Is Twitter Enough? Investigating Situational Awareness in Social and Print Media during the Second COVID-19 Wave in India

The COVID-19 pandemic required efficient allocation of public resources and transforming existing ways of societal functions. To manage any crisis, governments and public health researchers ex-ploit the information available to them in order to make informed decisions, also defined as situational awareness. Gathering situational awareness using so-cial media, has been functional to manage epidemics. Previous research focused on using discussions during periods of epidemic crises on social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook and developing NLP techniques to filter out important/relevant discussions from a huge corpus of messages and posts. Social media usage varies with internet penetration and other socio-economic factors, which might induce disparity in an-alyzing discussions across different geographies. How-ever, print media is a ubiquitous information source, irrespective of geography. Further, topics discussed in news articles are already 'newsworthy', while on social media 'newsworthiness' is a product of techno-social processes. Developing this fundamental difference, we study Twitter data during the second wave in India focused on six high-population cities with varied macro-economic factors. Through a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, we further analyze two Indian newspapers during the same period and compare topics from both Twitter and the newspapers to evaluate sit-uational awareness around the second phase of COVID on each of these platforms. We conclude that factors like internet penetration and GDP in a specific city influence the discourse surrounding situational updates on social media. Thus, augmenting information from newspapers to information extracted from social media would provide a more comprehensive perspective in resource-deficit cities © 2022 IEEE.

COVID-19 and the ethiopian newspaper industry: Challenges and opportunities

COVID-19 affected all global activities. The print media industry was one of the affected fields. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 brought to the Ethiopian newspapers. Political Economy of Media theory is used to analyse data obtained from documents and in-depth interviews with managers of two leading media houses;the governmentowned Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) and the private Capital newspaper. The findings show that print media faced two key challenges. First, their circulation decreased due to the COVID-19 as a result of the economic recession. This was compounded by the second challenge, based on the fact that not only don't these newspapers own printers, they also lack a established formal distribution infrastructure. As a result, they still had to pay highly for printing while selling copies at a reduced price. However, media hybridisation, innovative projects, and sponsored pages helped the newspapers stay on the market. This study recommends that newspaper publishers run their printing machines, expand the media technology, change the attitude of print journalists, and capacitate them to utilise media hybridisation as important solutions. © 2022 by Agaredech Jemaneh and Carol Azungi Dralega.

Willingness to Use Internet-Based Versus Bibliotherapy Interventions in a Representative US Sample: Cross-sectional Survey Study.

BACKGROUND: Self-help interventions have the potential to increase access to evidence-based mental health care. Self-help can be delivered via different formats, including print media or digital mental health interventions (DMHIs). However, we do not know which delivery format is more likely to result in higher engagement. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were to identify if there is a preference for engaging in print media versus DMHIs and whether there are individual differences in relative preferences. METHODS: Participants were 423 adults between the ages of 18 and 82 years (201/423, 47.5% female) recruited on Prolific as a nationally representative sample of the US population, including non-Hispanic White (293/423, 69.2%), non-Hispanic Black (52/423, 12%), Asian (31/423, 7%), Hispanic (25/423, 6%), and other individuals (22/423, 5%). We provided individuals with psychoeducation in different self-help formats and measured their willingness to use print media versus DMHIs. We also assessed participants' demographics, personality, and perception of each format's availability and helpfulness and used these to predict individual differences in the relative preferences. RESULTS: Participants reported being more willing to engage with print media than with DMHIs (B=0.41, SE 0.08; t422=4.91; P<.001; d=0.24, 95% CI 0.05-0.43). This preference appeared to be influenced by education level (B=0.22, SE 0.09; t413=2.41; P=.02; d=0.13, 95% CI -0.06 to 0.32), perceived helpfulness (B=0.78, SE 0.06; t411=13.66; P<.001; d=0.46, 95% CI 0.27-0.66), and perceived availability (B=0.20, SE 0.58; t411=3.25; P=.001; d=0.12, 95% CI 0.07-0.30) of the self-help format. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests an overall preference for print media over DMHIs. Future work should investigate whether receiving mental health treatment via participants' preferred delivery format can lead to higher engagement.

Credibility, resilience and sustainability and the Covid-19 pandemic: A study of Kannada print media

The Indian Media industry was affected by the pandemic circulation, and revenue started declining. Print media organisations devised ways to cope with the financial instability by cutting down their workforce, closing down editions, merging various editions, reducing the number of pages and salary cuts of their employees. Print revenues declined by a 41% fall in advertising and a 24% fall in circulation revenues. (FICCI, 2021) The regional newspapers could recover a large part of their circulation. Print in India is thriving in Tier II & Tier III cities due to the opportunities available for literacy, economy, and population size. Diversity in India fuels the growth of traditional media. This paper seeks to analyse the Kannada Print media during the pandemic. Kannada is the official language of Karnataka, situated in the south-west part of the Indian Union. The study analyses how the Kannada Newspaper organisations operated during the pandemic. In-depth interviews with the management and the editorial team were conducted to understand their coping strategies to deal with the pandemic. The analysis points out that the print media organisation’s credibility and resilience have helped them sustain themselves in the market. © 2022, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Faculty of Journalism. All rights reserved.

Social Media Use and the Spread of COVID-19-Related Fake News among University Students in Bangladesh

Context: After its emergence in China in 2019, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged in Bangladesh on March 8, 2020. Since then, this virus has got wide coverage in print and electronic media. Rumours and fake news have also begun to spread across online and offline media. Objectives: This study aimed to discuss how social media is being used to spread fake news during the COVID-19 pandemic and the reasons behind this. In addition, this paper examines the overall use of social media by university students and their role in sharing fake news on social media. Methodology: An online survey was used to collect data from students who had a minimum of one social media account. Facebook groups, messengers and emails were used for data collection and 264 responses were recorded. Findings: This study found that 92.8% of students received COVID-19-related news on social media, 61% experienced fake news in many cases. This is because most users of social media share news without checking its authenticity and reliability, and without checking facts against reliable sources. It was also found that most students were fairly confident in detecting fake news and checked the authenticity of the news before sharing it on social media. Originality/Value: This is the initial effort in Bangladesh to recognise the role of social media in propagating false news during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the sample size of this study was very small. Further studies with larger sample sizes may reveal a more evident understanding of this topic. © 2022 World Scientific Publishing Co.

Analyzing online opinions and influence campaigns on blogs using BlogTracker

Blogging has become an essential part of the new print media of the 21st century despite the emergence of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, with many news agencies, media outlets, journalists and users using this medium to write without any restriction on topics of choice or events that happen over the world. Although social networking sites have also become a hotbed where users share their views, it suffers from distraction when users try to air their views on topics that affect them due to character limitation, real-time toxic behavior, and content ownership rights. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit are sometimes used to drive traffic to blogs sites. The blogosphere, defined as the network of blogs, is growing at an exponential rate. Medium.com and WordPress.com are among the top blogging platforms, with WordPress leading the way as a top blogging platform and followed by other platforms like Medium, Hashnode, Tumblr, and blogger. Analyzing blog data helps understand the pulse of a society, know what resonates with a community, and recognize the grievances of a group, among other reasons. Since there is no character limit in blogs, unlike Twitter, blogs allow much depth in discourse, allowing it to be an effective platform for setting narratives. Blogs also provide a convenient platform to develop situational awareness during a socio-political crisis or humanitarian crisis in a conflict-torn region or a disaster-struck area. To address the difficulty of having a publicly accessible blog data analytical solution since solutions like Blogdex, among others, were either discontinued or made proprietary, we present BlogTracker. This tool helps users analyze public discussions with real-time data update capability and analyze narratives and emotion distribution on associated blog posts and trackers. This demonstration shows how the BlogTracker application analyses blog data with a case study about COVID-19. © 2021 ACM.

A proposed reading event analysis model (REAM) for determining likely reading format preferences

PurposeThis conceptual paper relates disparate evidence on the factors influencing reading format choice and preference, whether print or digital, in order to inform educational practice and scholarship.Design/methodology/approachThe authors propose a reading event analysis model (REAM) to help guide practitioners and scholars through a consideration of relevant factors, as evidenced by empirical research, to predicting whether print or digital formats will best support the reading and/or learning objectives of a reader in a given reading event in the current technological era.FindingsThe evidence synthesized and communicated by the REAM model reflects complex interactions between reader characteristics, task characteristics and text characteristics that influence the effects and outcomes of reading in print or digital format.Research limitations/implicationsThis model serves to guide scholars in the design of future empirical studies that account for critical performance variables related to reading comprehension and user preference.Practical implicationsIn examining the effects of reading format on learning and the relationship of learning to overall reader format preferences, this model will help educators, educational administrators, industry practitioners, technologists and interface developers transfer current findings to practice, make decisions and determine developmental priorities to meet the needs of readers and learners across a variety of contexts and support the pursuit of equity in education.Originality/valueThis model is necessary and contributes important original synthesis and to an area of scholarship that in recent years has yielded results that at times appear contradictory. The model provides possible resolutions to these apparent contradictions in a construct that lends translational value for practice.

Ageism in COVID-Related Newspaper Coverage: The First Month of a Pandemic.

OBJECTIVES: Media sources have consistently described older adults as a medically vulnerable population during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, yet a lack of concern over their health and safety has resulted in dismissal and devaluation. This unprecedented situation highlights ongoing societal ageism and its manifestations in public discourse. This analysis asks how national news sources performed explicit and implicit ageism during the first month of the pandemic. METHOD: Using content and critical discourse analysis methods, we analyzed 287 articles concerning older adults and COVID-19 published between March 11 and April 10, 2020, in 4 major U.S.-based newspapers. RESULTS: Findings indicate that while ageism was rarely discussed explicitly, ageist bias was evident in implicit reporting patterns (e.g., frequent use of the term "elderly," portrayals of older adults as "vulnerable"). Infection and death rates and institutionalized care were among the most commonly reported topics, providing a limited portrait of aging during the pandemic. The older "survivor" narrative offers a positive alternative by suggesting exceptional examples of resilience and grit. However, the survivor narrative may also implicitly place blame on those unable to survive or thrive in later life. DISCUSSION: This study provides insight for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners exploring societal perceptions of older adults and how these perceptions are disseminated and maintained by the media.

Suicide in the context of COVID-19 diagnosis in India: Insights and implications from online print media reports.

BACKGROUND: Suicide reports during the COVID pandemic is an increasing cause for concern. However, there is a limited understanding of suicide among individuals with positive/suspected COVID diagnosis specifically. Hence, this study, using online newspaper reports, aimed to determine factors influencing suicide among individuals withCOVID-19 infection status. METHODOLOGY: Information regarding positive/suspected COVID related suicide was obtained from online newspapers published in 4 languages between 30th Jan 2020 to 16th August 2020 using google news aggregator. Of 235 online identified, 93 were eligible for analysis after the exclusion and analysed using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Median Age of COVID related suicide victims was 45 years (range 15 - 80) wherein 61.3% belonged to 30-59 year age group, and 75.3% were males. 50% of suicides occurred within the first week of COVID diagnosis confirmation, and 50% suicides occurred at COVID centres. Hanging (53.8%) was the commonest method of suicide, followed by jumping (12.9%). CONCLUSION: Higher risk for suicide was observed among male gender and those with positive/suspected COVID infection within the first week, while receiving treatment in COVID care centres. Hanging and jumping were the two commonest methods. The above highlight an urgent need to integrate suicide preventive strategies into standard care protocols of COVID-19 positive and suspected cases.