in the front line in the fight against this virus since that date. The COVID units of the hospitals and the different hospital services have been reinforced by student nurses (trainees, volunteers.). Objective(s): To evaluate the degree of stress perceived during the COVID-19 pandemic by student nurses. To identify coping skills during a COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): Descriptive, retrospective study conducted in March 2021 on the 60 senior nursing students enrolled in the military health school. We used the Cungi (1997) stress scale and developed a self-questionnaire on coping skills used by the students. Result(s): Our population was 54.3% male and 45.7% female. The average age was 22.6 years. The majority of the senior students (54.3%) worked in units dedicated to the care of patients with COVID-19. On the Cungi Stress Rating Scale, students had very low (13%), low (27%), and high (60%) stress levels. The main coping methods used were watching movies and listening to music (81%), playing sports (80%), praying (75%), rigorously applying social distancing measures and wearing protective gear (73%), talking with friends or psychologists (62%), doing yoga or meditation (34%), drinking herbal tea, alcohol, or taking psychotropic drugs (23%). Conclusion(s): The COVID-19 pandemic is a time of major stress for nursing students. The coping methods used seem insufficient. Psychological support should be provided.

STRESS COPING MECHANISMS OF THE TERTIARY STUDENTS: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY DURING PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic has given many challenges to students, educators, and parents. This study is a phenomenological in nature which was conducted in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic where students were taught online and most of the schools were in a lockdown status. 103 tertiary students voluntarily participated in this study research instruments were answered through google form. Through this study, it was known that among the stress coping mechanisms (SCM), chatting with friends and watching movies and entertaining comedies were the two SCM that were most commonly employed by the tertiary students. They also overcome their stresses through prayers, reading religious scripts and listening spiritual songs which was commonly employed by the respondents. It is somehow good to note that removing oneself from the stressful situation and learning how to manage time properly making oneself busy with academic activities and sharing one’s problem with parents, friends, and teachers and regularly doing physical exercises are also other ways opted by the respondents to reduce their stress during the pandemic. However, among the SCMs, contacting professionals like psychologists or counsellors turned to be not commonly employed by the respondents which seem to be another interesting field of research to venture on.

The Impact of Ott Platforms on the Short Film Genre

Short films have always been there but in the last few years, the craving for the format has increased. The main reason for its popularity is the variety for the audience and a learning experience for the filmmakers. Platforms like Netflix and Vimeo are the most influential participants in the business, catering to movie makers across the world. For millennials, short films are a way to learn and for the experts, it is a way to explore. OTT platforms have emerged stronger than ever since 2020 and that is because of the freedom it provides for filmmakers to explore global genres bypassing the commercially burdensome processes of the industry. The audience is looking to explore new, woke and informed content, they are tapping into global industries to connect with the contents, characters, and the ideas that hold a mirror to the society. The short film industry provides a myriad of genres and ideas that are focused on connecting with the audience and keeping them engaged for twenty to forty minutes. This article explores the impact of the OTT platforms on the short film categories and the opportunities, and value it has created in the industry. It will also discuss the importance of OTT platforms, their regulations and the growing demand for the new content. We will also look at some global industry data and analyse investment trends in the OTT space.

Risk heatmaps as visual displays: Opening movie studios after the COVID-19 shutdown.

Upon shutting down operations in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie industry assembled teams of experts to help develop guidelines for returning to operation. It resulted in a joint report, The Safe Way Forward, which was created in consultation with union members and provided the basis for negotiations with the studios. A centerpiece of the report was a set of heatmaps displaying SARS-CoV-2 risks for a shoot, as a function of testing rate, community infection prevalence, community transmission rate (R0), and risk measure (either expected number of cases or probability of at least one case). We develop and demonstrate a methodology for evaluating such complex displays, in terms of how well they inform potential users, in this case, workers deciding whether the risks of a shoot are acceptable. We ask whether individuals making hypothetical return-to-work decisions can (a) read display entries, (b) compare display entries, and (c) make inferences based on display entries. Generally speaking, respondents recruited through the Amazon MTurk platform could interpret the display information accurately and make coherent decisions, suggesting that heatmaps can communicate complex risks to lay audiences. Although these heatmaps were created for practical, rather than theoretical, purposes, these results provide partial support for theoretical accounts of visual information processing and identify challenges in applying them to complex settings.

A Hybrid Recommender System for Improving Rating Prediction of Movie Recommendation

Because of COVID-19 pandemic, online movies are now extremely popular. While the movie theaters have not serviced and people are staying quarantine, movies are the best choice for relaxing and treating stress. In present, recommender systems are widely integrated into many platforms of movie applications. A hybrid recommender system is one promising technique to improve the system performance, especially for cold-start, data sparsity, and scalability. This paper proposed a hybrid of matrix factorization, biased matrix factorization, and factor wise matrix factorization to solve all mentioned drawback problems. Simulation shows that the proposed hybrid algorithm can decrease approximately 11.91% and 10.70% for RMSE and MAE, respectively, when compared with the traditional methods. In addition, the proposed algorithm is capable of scalability. While the number of datasets is tremendously increased by 10 times, it is still effectively executed. © 2022 IEEE.

Analysis on OTT Platformsin India: Its Rise and Future

The internet or net as it is known today has become an essential part of our living experience. Most industries operations have been drastically altered by the internet. Because of the increasing use of the internet among the audience, the Indian entertainment sectorhas seen significant changes in its operations. Gone are the times when we had to wait a week to catch up on the latest episode of our favourite television series or look forward to blockbuster movies being shown on large screens. Consumers increasingly becoming well-versed in the new technology and the customization and personalization of products and streaming services this technology provides,are the reasons for the surge in the usage of OTT platforms--Platforms for online video content screening and streaming--and therefore preferring it over the traditional television/cable system. The future of these OTT platforms is even assuring as these online services are being made more accessible by the internet's availability.Also, with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI), OTT platforms are able to optimize their delivery as they can learn about their customers preferences and hence give a user rice experience. This review paper will attempt to explore the rise of these OTT platforms, factors influencing their success, how Covid played an important role in its growth andtheir future.

Movie Theaters' Social Media Use During COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Beyoglu Movie Theater

Movie theaters were closed down during the COVID-19 pandemic leaving them with no way of communicating face-to-face with their target audiences and, more importantly, they lost an important source of revenue. Social media became one of the most important tools used by movie theaters to communicate with their target audiences during the pandemic. In this regard, this study seeks answers to the research problem: "Does social media provide new opportunities for independent movie theaters to continue their activities?" Accordingly, this article analyzes how movie theaters used social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, through the example of Beyoglu Movie Theater's use of Twitter. Beyoglu Movie Theater was sampled since it is an independent movie theater, which has the largest number of followers on Twitter in Turkey. In terms of methodology, this article employs a descriptive analysis and a content analysis to examine 794 tweets and retweets shared by Beyoglu Movie Theater between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020. The topic codes identified in the Tweets have been classified under 26 different categories. As an outcome, it was revealed that the tweets by Beyoglu Movie Theater underwent a major transformation. The use of social media evolved from promoting movie showtimes and selling tickets before the pandemic into a form that focuses on maintaining the connection with audiences and asking them for material support during the pandemic. Finally, this article concludes that Beyoglu Movie Theater's use of social media during the pandemic can be read as an example of participatory culture expressed by Jenkins, in contrast to passive media audience.

COVID-19's Impact on the Box office: Machine Learning and Difference-in-Difference

As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, and non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) continue to be strengthened, the impact of COVID-19 on the film industry has not yet been clearly quantified. In this study, the Difference-in-Difference model is used to quantify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the box office. Results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has a significant negative effect on the daily global box office. Additionally, based on a research dataset containing information on movies and COVID-19, ten machine learning methods were used to build a prediction model of the cumulative global box office. The experimental results showed that Extremely Randomized Trees had the best predictive performance, and it was found that COVID-19 features helped improve the predictive performance of several models. © 2021 IEEE.

Cinemaximum Movie Theaters During the Covid-19 Global Pandemic

This study looked into how movie theaters used social media during the pandemic, through the example of Cinemaximum movie theaters and Twitter. The reason for selecting Cinemaximum is that it is Turkey’s largest cinema chain and its movie theaters have the largest number of followers on social media. The study used the descriptive analysis and the content analysis method to examine 1006 tweets shared by Cinemaximum on Twitter between January 1 and December 15, 2020. At the end of the study it was seen that the Cinemaximum Twitter account was used actively in line with the company’s needs during the global pandemic. Differences were seen between shares posted prior to 16 March and those posted after this date. The topic codes identified in the Tweets were classified under 16 different categories. It was seen that the topics covered most in Tweets posted when movie theaters were open were “Films” (movie showtimes and information about the movie to be shown);when movie theaters were closed, “Entertainment” (competitions, games, questions, riddles, messages promoting participation (tagging your friend, etc.), humor, interesting information);and in July, when preparations were being made to reopen movie theaters, “Preparations for reopening the theaters.” When viewed in general, it can be said that the Tweets shared when movie theaters were open and in July when preparations to reopen them were underway were written primarily for marketing purposes, with a focus on advertising and promotion, and that those written when movie theaters were closed were focused on public relations.Alternate : Araştırmada küresel salgın döneminde sinema salonlarının sosyal medyayı nasıl kullandığı, Cinemaximum sinema salonları ve Twitter örneği üzerinden incelenmiştir. Cinemaximum’un ele alınmasının nedeni Türkiye’deki en büyük sinema zinciri olması ve sosyal medyada en fazla takipçiye sahip sinema salonu olmasıdır. Araştırmada Cinemaximum’un Twitter hesabında 1 Ocak-15 Aralık 2020 tarihleri arasında paylaştığı 1006 tweet, betimsel analiz yöntemi ve içerik analizi tekniğinden faydalanılarak incelenmiştir. Çalışma sonucunda Cinemaximum Twitter hesabının, küresel salgın döneminde ihtiyaçlar doğrultusunda aktif bir şekilde kullanıldığı görülmüştür. 16 Mart tarihinden önce yapılan paylaşımlarla, sonra yapılan paylaşımlar arasında farklılıklar tespit edilmiştir. Tweet’lerde tespit edilen konu kodları, araştırmada 16 farklı kategori altında sınıflandırılmıştır. Sinemaların açık olduğu dönemlerde ‘Filmler’ (Film gösterim programı ve gösterimi yapılacak filmler hakkında bilgi), kapalı olduğu dönemlerde ‘Eğlence’ (Yarışmalar, oyunlar, sorular, bilmeceler, katılım sağlama amaçlı mesajlar, mizah, ilginç bilgiler), sinema salonlarını yeniden açılma hazırlıklarının yapıldığı Temmuz ayında ise ‘Sinemaları yeniden açma hazırlıkları’ kategorisinde sınıflandırılan konuların, tweet’lerde en sık kullanılan konular olduğu görülmüştür. Genel olarak değerlendirildiğinde paylaşılan tweet’lerin, sinemaların açık olduğu dönemde ve sinemaların yeniden açılma hazırlıklarının yapıldığı Temmuz ayında öncelikle pazarlama çalışmaları kapsamında ‘reklam ve tanıtım’ amaçlı;sinemaların kapalı olduğu dönemde ‘Halkla Ílişkiler’ amaçlı olarak hazırlandığı söylenebilir.

Adoption Social Media-Movie Based Learning Project (SMMBL) To Engage Students' Online Environment

Developing ICT as English Language Teaching (ELT) materials in Indonesia is still being studied in higher education contexts. Nowadays, amid covid 19 there are many tools, apps and technologies are being integration in virtual classroom. ICT can be used as media for teaching and learning process it should be related today’s fact by integrating ICT easy enough to share it and easy to access by the students’ technologies devices (Muthmainnah, et.all, 2021 and Apriani et.al, 2021 The purposes of this study is to investigate the impact of development instructional design incorporating social media-movie based learning project (SMMBLP) in Computer Science Faculty in learning English to engagement student’s online environment. The method of this study is quantitative research and used pre-experimental design to investigates the impact of SMMBLP on students’ English skill and student’s motivation in ELT. The participants in this study were the first semester students of Computer Science Faculty academic year 2020-2021 at Universitas Al Asyariah Mandar consisted 40 students. The data were collected by test;pre-test, post-test and questionnaire. The result of the study implied the impact on integration social media-movie based learning project (SMMBLP) that very effective to enhancing students’ English skill and motivation. The study suggests SMMBL can be integration in online or Hybrid/ Blended environment for the next education teaching model in ELT for EFL students. © 2022, Pegem Akademi Yayincilik Egitim Danismanlik Hizmetleri Ticaret A.S.. All rights reserved.

An Updated Analysis on the Risk Factors Associated with COVID-19 Transmission

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global public health disaster and knowledge of its associated risk factors provides protection/slowdown against its transmission. AIM: This study was undertaken to investigate all major risk factors associated with transmission of the COVID-19 infection. METHODS: The data on the risk associated factors for the COVID-19 transmission were collected from the Texas Medical Association, Center for Disease Prevention and Control, World Health Organization, and Health and Safety Executive. The collected data were combined, analyzed, and presented as percentage mean ± SD. RESULTS: The collective data showed that among games such as playing football and basketball are highly risky followed by swimming in public pool and playing at the beach. Whereas, playing golf and tennis are not risky (p < 0.05). Moreover, the carryout food from the restaurants is much safer as compared with eating at buffet, in restaurants (p < 0.01). The data on social gathering showed that religious places, sports stadium, music concert, cinema halls, amusement parks, attending funerals, and wedding showed a higher risk of spreading COVID-19. The data on general outing showed that going to gymnasium, traveling by bus or plane, and visiting in salon are highly risky (p < 0.01) for COVID-19 infection. Moreover, hugging, shaking hands, and kissing are also highly risky for the COVID-19 infection. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides the collective information on the risk factors associated with the COVID-19 transmission. The findings can contribute to the concerned authorities to formulate the preventive measures to limit spread of the COVID-19 infection.

Effect of COVID-19 on the Screen Time of the Children in Pakistan

Objectives: This study intended to look at how people were receiving information on COVID-19, how children spent time during the COVID-19 pandemic and if the screen time for children had increased during the pandemic. Study Design: The study was descriptive in nature and a quantitative Place and Duration of the Study: Data was collected from parents visiting OPDs in four hospitals of Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi in three months from July to September 2020. Material and Methods: Quantitative survey design was used, data (N=923) were collected using self-administered scale and checklist. Results: Most of the information about COVID-19 was received either through TV (50.8%) or through online social media (33.6%). Most children were spending their time either playing (32.2%) or watching cartoons/movies (19.6%). Screen time of children in the lockdown period was increased. 87.4% children used screens for at least 2 hours per day during the lock down whereas 69.1% used screen for more than 2 hours before COVID-19. Most often used devices were mobile/tablet/PC in 64.2% whereas TV was viewed 34.9% of the time. Conclusion: Most COVID-19 related information was gathered online, and a large proportion of children spent their time in front of screens. There is a need to understand the serious implications of increased screen time for children and to develop effective strategies to reduce screen time of the children.

Occupational stress at work during the Covid-19 pandemic: hospital nurses’ coping strategies

Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic has been increasing nurses’ exposure to occupational stress and despite the relevance of organizational strategies, coping strategies may also play role in stress reduction. This study aimed to analyze coping strategies of hospital nurses to deal with occupational stress during the Covid-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: Qualitative-exploratory study performed with hospital nurses in Brazil. We carried out individual online interviews following an open-ended questions script. Data were recorded, transcripted, and analyzed using thematic analysis. All ethical concerns were respected. Results: Based on the theoretical framework, we found three categories: 1) Problem-focused coping strategies: proper use of PPE;better workplace organization;dealing with the problem in work and seeking help from experts to do it;not postponing activities that can be done at the moment;establishing effective communication;reflecting on stress events;reducing workloads when possible. 2) Emotion-focused coping strategies: use of prescribed drugs for depression and anxiety;getting support from families and friends;increase of food and alcohol consumption;watching non work-related movies and TV series;reading;practicing physical activities;making handicrafts;singing and listening to music;praying;enjoying quality time with family and pets. 3) Meaning-focused coping: spirituality;playing with coworkers to relieve the tension;focussing on patients care and on the bright side of things. Conclusions: Coping strategies help nurses to stay at work despite precarious workplace conditions and safety.

Japanese medical and nursing students ponder on kissing: Post publication impressions of a 2014 review

Objective: To find what freshman medical and nursing students in Japan, think about kissing behavior as practiced in Japan. Methods: Freshman students who entered the medical and nursing curriculum (N = 37, with 12 men and 25 women) at a national university in 2015 were asked the question: 'Write your impressions and criticism to a published editorial 'Kissing behavior among Japanese' (Internat Med J., 2014;21: 374-375) Results: Obtained results are summarized in two tables. Majority of the students expressed that kissing practices in Europe or America differs from the kissing behavior in Japan. Whereas kissing in public places are more common in Europe or America as a form of greeting, this is hardly seen in Japan because kissing is mainly considered as a gesture/signal of erotic love in Japan. Two female students raised a question and a concern related to kissing as a mode of transmission of AIDS disease. Another male student had humorously asked, "Aren't fellatio or cunnilingus, a kind of kissing?" Conclusion: Among the 37 responses on kissing behavior of Japanese, we highlight two;(1) More researchers should research about kissing, not independently but collaboratively;(2) The risk of infections caused by kissing behavior has to be investigated. These suggestions have high relevance now due to the coronavirus disease---2019 (COVID-19) lockdown experi-enced in Japan in 2020 and 2021.