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This chapter contributes to the scholarly literature in crisis communication by emphasizing on the media coverage of the first three months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Canadian newspapers. Indeed, described as a health, social, and economic crisis, Covid-19 swiftly plunged the world into a state of crisis. Media coverage of the pandemic contributes to crisis communication, by attempting to make sense of the new coronavirus and its many impacts on global order. Thanks to an innovative methodological approach, we analyzed the journalistic coverage through a simultaneous tripartite process of staging the protagonists (Who?), selecting different facets of social reality (What?), and positioning with respect to professional ideals (How?). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023. All rights reserved.
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PURPOSE: The COVID-19 pandemic led to concerns about increases in suicidal behaviour. Research indicates that certain types of media coverage of suicide may help reduce suicidality (the Papageno effect), while other types may increase suicidality (the Werther effect). This study aimed to examine the tone and content of Canadian news articles about suicide during the first year of the pandemic. METHODS: Articles about suicide from Canadian news sources were collected and coded for adherence to responsible reporting of suicide guidelines. Articles which directly discussed suicidal behaviour in the COVID-19 context were identified and compared to other suicide articles in the same period. Lastly, a thematic analysis was conducted on the sub-sample of articles discussing suicide in the COVID-19 context. RESULTS: The sub-set of articles about suicide in the COVID-19 context (n = 103) contained significantly more putatively helpful content compared to non-COVID-19 articles (n = 457), such as including help information (56.3% Vs 23.6%), quoting an expert (68.0% Vs 16.8%) and educating about suicide (73.8% Vs 24.9%). This lower adherence among non-COVID-19 articles is concerning as they comprised over 80% of the sample. On the plus side, fewer than 10% of all articles provided monocausal, glamourized or sensational accounts of suicide. Qualitative analysis revealed the following three themes: (i) describing the epidemiology of suicidal behaviour; (ii) discussing self and communal care; and (iii) bringing attention to gaps in mental health care. CONCLUSION: Media articles about suicide during the first year of the pandemic showed partial adherence to responsible reporting of suicide guidelines, with room for improvement.
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COVID-19 , Suicide , Humans , Pandemics , Canada , Suicide/psychology , Mass MediaABSTRACT
Background: Associations between sensational news coverage of suicide and increases in suicidal behavior have been well documented. Amid growing concern over the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicide rates, it is especially important that news coverage adheres to recommended standards. Method: We analyzed the quality and content of print and online UK news reports of possible COVID-19-related suicides and suicide attempts in the first 4 months of the pandemic (N = 285). Results: The majority of reports made explicit links between suicidal behavior and the COVID-19 pandemic in the headline (65.5%), largely based on statements by family, friends, or acquaintances of the deceased (60%). The impact of the pandemic on suicidal behavior was most often attributed to feelings of isolation (27.4%), poor mental health (14.7%), and entrapment due to government-imposed restrictions (14.4%). Although rarely of poor overall quality, reporting was biased toward young people, frontline staff, and relatively unusual suicides and, to varying degrees, failed to meet recommended standards (e.g., 41.1% did not signpost readers to sources of support). Limitations: This analysis cannot account for the impact of reporting on suicide. Conclusion: Careful attention must be paid to the quality and content of reports, especially as longer-term consequences of the pandemic develop.
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In the US, the absence of a coordinated national response to the COVID-19 pandemic left decision-making to state and local leaders. In Texas, debate over how best to decrease the virus' spread highlighted political tensions between the Republican state leadership and the predominantly Democratic county- and city-leaders. We analyze the daily newspapers of two major cities, Houston and El Paso, to understand similarities and differences in local pandemic-related concerns. We focus specifically on three periods: the days immediately following the first case of COVID-19 in Texas in March 2020, the days surrounding the peak of the first major spike in July 2020, and the days surrounding the second, more deadly spike in January 2021. We trace the progression of the pandemic in Houston and El Paso, analyzing the prevalent newspaper themes and illustrating regional differences through word clouds, which provide a visual analysis of the COVID-19 related coverage. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
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Nonnational students in the Anglophone Caribbean are often affected by natural or man-made disasters that affect their experiences in the host country. However, the region had never experienced pandemic disasters such as COVID-19. Its occurrence highlighted latent concerns such as prejudices, border issues, and weak institutional support despite the existence of geopolitical treaties. Using the concept of the looming vulnerability framework, and incorporating a transformative lens, the research examined factors that contributed to these students' vulnerabilities at institutions of higher education in the Caribbean during the pandemic. A qualitative research design using regional newspapers accounted for students' collective voices. The results showed that nonnational students' mental well-being was affected by factors including institutional role, management of communication, access to resources, their governments' expression of financial support, and perceived discrimination from the host community. The article highlights the potential for students' further marginalization in the absence of pragmatic disaster preparedness plans.
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This paper describes the indicators of the emotional tone of newspapers daily news about coronavirus epidemic, published in various countries at the beginning of the epidemic. The total sample is 12,000 news entries published between 1st and 30th March 2020 in Italian, German, French and Russian languages. Among the countries under consideration, the most stable tone of the published news was observed in Russia, the predominantly negative tone of news records was in France, and positive tone was found in Italy. It is shown that the emotional tone of news was strongly related with the increase in the pandemic indicators, and was less related with the absolute indicators of its spread. The emotional tone of the press was stronger determined by the global events associated with the pandemic than by the spread within their own country. Three to 4 days was the size of the sliding window during which the press maintained the tone of the published news. Hierarchical regression method was used for built models for predicting the tone of the next day's press for each of the analyzed countries: France (R-2 = 0.78), Italy (R-2 = 0.75), Germany (R-2 = 0.76), Russia (R-2 = 0.85). The most relevant predictors were identified for each model. The most significant contribution for France and Italy was made by the parameters of the spread of the epidemic in the world in the previous 3 days and the emotional tone of the local media in the previous 3 days. The indicator of the emotional tone of the press in the previous 4 days and the emotional tone of the Italian media in the previous 1-2 days had a great explanatory power for Germany. In Russia, one can note the impact of global indicators of the spread of the epidemic and the emotional tone of the media in previous days.
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PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the main keywords, network properties, and main topics of news articles related to artificial intelligence technology in the field of nursing. METHODS: After collecting artificial intelligence-and nursing-related news articles published between January 1, 1991, and July 24, 2022, keywords were extracted via preprocessing. A total of 3,267 articles were searched, and 2,996 were used for the final analysis. Text network analysis and topic modeling were performed using NetMiner 4.4. RESULTS: As a result of analyzing the frequency of appearance, the keywords used most frequently were education, medical robot, telecom, dementia, and the older adults living alone. Keyword network analysis revealed the following results: a density of 0.002, an average degree of 8.79, and an average distance of 2.43; the central keywords identified were 'education,' 'medical robot,' and 'fourth industry.' Five topics were derived from news articles related to artificial intelligence and nursing: 'Artificial intelligence nursing research and development in the health and medical field,' 'Education using artificial intelligence for children and youth care,' 'Nursing robot for older adults care,' 'Community care policy and artificial intelligence,' and 'Smart care technology in an aging society.' CONCLUSION: The use of artificial intelligence may be helpful among the local community, older adult, children, and adolescents. In particular, health management using artificial intelligence is indispensable now that we are facing a super-aging society. In the future, studies on nursing intervention and development of nursing programs using artificial intelligence should be conducted.
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Artificial Intelligence , Nursing Research , Child , Humans , Aged , AdolescentABSTRACT
This paper explores the proximity of local media to audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a case study of Italian daily L'Eco di Bergamo combining two sets of data: a list of initiatives the newspaper took in 2019 and 2020 to be closer to audiences, and interviews shedding light on how staff viewed the paper's relationship with audiences during that time. An analysis of these two datasets shows that the pandemic increased the newspaper's proximity to audiences but did not fundamentally change the way in which it related with audiences, despite significant changes in journalists' work routines. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a conceptualization of proximity as a dynamic balance between three structuring dimensions (gatekeeping, social and commercial), with a focus on audiences as a plural figure determined by news organizations' strategies. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journalism Studies is the property of Routledge 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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This study explored how The New York Times and the Dallas Morning News used visuals on their front pages to frame the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Findings indicated that the Times was more likely to publish COVID-related images on the front page, use the threat frame in its images, and use photographs taken by staff photojournalists than sourced from wire services or freelancers. The two newspapers were equally likely to give prominence to COVID-related photos on their front pages, by publishing them above the fold. The implications of these trends are discussed. © 2023 SAGE Publications.
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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze media coverage of the pharmaceutical industry before and after the COVID-19 lockdown to determine whether the coverage changed in light of a global health-care crisis and the fast-track development of vaccines and antiviral treatments.Design/methodology/approachThe top five US newspapers were audited, comparing the 12-month periods before and after March 2020 coinciding with the pandemic lockdown, yielding 493 front-page articles and editorials. Each headline and full-text article was separately analyzed and categorized as either positive, negative or neutral toward the pharmaceutical industry. A frequency analysis of the hot button issues covered in each article was conducted.FindingsYear 1 and Year 2 audit results were compared to identify changes in media coverage pre- and post-lockdown. The amount of coverage of the industry increased 145% and the tone of both headlines and articles shifted dramatically. Only one of the five newspapers had a net positive article rating of the industry pre-lockdown, four of five were net positive post-lockdown. The proportion of positive headlines increased 165%. The top issues discussed in the coverage shifted from persistent challenges for the industry (e.g. opioid crisis, high cost of drugs) to the emergence of the virus and status of vaccine development.Originality/valueThis research establishes how media coverage of the pharmaceutical industry changed as the industry responded to a global health-care crisis and identifies implications for industry stakeholders.
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This paper describes the indicators of the emotional tone of newspapers daily news about coronavirus epidemic, published in various countries at the beginning of the epidemic. The total sample is 12,000 news entries published between 1st and 30th March 2020 in Italian, German, French and Russian languages. Among the countries under consideration, the most stable tone of the published news was observed in Russia, the predominantly negative tone of news records was in France, and positive tone was found in Italy. It is shown that the emotional tone of news was strongly related with the increase in the pandemic indicators, and was less related with the absolute indicators of its spread. The emotional tone of the press was stronger determined by the global events associated with the pandemic than by the spread within their own country. Three to 4 days was the size of the sliding window during which the press maintained the tone of the published news. Hierarchical regression method was used for built models for predicting the tone of the next day's press for each of the analyzed countries: France (R2 = 0.78), Italy (R2 = 0.75), Germany (R2 = 0.76), Russia (R2 = 0.85). The most relevant predictors were identified for each model. The most significant contribution for France and Italy was made by the parameters of the spread of the epidemic in the world in the previous 3 days and the emotional tone of the local media in the previous 3 days. The indicator of the emotional tone of the press in the previous 4 days and the emotional tone of the Italian media in the previous 1−2 days had a great explanatory power for Germany. In Russia, one can note the impact of global indicators of the spread of the epidemic and the emotional tone of the media in previous days. © 2022 National Research University Higher School of Economics. All rights reserved.
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ABSRACT Objectives: To find the effect of information channels on Covid-19 acceptance among university students of Rawalpindi/ Islamabad. Study Design: Cross sectional analytic study. Place and Duration of Study: Study was conducted in four imminent Universities in Rawalpindi/Islamabad, Air University, Rawalpindi Medical University, Riphah University and Quaid-e-Azam University, Rawalpindi, from May to Aug 2022. Methodology: Participants from four universities in Rawalpindi/Islamabad Pakistan, were recruited for this current research from May to August 2022. A sample size of 377±14 was computed using the Rao soft sample size calculator, maintaining a 5% margin of error and a 95% confidence interval a population proportion (50%). Non-probability convenient sampling was used. Data was analysed using SPSS version 26. Results: There were 377 students recruited, out of which majority 207(55%) were female. Most of the students were in the Medicine and allied fields 227(60.2%). Almost, half of the respondents (44.56%) received information about the COVID-19 vaccine from mobile networks. The level of trust in vaccine information was also highest for Mobile Networks (31.30%). Participants' perceptions of the covid 19 risk, 156(41%) revealed high concerns for infecting family and friends with the virus. There was a significant association of female gender (p<0.05) and being from the Medicine and allied fields (p=p<0.05) with vaccine acceptance. Conclusion: In our study the mobile and traditional media were reported as the main sources of information about the COVID-19 vaccination however they were not significantly associated with vaccine acceptance. Female gender, education level and being from the Medicine and allied fields was associated with intention to be vaccinated.
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Major media outlets have run many articles on the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the public suffers cognitive and emotional effects related to COVID-19 from such reports, we analyzed and reviewed the topics of news reports. We searched newspaper articles with the term ‘COVID-19' term in four Korean daily newspapers from January 20, 2020, when the first patient in Korea was found, to June 15, 2020. Topic modeling analysis was conducted through text mining using R. Five themes were found: "Changes in people's everyday life,” "Socio-economic shock,” "Trends in infection,” "Role of the government and business,” and "Increased psychological anxiety,” which all showed sharp increases in articles from mid-February to early March and then decreased. Despite the increased psychological anxiety people suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, this topic showed the fewest articles. "Changes in people's everyday life” showed the most, focusing attention on stimulating lifestyle articles of general interest. Since the COVID-19 pandemic can lead to mental health problems due to severe changes and isolation in everyday life, a comprehensive response to the news focusing on the impact on the mental health of the population around the world should be made. © 2023, Tech Science Press. All rights reserved.
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Newspapers and News Websites have become a part and a crucial medium in society. They provide information regarding the events that are happening around and how society is getting influenced by these events. For example, a pandemic like Covid-19 has raised the importance of these mediums. They have been giving detailed news to society on a variety of topics, such as how to detect the strains of the coronavirus, reasons for lockdown along with what are the other restrictions to be followed during the pandemic. They also provided information about the government policies which were built to be taken care of in case of pandemics and so on and they kept updated with the details about the development of the vaccines. Due to this lot of information on Covid-19 is generated. Examining the different topics/themes/issues and the sentiments expressed by different countries will aid in the understanding of the covid-19. This paper discusses the various models which were built to identify the topics, sentiments, and summarization of news headlines and articles regarding Covid-19. The proposed topic model has achieved a Silhouette score of 0.6407036, 0.6645274, 0.6262914, and 0.6234863 for 4 countries like South Korea, Japan, the UK, India on the news articles dataset, and it was found that the United Kingdom was the worst-hit, and it had the largest percentage of negative sentiments. The proposed XlNet sentiment classification model obtained a validation accuracy of 93.75%. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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This article analyzes the representation of women in Chinese news reports about COVID-19 in order to examine the consequences of the pandemic on gender relations in China. It draws on the linguistic framework of appraisal theory for identifying evaluative language and takes Chinese news reports on the COVID-19 frontline in 2020 as the major data sources. The study finds that while the narrative about women's capacity in combating the virus, resolution in the face of adversity, and sense of responsibility help build a shared feeling of community to reconstruct the disturbed social order, the descriptions about the evaluation and feelings of female characters lead to undesirable outcomes in gender relations in China. Specifically, the newspapers' reports on COVID-19 mainly focus on group interests and accomplishments and overlook women's contributions in containing the pandemic. Meanwhile, the news reports devoted to constructing model female characters that highlight transcendent qualities place considerable pressure on everyday women. Furthermore, journalists tend to infuse their reports with gender bias when depicting women, including aesthetic appreciation of appearance and a focus on emotional reactions and domestic roles, which hinders the professional identity of women. This article sheds light on gender relations in China amid the pandemic, as well as the study of gender equality in media discourse.
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COVID-19 , Humans , Female , Male , East Asian People , Sexism , Interpersonal Relations , LanguageABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: More people are turning to internet pharmacies to purchase their prescription medicines. This kind of purchase is associated with serious risks, including the risk of buying fake medicines, which are widely available on the internet. This underresearched issue has been highlighted by many newspaper articles in the past few years. Newspapers can play an important role in shaping public perceptions of the risks associated with purchasing prescription medicines on the internet. Thus, it is important to understand how the news media present this issue. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore newspaper coverage of the problem of purchasing fake prescription medicines on the internet. METHODS: Newspaper articles were retrieved from the ProQuest electronic database using search terms related to the topic of buying fake prescription medicines on the internet. The search was limited to articles published between April 2019 and March 2022 to retrieve relevant articles in this fast-developing field. Articles were included if they were published in English and focused on prescription medicines. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the articles, and the Theory of Planned Behavior framework was used as a conceptual lens to develop the coding of themes. RESULTS: A total of 106 articles were included and analyzed using thematic analysis. We identified 4 superordinate themes that represent newspaper coverage of the topic of buying prescription medicines on the internet. These themes are (1) the risks of purchasing medicines on the internet (eg, health risks and product quality concerns, financial risks, lack of accountability, risk of purchasing stolen medicines), (2) benefits that entice consumers to make the purchase (eg, convenience and quick purchase, lower cost, privacy of the purchase), (3) social influencing factors of the purchase (influencers, health care providers), and (4) facilitators of the purchase (eg, medicines shortages, pandemic disease such as COVID-19, social media, search engines, accessibility, low risk perception). CONCLUSIONS: This theory-based study explored the news media coverage of the problem of fake prescription medicines being purchased on the internet by highlighting the complexity of personal beliefs and the range of external circumstances that could influence people to make these purchases. Further research is needed in this area to identify the factors that lead people to buy prescription medicines on the internet. Identifying these factors could enable the development of interventions to dissuade people from purchasing medicines from unsafe sources on the internet, thus protecting consumers from unsafe or illegal medicines.
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The COVID-19 pandemic generated tremendous journalistic attention, and occurred during a period of increasing politicization and polarization in America's news media. This study considers the intersection of both phenomena, and the extent of politicization in recent and historical pandemic-related reporting. Results suggest that political topics, actions and actors have frequently been the focus of COVID-19-related reporting, and that such political content has grown more substantial over time.
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This paper describes the indicators of the emotional tone of newspapers daily news about coronavirus epidemic, published in various countries at the beginning of the epidemic. The total sample is 12,000 news entries published between 1st and 30th March 2020 in Italian, German, French and Russian languages. Among the countries under consideration, the most stable tone of the published news was observed in Russia, the predominantly negative tone of news records was in France, and positive tone was found in Italy. It is shown that the emotional tone of news was strongly related with the increase in the pandemic indicators, and was less related with the absolute indicators of its spread. The emotional tone of the press was stronger determined by the global events associated with the pandemic than by the spread within their own country. Three to 4 days was the size of the sliding window during which the press maintained the tone of the published news. Hierarchical regression method was used for built models for predicting the tone of the next day's press for each of the analyzed countries: France (R-2 = 0.78), Italy (R-2 = 0.75), Germany (R-2 = 0.76), Russia (R-2 = 0.85). The most relevant predictors were identified for each model. The most significant contribution for France and Italy was made by the parameters of the spread of the epidemic in the world in the previous 3 days and the emotional tone of the local media in the previous 3 days. The indicator of the emotional tone of the press in the previous 4 days and the emotional tone of the Italian media in the previous 1-2 days had a great explanatory power for Germany. In Russia, one can note the impact of global indicators of the spread of the epidemic and the emotional tone of the media in previous days.
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Purpose: This study explored the meaning of the social perceptions of nurses in online news articles during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Methods: A total of 339 nurse-related articles published in Korean online newspapers from January 1 to December 31, 2020, were extracted by entering various combinations of OR and AND with the four words "Corona,” "COVID,” "Nursing,” and "Nurse” as search keywords using BIGKinds, a news database provided by the Korea Press Foundation. The collected data were analyzed with a keyword network analysis and topic modeling using NetMiner 4. Results: The top keywords extracted from the nurse-related news articles were, in the following order, "metropolitan area,” "protective clothing,” "government,” "task,” and "admission.” Four topics representing keywords were identified: "encouragement for dedicated nurses,” "poor work environment,” "front-line nurses working with obligation during the COVID-19 pandemic,” and "nurses' efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19.” Conclusion: The media's attention to the dedication of nurses, the shortage of nursing resources, and the need for government support is encouraging in that it forms the public opinion necessary to lead to substantial improvements in treating nurses. The nursing community should actively promote policy proposals to improve treatment toward nurses by utilizing the net function of the media and proactively seek and apply strategies to improve the image of nurses working in various fields. Copyright © 2022 The Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education.
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The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus represents the greatest crisis the world has faced in recent decades. Especially during the first waves, Spain was one of the European countries most affected by the pandemic. Although several studies have been carried out on the media coverage of the crisis, they have largely focused on the news genre. This study examines newspaper editorials' approach to the issue, helping to analyse the perspective offered in opinion genres. To this end, the editorials of four Spanish newspapers were analysed from January 2020 to August 2021 (N = 243). The results reflect a strong politici-zation of the pandemic, both echoing and reinforcing political tension, and leaving more technical or scientific issues on a secondary plane. © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.