ABSTRACT
Education has gone through rapid changes during the emergency remote teaching period resulting by the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes, in part, have been associated with educational institutions attempting to implement a viable solution to the problem of distance education. Although organizational management theory literature suggests that great change in very little time results in a detrimental psychological phenomenon called change fatigue in employees and that this phenomenon has even been investigated in the context of teaching staff in the past;there have been no attempt at understanding change fatigue from a student perspective. This quantitative study attempts at proposing a structural equation model towards the understanding of how to change fatigue and other variables, namely, digital literacy, online learning attitude and school alienation that might have been influenced by it have affected teacher candidates after resuming face-to-face education followed by a 1.5 year of emergency remote teaching period. Results indicated that change fatigue predicts school alienation and yet;does not predict online learning attitude;hinting that there might be another category of alienating organizational change that universities have gone through that does not solely involve online education. Nevertheless, digital literacy is a beneficial skill for all students that helps bolster online learning attitudes and reduce overall school alienation.
ABSTRACT
Uptake of a booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine is effective in preventing infection and severe consequences caused by COVID-19. The present study examined the effects of negative attitudes towards vaccination in general and trust in government on uptake of a COVID-19 booster dose, as well as the moderating role of psychological reactance to pro-vaccination messages in Hong Kong. An observational prospective cohort study using online survey was conducted among 264 adults. Findings showed that, after adjustment for significant background characteristics, negative attitudes towards vaccination in general negatively predicted uptake of a booster dose, and trust in government positively predicted uptake of a booster dose. In addition, the association between negative attitudes towards vaccination in general and uptake of a booster dose was weaker among those who reported a higher level of psychological reactance. The present study highlighted the importance of improving attitudes towards vaccination in general especially among those who are not experiencing psychological reactance, and building trust in government. This study also suggested that interventions aimed at improving attitudes towards vaccination in general should seek to avoid psychological reactance, and special attention should be given to people who are experiencing psychological reactance to pro-vaccination messages.
ABSTRACT
The contexts of social and political polarization are generating new forms of communication that affect the digital public sphere. In these environments, different social and political actors contribute to extreme their positions, using bots to create spaces for social distancing where hate speech and incivility have a place, a phenomenon that worries scientists and experts. The main objective of this research is to analyze the role that these automated agents played in the debate on social networks about the Spanish Government's management of the global COVID-19 pandemic. For this, "Social Big Data Analysis" techniques were applied: machine learning algorithms to know the positioning of users, bot detection algorithms, "topic modeling" techniques to learn about the topics of the debate on the web, and sentiment analysis. We used a database comprised of Twitter messages published during the confinement, as a result of the Spanish state of alarm. The main conclusion is that the bots could have served to design a political propaganda campaign initiated by traditional actors with the aim of increasing tension in an environment of social emergency. It is argued that, although these agents are not the only actors that increase polarization, they do contribute to deepening the debate on certain key issues, increasing negativity.
ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the phenomenon of technostress in medical students and its predictors during pandemic-prompted distance education. From a sample of 259 students in a school of medicine at a public university in Turkey, the data were collected using convenience sampling through an online questionnaire based on person-environment misfit theory and were analyzed by means of descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptively, the participant students reported experiencing relatively mild level of technostress. As a result of the multiple regression analysis, regular attendance and participation, adequate learning environment, perceived negativity of distance education, perceived need for psychological support, and year at medical school were all found to be significant predictors of technostress in medical students. This is the first study evaluating technostress on medical students. Students who do not attend classes regularly, do not have an adequate learning environment, have higher degree of perceived negativity of distance education, have need for psychological support and are at higher grade levels experience more technostress. Finally, according to the person-environment misfit theory the major component of technostress in medical students originated from the tool-related component. Although the level of technostress was relatively low, technological tools generate pressure even on the digital native generation.
ABSTRACT
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the phenomenon known as conspiracy theories started to develop under the uncertainty of what is going to happen next and why we are forced to live in times like that. Meanwhile, researchers tried to develop as soon as possible a vaccine that would mitigate the damage caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and eventually put an end to this pandemic. But, the effort of creating a vaccine is threatened by a vast number of people that tend to reject the idea of vaccination because of distrust in vaccine efficiency, fear related to side effects, the composition of vaccine and so on. What fuels these negative attitudes towards anti-Covid-19 vaccination are the controversies born from conspiracy theories, that tend to be attractive to some categories of people, such as younger individuals, women, people with low-income levels, a low level of education and people from ethnic minorities. In this paper, I tried to capture what are the reasons for people's vaccine hesitancy, and how we can resolve this problem.
ABSTRACT
Although the COVID-19 vaccine has been recommended as the safer and more effective prevention for COVID-19 disease relative to other alternative medications, yet across the globe, many people are resistant to receiving it. Setting out to explain such a paradox, we conducted an online survey among a sample of Indonesians (N = 4758) when the World Health Organisation (WHO) granted authorisations for the clinical trial of various vaccines against COVID-19. The results revealed that participants' support for theories that the COVID-19 vaccine is invented to harm their nation (i.e., COVID-19 vaccine conspiratorial beliefs) positively corresponded with the perceptions that international collaboration in the COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial is not aligned with their nation's actual needs (i.e., the perceived assumptive international collaboration) and negative attitudes towards the vaccine. In turn, the perceived assumptive international collaboration was positively related to negative attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccine. We also showed that the positive relationship between COVID-19 vaccine conspiratorial beliefs and the perceived assumptive international collaboration in the vaccine clinical trial was more prominent among participants who were strongly resistant to take vaccines supplied by other countries due to national pride (i.e., vaccine national glorification). © 2022 Polish Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
In the absence of a precedence or adequate scientific evidence, competing interests, values, beliefs and worldviews, higher education institutions responded contextually to the challenges that came their way with many of them taking emergency measures to restore basic operations. Because teachers felt unprepared and confused, misconceptions and dissent grew to the extent of generating resistance to what was seen as unreasonable demands being made. Patrick Mafenya using data collected from lecturers and students, report on the deleterious effects of poor internet access and negative attitudes towards online learning on student experience during the first year of the pandemic. Greig Krull et al, narratively document how five learning and teaching support staff at three South African Universities succeeded in co-creating "a safe and authentic online learning environment".
ABSTRACT
The recent COVID-19 pandemic affected educational systems around the world. In order to prevent the virus from spreading, educational institutions around the world have adapted distance education--universities being no exception. To ensure that students benefit the most from online teaching, it is necessary to discover views and suggestions of students to align distance education in parallel to their needs. In this milieu, preservice teachers' views are especially significant for they will implement distance education when they become professional teachers in near future. Thus, the primary purpose of the study was to determine positive and negative aspects of distance education in effect during COVID-19 pandemic, and to uncover suggestions for improving it from the perspective of preservice teachers in College of Education at Aksaray University. A qualitative approach was adapted to achieve the research aim. Data were collected from 214 students registered to an undergraduate program by asking them open-ended questions about their positive and negative views as well as suggestions on distance education. Data were analyzed iteratively as a result of which codes and themes were created. Results indicate that five themes construct participants' view on distance education: Advantages, Personal Development, Internet Connection, Instruction, Other. Generally, it was found that distance education provided many benefits such as giving chances to students to repeat the material, providing equity in opportunity for students, helping students to gain the habit of time management, being efficient and economical, establishing continuity, being helpful to students who need assistance, and being environment friendly by saving paper waste. On the other hand, it is ineffective due to absence of live lectures, lack of technological devices, internet quota, problems because of infrastructure and family environment.
ABSTRACT
Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have negative consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, in increasing negative attitudes towards immigrants. We used participant-level data from 41 countries (N = 55,015) collected as part of the PsyCorona project, a cross-national longitudinal study on responses to COVID-19. Our predictions were tested through multilevel and SEM models, treating participants as nested within countries. Results showed that people's concern with COVID-19 threat was related to greater desire for tightness which, in turn, was linked to more negative attitudes towards immigrants. These findings were followed up with a longitudinal model (N = 2,349) which also showed that people's heightened concern with COVID-19 in an earlier stage of the pandemic was associated with an increase in their desire for tightness and negative attitudes towards immigrants later in time. Our findings offer insight into the trade-offs that tightening social norms under collective threat has for human groups.