Everyday Virtuality: A Multimodal Analysis of Political Participation and Newsworthiness

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, digital interactions ceased to be "just another form of communication”;indeed, they became the only means of social interaction, mediated and driven by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Consequently, working in a digital context switched from being a phenomenon to be studied to the primary means of socializing and the primary workspace for researchers. This study explores four different methodologies to question how discursive interactions related to power and newsworthiness may be addressed in digital contexts. The multimodal approach was reviewed through the affordances of critical discourse analysis, issue ownership and salience, morphological discourse analysis, and protest event analysis. It starts by theoretically addressing concepts of multimodality and phenomenology by focusing on the implications of both perspectives. It examines publications and interactions in digital contexts in Ecuador from March 2017 to December 2020 within three political phenomena. The results of the analysis of these publications and interactions suggest that when analyzing political participation and newsworthiness, the virtual becomes a subjective space. Moreover, qualitative research is one of the primary ways to combine multimodality with other forms of discourse analysis. This paper concludes that perceptions, practices, and meanings assigned to social online representations can be better analyzed through multimodality, which tackles the intertwined characteristics of virtual discourses. © 2023 by the authors.

Beyond Utterances: Embodied Creativity and Compliance in Dance and Dementia

Practices of creativity and compliance intersect in interaction when directing local dances remotely for people living with dementia and their carers in institutional settings. This ethnomethodological study focused on how artistic mechanisms are understood and structured by participants in response to on-screen instruction. Video data were collected from two long-term care facilities in Canada and Finland in a pilot study of a dance program that extended internationally from Canada to Finland at the onset of COVID-19. Fourteen hours of video data were analyzed using multimodal conversation analysis of initiation–response sequences. In this paper, we identify how creative instructed actions are produced in compliance with multimodal directives in interaction when mediated by technology and facilitated by copresent facilitators. We provide examples of how participants' variably compliant responses in relation to dance instruction, from following a lead to coordinating with others, produce different creative actions from embellishing to improvising. Our findings suggest that cocreativity may be realized at intersections of compliance and creativity toward reciprocity. This research contributes to interdisciplinary discussions about the potential of arts-based practices in social inclusion, health, and well-being by studying how dance instruction is understood and realized remotely and in copresence in embodied instructed action and interaction. © 2023 by the authors.

Working toward equity and engagement in an online course for future K-12 teachers

In a multi-ethnography, three teacher educators explore how they intentionally enhanced equity in their online course for teacher candidates (TCs) learning to support English learners from K to 12 during the shift to virtual classrooms due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings suggest that using various digital apps and various multimodal creations was a powerful way to increase engagement and afford TCs experience with equitable practices in their learning. Taking part in this course allowed TCs to imagine ways to make their work with K-12 English learners more equitable. Making ourselves vulnerable as teacher educators had the most powerful impact on teacher-learners as we unpacked our own experiences with oppression and discrimination during the COVID-19 crisis. We address our experiences using the Racial Literacy Development Model (Sealey-Ruiz, 2020) as a lens. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights reserved.

Antecedents of freight transportation for sustainable supply chain in the post-COVID era: an emerging market study

PurposeIn past years, the global supply chain has witnessed devastating effects of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed the interest of the Sustainable Supply Chain (SSC) stakeholders on sustainability. The stakeholders are now rethinking their business processes and strategy to make them sustainable. In this context, the relevant literature is required to support emerging markets to formulate sustainability-focussed strategies. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of potential antecedents that leads towards sustainable development of freight transportation in emerging markets.Design/methodology/approachInitially, the antecedents of the Sustainable Freight Transport (SFT) system are derived from the literature survey followed by verification from the experts. Then, the potential antecedents are categorized under four (social, organizational, operational and environmental) broad categories. Afterwards, a Neutrosophic Analytic Network Process (N-ANP) method is employed to obtain the priority weights of the identified potential antecedents.FindingsThe paper identified and ranked 17 antecedents of the SFT system. According to the study's findings, the top three antecedents of SFT are "the presence of a multimodal transportation system,” "circularity in SFT” and "traffic congestion management”. The results from the study advocate the promotion of existing multi-modal transport facilities which is promising to achieve sustainability. The results suggested the adoption of the digital twin to manage the transport operations.Originality/valueThis study sheds light on how to achieve sustainability in the freight transportation system post-COVID era highlighting the potential antecedents. The study's findings will assist practitioners in developing SFT strategies in the face of such pandemics in future.

Representing agency and action in the #storiesfromvaccination governmental campaign in Romania. A multimodal approach

Vaccination continues to be one of the most debated topics worldwide, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and in countries like Romania, where the COVID-19 vaccination rate is very low. Studies showed that in public pro-vaccination campaigns, despite the tendencies towards using evidence-based content strategies focusing on factual information delivered by experts, emotional content through personal stories also triggers a positive engagement in fostering vaccine confidence. In April 2021, the Romanian Government launched a new Facebook campaign entitled #storiesfromvaccination/ #povestidelavaccinare. Drawing from two concepts (point of view and multimodality) relevant to narrative online health messages, the study has a threefold aim: (1) to investigate the online engagement of the narrative perspectives in the #storiesfromvaccination campaign;(2) to provide a comparative analysis of the multimodal cohesion in the Facebook #storiesfromvaccination multimodal texts posted by various message sources;(3) to identify the various representations of agency and action in the interplay of the three metafunctions (experiential, interpersonal and textual) in the personal stories from vaccination. © The Authors.

DeepCOVID-Fuse: A Multi-Modality Deep Learning Model Fusing Chest X-rays and Clinical Variables to Predict COVID-19 Risk Levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to global healthcare systems, highlighting the need for accurate and timely risk prediction models that can prioritize patient care and allocate resources effectively. This study presents DeepCOVID-Fuse, a deep learning fusion model that predicts risk levels in patients with confirmed COVID-19 by combining chest radiographs (CXRs) and clinical variables. The study collected initial CXRs, clinical variables, and outcomes (i.e., mortality, intubation, hospital length of stay, Intensive care units (ICU) admission) from February to April 2020, with risk levels determined by the outcomes. The fusion model was trained on 1657 patients (Age: 58.30 ± 17.74; Female: 807) and validated on 428 patients (56.41 ± 17.03; 190) from the local healthcare system and tested on 439 patients (56.51 ± 17.78; 205) from a different holdout hospital. The performance of well-trained fusion models on full or partial modalities was compared using DeLong and McNemar tests. Results show that DeepCOVID-Fuse significantly (p < 0.05) outperformed models trained only on CXRs or clinical variables, with an accuracy of 0.658 and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.842. The fusion model achieves good outcome predictions even when only one of the modalities is used in testing, demonstrating its ability to learn better feature representations across different modalities during training.

[Optimisation of risk and crisis communication of governments, authorities and public health institutions-challenges in long-lasting crises illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic]. / Optimierung der Risiko- und Krisenkommunikation von Regierungen, Behörden und Organisationen der Gesundheitssicherung ­ Herausforderungen in lang anhaltenden Krisen am Beispiel der COVID-19-Pandemie.

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the great importance of risk and crisis communication. In a dynamic situation, authorities and policymakers face the challenge of dealing with a large amount of data, reviewing it and communicating it in a way that is appropriate for diverse target groups. Comprehensible and unambiguous information on risks and options for action make a significant contribution to the objective and subjective safety of the population. Hence, there is a great need to use the experience gained from the pandemic to optimize risk and crisis communication.Digitalization enables multimodal arrangements - that is, the combination of text, graphics, icons, images, animations and sound. These arrangements play an increasingly important role in risk and crisis communication. It is of interest to what extent the communicative interaction of authorities, media and other public actors in crisis preparation and management in view of a complex public can be improved with the help of target group-specific communication and how legal certainty can be ensured for official and media practice. Accordingly, the article pursues three objectives:1. It describes the challenges faced by authorities and media actors in pandemic communication.2. It shows the role of multimodal arrangements as well as the necessary research perspectives to grasp the complexity of communicative crisis management in the federal system.3. It provides a rationale for how an interdisciplinary research network from the fields of media, communication and law can gain insights into the evidence-based use of multimodal communication.

Videoed storytelling in primary education EFL: exploring trainees' digital shift

This study explores the challenges and benefits primary education EFL trainees (N = 28) reported when designing and videoing a storytelling session originally intended to be conducted offline with young learners. This change of scenario was caused by the COVID-19 crisis. The data for the study were derived from the trainees' written reflections, focus group interviews, videos of instructional sessions and student-authored multimodal videos, which were explored to interpret trainees' creative processes while engaged in multimodal composing. The results indicate that trainees hold videoed storytelling to have a similar number of challenges and benefits as face-to-face storytelling. However, two of the reported advantages, enhanced creativity and self-confidence, sit at misconceptions based on trainees' limited knowledge of the pedagogical potential of multimodal resources. The findings have important educational implications in helping develop a pedagogy of videoed storytelling, while also highlighting the need for teacher training programs to specifically target the development of teachers' competence in multimodal pedagogy.

Navigating COVID-19 linguistic landscapes in Vancouver's North Shore: official signs, grassroots literacy artefacts, monolingualism, and discursive convergence

This article describes the changing linguistic landscape on the North Shore of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. I present an account of the visual representation of change along the area's parks and trails, which remained open for socially-distanced exercise during the province's lockdown. Following the principles of visual, walking ethnography, I walked through numerous locations, observing and recording the visual representations of the province's policies and discourses of lockdown and social distancing. Examples of change were most evident in the rapid addition to social space of top-down signs, characterised mainly by multimodality and monolingualism, strategically placed in ways that encouraged local people to abide by social-distancing. However, through this process of observation and exploration, I noticed grassroots semiotic artefacts such as illustrated stones with images and messages that complemented the official signs of the provincial government. As was the case with the official signs and messages, through a process of discursive convergence, these grassroots artefacts performed a role of conveying messages and discourses of social distancing, public pedagogy, and community care.

Curriculum Development for Online Teaching and Learning: Academics' Perspectives from A Rural-Based University in South Africa

This study sought to explore academics' perceptions of the development and delivery of curriculum for online teaching and learning in a rural-based university. Technology integration into teaching and learning in higher education is receiving more attention, thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic that has forced all facets of lives to look for alternative methods of operation instead of face-to-face contact. The pandemic saw most institutions of higher learning move their mode of curriculum delivery from face-to-face to multimodal learning using technology. This, however, was done without considering whether the existing curriculum that was accredited to be delivered face-to-face will perfectly fit into multimodal learning. The exploratory research design within the qualitative research methodology was applied in this paper. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques were applied to sample a rural university in Limpopo province of South Africa, and academics respectively. Semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis were employed for data collection and analysis for this paper. The study revealed there is a relationship between curriculum development and the mode of delivery used for teaching. Some of the academics indicated that a lack of technological skills poses a threat to adopting new technologies for teaching. In light of this, the study recommends ICT infrastructure investment and human resource capacitation for proper integration of technology for teaching and learning.

Multimodality Imaging of COVID-19 Using Fine-Tuned Deep Learning Models.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, many studies have been undertaken to provide assistive recommendations to patients to help overcome the burden of the expected shortage in clinicians. Thus, this study focused on diagnosing the COVID-19 virus using a set of fine-tuned deep learning models to overcome the latency in virus checkups. Five recent deep learning algorithms (EfficientB0, VGG-19, DenseNet121, EfficientB7, and MobileNetV2) were utilized to label both CT scan and chest X-ray images as positive or negative for COVID-19. The experimental results showed the superiority of the proposed method compared to state-of-the-art methods in terms of precision, sensitivity, specificity, F1 score, accuracy, and data access time.

Channelling discomfort through the arts: A Covid-19 case study through an intercultural telecollaboration project

In this article we argue, in the context of the current dominance of the performative and instrumental drives characterizing the accountable university, that language and intercultural communication education in universities should also be humanistic, addressing ‘discomforting themes' to sensitize students to issues of human suffering and engage them in constructive and creative responses to that suffering. We suggest that arts-based methods can be used and illustrate this with an intercultural telecollaboration project created in response to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. In this way language and intercultural communication education can become a site of personal and social transformation albeit modest and piecemeal as part of a longer process. Through arts-based methodologies and pedagogies of discomfort, Argentinian and US undergraduates explored how the theme of the Covid-19 crisis has been expressed artistically in their countries, and then communicated online, using English as their lingua franca, to design in mixed international groups artistic multimodal creations collaboratively to channel their suffering and trauma associated with the pandemic. This article analyses and evaluates the project. Data comprise the students' artistic multimodal creations, their written statements describing their creations, and pre and post online surveys. Our findings indicate that students began a process of transformation of disturbing affective responses by creating artwork and engaging in therapeutic social and civic participation transnationally, sharing their artistic creations using social media. We highlight the powerful humanistic role of education involving artistic expression, movement, performativity, and community engagement in order to channel discomforting feelings productively at personal and social levels.

Drawings + Talk: Capturing the Multimodal Authoring of Emergent Bilinguals through Culturally Responsive Teaching

Hao and Brown explore how a teacher-researcher team created a virtual learning space that embraced culturally relevant/responsive literacy practices and supported multimodal authoring practices for emergent bilingual children during COVID-19. The extenuating circumstances of the pandemic closed many heritage language schools, and there was a need to continue literacy learning for Chinese American children. These factors caused to rethink the best ways to maintain culturally responsive and relevant literacy instruction with young learners in a distance-learning format given the power of this approach to move children toward academic success, cultural competence, and an ability to navigate critical consciousness. Their central question was: How did emergent bilingual children make meaning of stories during a virtual book club driven by culturally responsive literacy practices and a multimodal approach to authoring? In this case, they invited eight children and their parents from Ling's Chinese class to join a virtual book club that met once a week to participate in multimodal authoring surrounding read-alouds of texts connected to Chinese culture and language.

"Everything will be all right (?)”: Discourses on COVID-19 in the Italian linguistic landscape

The study of the linguistic landscape (LL) focuses on the representations of languages on signs placed in the public space and on the ways in which individuals interact with these elements. Regulatory, infrastructural, commercial, and transgressive discourses, among others, emerge in these spaces, overlapping, complementing, or opposing each other, reflecting changes taking place and, in turn, influencing them. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all aspects of life, including cities, neighborhoods, and spaces in general. Against this background, the study of the LL is fundamental not only to better understand the ways in which places have changed and how people are interpreting and experiencing them but also to analyze the evolution of COVID-19 discourses since the pandemic broke out. This contribution aims to investigate how and in what terms the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on the Italian LL, considered both in its entirety, as a single body that, regardless of local specificities, responded to and jointly reflected on the shared shock, and specifically, assuming the city of Florence as a case study. The data collected in the three main phases of the pandemic include photographs of virtual and urban LL signs and interviews, which were analyzed through qualitative content analysis with the aim of exploring citizens' perceptions and awareness of changes in the LL of their city. The results obtained offer a photograph of complex landscapes and ecologies, which are multimodal, multi-layered, and interactive, with public and private discourses that are strongly intertwined and often complementary. Furthermore, the diachronic analysis made it possible to identify, on the one hand, points in common with the communication strategies in the different phases, both at a commercial and regulatory level. On the other hand, strong differences emerged in the bottom-up representations, characterized in the first phase by discourses of resilience, tolerance, hope, solidarity, and patriotism, and in the second and third phases by disillusionment, despair, and protest. Copyright © 2023 Bagna and Bellinzona.

Self-Discovery and Healing in Nepantla: Multimodality and Learning by Design in a Mixed Spanish University Classroom

This article explores the enactment of inclusive pedagogical practices in an intermediate, Spanish-as-a-secondlanguage mixed writing class in an R1 university in Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this work examines how the use of authentic resources tied to heritage language (HL) and second language (L2) students' geographic, linguistic, and social identities helped learners unveil and articulate their experiences and struggles during the pandemic. All curricular elements were grounded in the multiliteracies framework "Learning by Design."Students' learning also relied on translanguaging. The first part of the article provides a theoretical introduction, and it reviews previous studies. This is followed by the presentation of the instructional context and an example of an intervention based on the works of Chicanx writer Gloria Anzaldúa. The next sections focus on the qualitative and social semiotic analyses of learners' multimodal interpretations and personal appropriations of Anzaldúa's concept of "nepantla."The results revealed similarities and differences between the HL and L2 learners in terms of the themes embedded in their artifacts and the chosen modes of communication. As expected, themes connected with COVID-19 played a prominent role for both student populations. The social semiotic analysis showed a high degree of congruity between the employed multimodal resources and the messages conveyed, which points to the effectiveness of Learning by Design to contribute to HL and L2 students' growth as multimodal communicators. Also, the comprehensiveness and richness of the emotions expressed in all artifacts suggest that both groups could connect with the task at a deeply personal level. © Common Ground Research Networks, Gabriela C. Zapata, All Rights Reserved.

An Exploration of a Novice Kindergarten Teacher's Enactment of Multiliteracies Pedagogy during the Pandemic: A Case Study of a Virtual Kindergarten Classroom

We aim to gain insight into technology-enhanced literacy learning for kindergarten students during the COVID-19 pandemic by exploring a novice kindergarten teacher's practice of multiliteracies pedagogy in his virtual kindergarten classroom. This qualitative case study collected data from multiple sources such as virtual interviews and classroom observations, the Kindergarten Program (KP) document, teacher's reflective notes, lesson plans, students' artefacts, and researchers' observational notes and reflective journals. This study found that although the novice kindergarten teacher provided various multimodal learning opportunities for students, his literacy practice emphasized phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and letter-sound correspondence. Also, he faced numerous challenges due to inadequate teacher preparation and professional development, inconsistency of the quality and utility of technology, constraints of virtual learning for young learners, varying degrees of parental support, and challenges of implementing multiliteracies pedagogy with young children virtually. This study contributes to the existing literature on online learning for kindergarten students and expands the burgeoning multiliteracies research from physical to virtual learning environments. Also, this study demonstrates how virtual learning opens up opportunities to advance the multiliteracies pedagogy and highlights the importance of strengthening teacher education programs and providing continuous professional development for teachers. © 30th International Conference on Computers in Education Conference, ICCE 2022 - Proceedings.

Multimodal Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring Students' Preferences

This study explores students' preferences for the various online learning activities that leveraged digital learning tools. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 23 education major students who learned online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students found the multimodal activities effective in making them stay focused, engaged and acquire new knowledge and skills at a deeper level. © ICCE 2022.All rights reserved.

A Case of Thoracic Esophageal Cancer Treated with COVID-19 Pneumonia during Preoperative Chemoradiotherapy(CRT).

INTRODUCTION: There is concerned that prognosis of cancer-bearing patients is adversely affected by postponement of cancer treatment due to infection with a new type of coronavirus(COVID-19). We report a case of thoracic esophageal cancer treated with COVID-19 pneumonia during preoperative CRT. A 60-year-old female diagnosed as having Stage IV thoracic esophageal cancer(cT3N0M1LYM[104R])started receiving preoperative chemoradiotherapy. On the 12th day, she had a fever and was diagnosed with COVID-19 infection. CRT temporarily interrupted and she was treated for COVID-19 pneumonia preferentially. CRT was resumed promptly after remission. Finally, video-Assisted radical esophagectomy was performed. There were no postoperative complications. Nivolumab was started as an adjuvant therapy on the 2nd postoperative months. CONCLUSION(S): We experienced a case of thoracic esophageal cancer in which COVID-19 pneumonia was treated during preoperative CRT, and CRT and surgery were completed without complications by appropriate treatment.

Everyday information behavior during the "new normal” of the Covid-19 pandemic: approaching the notions of experiential and local knowledge

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to understand everyday information behavior (IB) during the Covid-19 pandemic at the "new normal” stage, focusing on the notions of experiential knowledge (EK), i.e. knowledge acquired by first-hand experience or in personal interactions, and local knowledge (LK) as perception of local environment. Design/methodology/approach: Seventeen interviews were carried out in February–May 2021, in a district of the city of Madrid (Spain). Interview transcripts were analyzed according to grounded theory, to identify major and complementary themes of EK and LK. Findings: Participants' stories show that EK cooperated with information originating from government, scientific authorities and mainstream media, in patterns of convergence and divergence. While convergence produces "thick knowledge” (knowledge perceived as solid, real and multidimensional), divergence leads to uncertainty and collaboration, but it also supports a critical stance on authorities' information. In addition, participants' perceptions of LK emphasize its human component. LK and EK are exchanged both explicitly and tacitly. Originality/value: The paper presents the first approach to understanding EK and LK and their function during the health crisis, characterizing them as alternative information systems and as topics deserving major attention in research on IB and crisis management. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

High-Risk Pulmonary Embolism During Labor: JACC Patient Care Pathways.

While in labor, a 37-year-old woman developed acute dyspnea, hypoxemia, and tachycardia. Transthoracic echocardiography demonstrated severe right ventricular dilation and dysfunction, raising the suspicion of acute pulmonary embolism. The patient indeed had bilateral pulmonary embolism, necessitating percutaneous thrombectomy. Her course was complicated by another saddle pulmonary embolus, heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, and COVID-19 infection. This clinical case illustrates the importance of prompt diagnosis of acute pulmonary embolism in a peripartum female patient, the multidisciplinary approach of management, and how to approach clinical complications such as heparin-induced thrombocytopenia. Furthermore, long-term management in acute pulmonary embolism is presented.