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Background: E-learning or electronic learning is a popular modality to address the educational needs of a population. In the context of medical education, E-learning is useful but has its limitations. Aim and Objectives: This study was conducted among 2-year MBBS students of a Government Medical College in South India to know their knowledge, attitude, and practice of E-learning and also to learn from their experiences during the COVID pandemic. Material(s) and Method(s): After obtaining informed consent, students were asked to fill up a questionnaire containing 15 questions in Google Forms and submit it. Result(s): This study shows that more than 70% of students consider themselves capable of using computers for everyday activities. They also reported using search engines and online animations for updated medical information. However, they preferred their course content to be delivered through blended learning, a combination of classroom and E-learning. The students reported poor internet connectivity as a major limitation in E-learning. They also suggested having a separate website for each college where the teaching material can be uploaded by the faculty and can be accessed by all the students of the institution. Conclusion(s): From this study, it can be concluded that a majority of students have good knowledge and are already using E-learning modalities. They are also open to the idea of blended learning for clinical cases.Copyright © 2023 Jeyasudha J, et al.
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Background: Medical imaging is vital in the diagnostic workup and evaluation of patients suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19;hence, radiology healthcare workers (HCWs) were an essential part of the early containment response to the pandemic. Radiology services are facing rising demands to introduce stricter infection control measures, and staff are expected to adhere to the new protocols while coping with a surge in patients. Objective(s): This study aims to identify the knowledge, attitudes and perceptions (KAPs) of radiology HCWs at a single site with regard to workplace preparedness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method(s): A 26-item questionnaire was conducted with radiographers, radiology nurses, and support staff who had direct patient contact. Questions were concerned with involvement in managing suspected or positive COVID-19 patients, knowledge of infection control measures, and attitudes and perceptions in relation to working during the pandemic. Results were analysed using t-tests, chi-square tests, and Spearman's rank-order correlation, with statistical difference set at p<0.05. Result(s): Radiology HCWs self-reported significantly better knowledge of infection control measures and positive work attitudes. Those who had received the flu vaccine had significantly better perceptions of working during the pandemic. Suggested improvements included better organisational structure and more resources, better staff compliance and vigilance, better education, and a clearer focus on staff wellbeing. Conclusion(s): The findings indicate favourable KAPs among radiology HCWs in Singapore with regard to workplace preparedness during the pandemic, but efforts towards sustainability must be considered. Formulating policies to nurture motivated and resilient HCWs during a pandemic is advocated to foster a resilient workforce that is prepared for the next pandemic.Copyright © The Author(s) 2021.
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In contrast to 2018, the 2021 Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Enrollments showed a decrease in undergraduate student enrollment in journalism and mass communication programs as well as decreases in the percentage of minority undergraduate and graduate students enrolled. In addition, it showed an increase in the percentage of programs reporting decreases in their operating budgets and increases in hiring freezes for faculty and staff. These findings, which undoubtedly were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, reflect overall trends in student enrollment and finances at colleges and universities nationwide. However, on a more positive note, the 2021 survey also showed increases in graduate student enrollment as well as continued growth in the percentage of programs offering online degrees and the percentage of students enrolled in journalism sequences. © AEJMC 2023.
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Introduction: The impact of COVID-19 social restrictions on mental wellbeing of health professional students during placement is largely unknown. Conventional survey methods do not capture emotional fluctuations. Increasing use of smartphones suggests short message service (SMS) functionality could provide easy, rapid data. This project tested the feasibility and validity of gathering data on Therapeutic Radiography student mental wellbeing during clinical placement via emoji and SMS. Methods: Participants provided anonymous daily emoji responses via WhatsApp to a dedicated mobile phone. Additional weekly prompts sought textual responses indicating factors impacting on wellbeing. A short anonymous online survey validated responses and provided feedback on the method. Results: Participants (n = 15) provided 254 daily responses using 108 different emoji;these triangulated with weekly textual responses. Feedback concerning the method was positive. 'Happy' emoji were used most frequently;social interaction and fatigue were important wellbeing factors. Anonymity and opportunity to feedback via SMS were received positively;ease and rapidity of response engendered engagement throughout the 3-week study. Conclusions: The use of emoji for rapid assessment of cohort mental wellbeing is valid and potentially useful alongside more formal evaluation and support strategies. Capturing simple wellbeing responses from a cohort may facilitate the organisation of timely support interventions. © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.
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Introduction: The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico required close communication with the population by the health authority through press conferences at both federal and local levels. Objectives: To analyze the press conferences issued by the health authority in a city in northern Mexico on a daily basis and broadcast by local press, in order to determine if they were used to educate for health and on which topics. Methodology: Qualitative research through content analysis of the press conferences issued during the period from January 26, 2021 to March 12, 2021. Results: 5 thematic axes were identified, revealing health education through these press conferences. Conclusion: Press conferences during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic were used for the purpose of both informing and educating, in order to provide relevant medical information to population, helpful to take care of their health during and after the pandemic. The participation of the media was key in this regard.
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Background: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, social media have influenced the circulation of health information. Public health agencies often use Twitter to disseminate and amplify the propagation of such information. Still, exposure to local government-endorsed COVID-19 public health information does not make one immune to believing misinformation. Moreover, not all health information on Twitter is accurate, and some users may believe misinformation and disinformation just as much as those who endorse more accurate information. This situation is complicated, given that elected officials may pursue a political agenda of re-election by downplaying the need for COVID-19 restrictions. The politically polarized nature of information and misinformation on social media in the United States has fueled a COVID-19 infodemic. Because pre-existing political beliefs can both facilitate and hinder persuasion, Twitter users' belief in COVID-19 misinformation is likely a function of their goal inferences about their local government agencies' motives for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective: We shed light on the cognitive processes of goal understanding that underlie the relationship between partisanship and belief in health misinformation. We investigate how the valence of Twitter users' goal inferences of local governments' COVID-19 efforts predicts their belief in COVID-19 misinformation as a function of their political party affiliation. Methods: We conducted a web-based cross-sectional survey of US Twitter users who followed their state's official Department of Public Health Twitter account (n=258) between August 10 and December 23, 2020. Inferences about local governments' goals, demographics, and belief in COVID-19 misinformation were measured. State political affiliation was controlled. Results: Participants from all 50 states were included in the sample. An interaction emerged between political party affiliation and goal inference valence for belief in COVID-19 misinformation (∆R 2=0.04; F 8,249=4.78; P<.001); positive goal inference valence predicted increased belief in COVID-19 misinformation among Republicans (ß=.47; t 249=2.59; P=.01) but not among Democrats (ß=.07; t 249=0.84; P=.40). Conclusions: Our results reveal that favorable inferences about local governments' COVID-19 efforts can accelerate belief in misinformation among Republican-identifying constituents. In other words, accurate COVID-19 transmission knowledge is a function of constituents' sentiment toward politicians rather than science, which has significant implications on public health efforts for minimizing the spread of the disease, as convincing misinformed constituents to practice safety measures might be a political issue just as much as it is a health one. Our work suggests that goal understanding processes matter for misinformation about COVID-19 among Republicans. Those responsible for future COVID-19 public health messaging aimed at increasing belief in valid information about COVID-19 should recognize the need to test persuasive appeals that address partisans' pre-existing political views in order to prevent individuals' goal inferences from interfering with public health messaging.
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Before the COVID-19 pandemic, journalism and mass communication (JMC) schools were increasingly integrating online educational delivery into their programming. The pandemic then forced instructors to transition all programming almost overnight to emergency remote teaching environments. This had an acute disruption on applied courses within JMC professions. As higher education pivots toward an uncertain future amidst a likely endemic COVID-19, JMC instructors will need access to evidence-supported pedagogy that can be contextualized across modalities. This five-round Delphi study featured a panel of 24 experienced online JMC educators, who co-constructed a framework of pedagogical practices and instructional design strategies for designing, delivering, supporting, and evaluating rigorous experiential learning activities in online environments. The resulting framework—called The EXCEL Online Framework—is comprised of 36 primary and 59 ancillary practices that JMC educators can contextualize to their online courses. Analysis revealed the primary practices aligned closely with principles of the Cognitive Apprenticeship Model. [ FROM AUTHOR]
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The Covid-19 pandemic has forced people worldwide to stay home for long periods. Dance schools and sports clubs have organized online courses. Homes have thus become a stage for body movements. Although online gym classes seem like a new phenomenon, they had a predecessor in the radio gym classes of the 1930s. Belgian dancer Lea Daan (1906-1995), schooled in modern dance by German choreographer Rudolf von Laban, gave gym classes in Dutch for the newly founded National Radio Institute and succeeded in creating a sense of community without any visual means. This paper investigates how Daan organized these live classes and how they fitted within the broader framework of home culture during the economic crisis. We also reflect on the relation between the private and public spheres, a relation reinforced by the modern home through specific architectural elements intended to reform all household members.
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The outbreak of Covid-19 epidemic has been a once in an event which had altered the life as we had known. Governments and authorities across the world had taken every possible cautious action to avoid the spread of this unusual corona virus outbreak with prime concern over quarantines and lock downs forcing people to stay at their homes. This epidemic had ramifications in the media and entertainment industries, with severe consequences for films, entertainment events, theme parks and other conventional sources of entertainment. As a diversion from boredom, the first lockdown imposed behavior modifications and promoted experimentation. This has made the entertainment business significantly less predictable, necessitating far more flexible and reactive content suppliers, particularly traditional broadcasters. However, as the duration of these lockdowns stretched, people started to look for alternative sources of entertainment to keep their sanity in such stressful periods. This in turn resulted into an increase in digital media consumption in India. The purpose of this study is to determine the most powerful source of entertainment of this period, including a change away from conventional media, particularly among the younger generation, while also analyzing the demands of their forefathers. It has been observed that the millennial generation doesn't prefer radio as compared to older generations do, and the decline in usage and shift in behavior is striking. The younger generation has stopped listening to the radio and has instead resorted to streaming, with many of those surveyed preferring on-demand choices. This illustrates that younger music enthusiasts just aren't as interested in radio as their elder siblings, parents, and grandparents were, which also demonstrates that streaming is generally more desirable. As part of the research, a response from more than 100 persons was sought from various generations which have formed the basis of conclusions of this study.
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This study is a comparative text analysis of Al Jazeera English, BBC News, and CNN on the Coronavirus pandemic. Only the text-based news from April 13 to April 20, 2020, were collected from the official Facebook pages of the respective news organizations. Based on the framing theory, the computer-based text analysis using MAXQDA software was used to conduct the research. The study found how these internationally recognized media outlets frame their news using word frequency, the combination of multiple words, and semantic relationships among the news published on their Facebook pages. A total of 105 news were selected out of 185 and 89,465 words were analyzed to observe how they framed the Novel Coronavirus crisis. Six individual frames were found and the results revealed four similarities and two differences among the frames. The similarities and differences were discussed based on different approaches to framing including proximity and political agendas.
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Starting March 2020, Romania has been faced with a health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, a crisis reflected in media communication. In such situations, media play a crucial role in making relevant information timely and accessible, to help people learn about and understand what this pandemic is and how it is assessed, how to protect themselves, and what measures are taken by the authorities. This study aims to analyse how Romanian students keep informed during this national and global crisis, which also generates adjacent media phenomena such as an increase in misinformation, lack of transparency in communicating with the public or over-abundance of information. To this end, we applied a questionnaire which was answered by 426 students from a public university in Romania. The results show that students use many sources to get the information they consider important, believe that the types of messages that help them feel properly informed about the pandemic and its implications: data, figures, accurate facts, and the information received from authorities or experts and that they prefer multimedia digital content. Young people tend to be cautious concerning the transparency of official communication and continue to consume information transmitted by the mainstream media, perceived as being more credible than other news sites. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Postmodern Openings / Deschideri Postmoderne is the property of Lumen Publishing House 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.)
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The spread of misinformation, facilitated by social media and other digital platforms, has proven to be as destructive to global public health as the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself. Fake news adds challenges to human communication efforts, producing tension, misunderstanding, and disbelief. While social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Viber, etc. have provided a huge relief during the lockdown helping reduce mental stress and depression as well as facilitating online education, and work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has also raised concerns over the spread of fake news. In such a situation, online fake news poses a new threat to public health communication as more people now depend on the internet to get health-related information. In response, this study seeks to understand how manipulation of news on social media has posed a threat to Fijian public health. Eventually, some of these have resulted in police investigations.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Deception , Pandemics , Social Media , Communicable Disease Control , Communication , Fiji , HumansABSTRACT
As a crucial element of China's political and cultural life, "banners," or biaoyÇ, have been around for decades, in support of national-level policies such as family planning and the governing mottos of Presidents. The banners that have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic which was also the subject of a national-level driven policy, have been involved in a nation-wide public debate over the language styles of banners used to urge people to stay indoors. Based on the analysis of the early COVID-19 banners and the related online comments, this article analyzes the language style patterns of the banners and the mode of banner circulation. The study found that the manner in which the banners are circulated goes beyond a unidirectional path of on-site instant communication. This process is facilitated by social networks and mass media, which, during circulation, twice created a banner upgrade. The upgrades created decontextualization and function extension of the banners, whereas audience feedback triggered an adaptive adjustment of the language style of the banners. This article suggests that the study of the use and spread of banners, especially the early COVID-19 banners, sheds light on the study of mass communication and discourse style, and also how measures to contain pandemics such as COVID-19 can be communicated.
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COVID-19/prevention & control , Communication , Health Promotion/methods , Pandemics/prevention & control , China , Humans , Mass Media , Social MediaABSTRACT
Due to changes in the information environment since the last global epidemic, high WHO officials have spoken about the need to fight not only the current COVID-19 pandemic but also the related infodemic. We thus explored how people search for information, how they perceive its credibility, and how all this relates to their engagement in self-protective behaviors in the crucial period right after the onset of COVID-19 epidemic. The online questionnaire was circulated within 48 h after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Slovenia. We gathered information on participants' demographics, perception of the situation, their emotional and behavioral responses to the situation (i.e., self-protective behavior), perceived subjective knowledge, perceived credibility of different sources of information, and their level of trust. We looked into the relationships between perceived credibility and trust, and self-protective behavior of 1,718 participants and found that mass media, social media, and officials received relatively low levels of trust. Conversely, medical professionals and scientists were deemed the most credible. The perceived credibility of received information was linked not only with lower levels of negative emotional responses but also with higher adherence to much needed self-protective measures, which aim to contain the spread of the disease. While results might vary between societies with different levels of trust in relevant governmental and professional institutions, and while variances in self-protective behavior scores explained by our model are modest, even a small increase in self-protective behavior could go a long way in viral epidemics like the one we are facing today.