Impact of COVID-19 on corporate social responsibility in India – a mixed methods approach

Purpose: Prior research studies have discussed the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) during crisis situations in increasing the resilience and sustainability of the companies. There are two basic models of crisis management – reactive and proactive. When a crisis occurs, suddenly firms tend to act reactively and progressively take proactive steps to manage the crisis. CSR can also be reactive and proactive during crisis situations. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to explore whether CSR during the COVID-19 pandemic moved from a reactive to a proactive stance, with specific focus on CSR legislation, corporate CSR response and corporate thinking about CSR. Design/methodology/approach: This paper adopts a mixed methods approach, using both qualitative and quantitative research designs. This study draws upon both primary and secondary data. Findings: The results highlighted the change in the CSR approach from being reactive to being proactive as the pandemic progressed. This was observed through the increase in frequency of CSR legislation, and the shift in the intent of CSR legislation from "prompting to donate” to "prompting to volunteer.” Similarly, the shift in reactive to proactive CSR corporate response was observed through the increased spending on CSR and improved COVID-related CSR reporting. Practical implications: This study recommends companies to manage crises by becoming more proactive. CSR activities need to be closely aligned with national developmental objectives, and collaborate with various stakeholders to achieve the intended outcomes of the activities. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research paper is one of the few to study the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on CSR in India at a time when India went through three waves of the pandemic. This study corroborates with other studies in terms of managing crisis. © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Working from home vs working from office in terms of job performance during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis: evidence from China

Despite being a worldwide disaster, the COVID-19 pandemic has also provided an opportunity for renewed discussion about the way we work. By contextualizing in the early periods of China's ending of lockdown policy on COVID-19, this paper offers evidence to respond to an essential discussion in the field of working from home (WFH): In terms of job performance, can WFH replace working from the office (WFO)? The present study compares job performance in terms of quality and productivity between WFH and WFO from 861 Chinese respondents using entropy balance matching, a quasi-experimental methodology. Results reveal that WFH enhances job performance in terms of job quality but lowers it in terms of job productivity. In addition, the present study aims to capture and empirically measure the variations in fundamental job characteristics in terms of job control and job demand between WFH and WFO by applying the job demand control support model. More specifically, we find that job control items, such as ‘talking right' and ‘work rate', and job demand items, such as ‘a long time of intense concentration' and ‘hecticness of the job', are vital factors that contribute to how these differences exert influence on employees' performance in the context of the pandemic. © 2022 Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI).

Finnish university students' satisfaction with e-learning outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: Students' satisfaction with e-learning outcomes is a vital component in determining the adoption of e-learning systems. Understanding the antecedent factors impacting students' satisfaction with e-learning outcomes helps decision-makers at the higher education to take the necessary actions to enhance the quality of students' performance, especially during the exceptional times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: This paper aims to determine and analyse the antecedent factors influencing students' satisfaction with e-learning outcomes during the pandemic. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to analysis a proposed research model. Findings: The SEM results show that digital communities in e-learning, information technology (quality and accessibility) and the online course design quality directly influence students' satisfaction with e-learning outcomes. More interestingly, results show that the COVID-19-related factors (1) awareness of the COVID-19, (2) perceived challenges (negatively) and (3) the educational institutions' preparedness also influence e-learning outcomes. Research limitations/implications: The results suggest that the decision-makers at the educational institutions should consider adopting a blended learning system approach to deliver e-learning during the emergency, such as the COVID-19 outbreak situation. Originality/value: This is one of the first studies in higher education context, which seek to identify the antecedent factors that influence students' satisfaction with e-learning outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022, Shahrokh Nikou and Ilia Maslov.

Science communication and public trust in science

There are many ways that trust plays a crucial role in science, both between researchers and between researchers and various communities impacted by their research. Scientific practices can operate in ways that either facilitate, or undermine, trust in science. This contribution will examine the role of science communication in facilitating (or undermining) public trust in science and science-based policy recommendations. This will be done by looking at some potential failures in the public communication of science during the COVID-19 pandemic that have the potential to undermine trust in scientists. Finally, I draw out lessons that this case has for how we might improve science communication practices. © 2022 Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining Published by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Institute.

Maturity in leaps and bounds–organisational listening for customer engagement

Much organisational development occurs during times of crisis when answers and solutions are urgently needed. The objective of this article is to show examples illustrating that organisational listening on social media may take leaps from immature to mature mainly due to the pressure from stakeholders, not often as a strategic tool of integrated marketing communications (IMC) or public communications. The first example is from the late 2010s, when stakeholders were introduced to a direct route to brands made available through social media. Many unanswered customer questions suddenly became visible and were subsequently addressed. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic, as the second example, pressured organisations to respond to citizens' urgent concerns. These snapshots of development suggest that what matters for organisational legitimacy is understanding stakeholders' changing needs. This paper proposes that organisational listening–even in social media–should become a strategic function of organisations. Building on theories related to organisational listening, social media and IMC, this article argues for incorporating organisational listening as a strategic function into a model of integrated marketing and communications and/or strategic public communication. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Sensing Technologies for Crowd Management, Adaptation, and Information Dissemination in Public Transportation Systems: A Review

Management of crowd information in public transportation (PT) systems is crucial, both to foster sustainable mobility, by increasing the user's comfort and satisfaction during normal operation, as well as to cope with emergency situations, such as pandemic crises, as recently experienced with coronavirus disease (COVID-19) limitations. This article presents a taxonomy and review of sensing technologies based on the Internet of Things (IoT) for real-time crowd analysis, which can be adopted in the different segments of the PT system (buses/trams/trains, railway/metro stations, and bus/tram stops). To discuss such technologies in a clear systematic perspective, we introduce a reference architecture for crowd management, which employs modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to: 1) monitor and predict crowding events;2) implement crowd-aware policies for real-time and adaptive operation control in intelligent transportation systems (ITSs);and 3) inform in real time the users of the crowding status of the PT system, by means of electronic displays installed inside vehicles or at bus/tram stops/stations and/or by mobile transport applications. It is envisioned that the innovative crowd management functionalities enabled by ICT/IoT sensing technologies can be incrementally implemented as an add-on to state-of-the-art ITS platforms, which are already in use by major PT companies operating in urban areas. Moreover, it is argued that, in this new framework, additional services can be delivered to the passengers, such as online ticketing, vehicle access control and reservation in severely crowded situations, and evolved crowd-aware route planning. © 2001-2012 IEEE.

Intelligent Networked Music Performance Experiences

A Networked Music Performance (NMP) is defined as what happens when geographically displaced musicians interact together while connected via network. The first NMP experiments begun in the 1970s, however, only recently the development of network communication technologies has created the necessary infrastructure needed to successfully create an NMP. Moreover, the widespread adoption of network-based interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a renewed interest towards distant music-based interaction. In this chapter we present the Intelligent networked Music PERforMANce experiENCEs (IMPERMANENCE) as a comprehensive NMP framework that aims at creating a compelling performance experience for the musicians. In order to do this, we first develop the neTworkEd Music PErfoRmANCe rEsearch (TEMPERANCE) framework in order to understand which are the main needs of the participants in a NMP. Informed by these results we then develop IMPERMANENCE accordingly. © 2023, The Author(s).

SanJeeVni: Secure UAV-Envisioned Massive Vaccine Distribution for COVID-19 Underlying 6G Network.

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are deployed in Novel Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) vaccine distribution process. To address issues of fake vaccine distribution, real-time massive UAV monitoring and control at nodal centers (NCs), the authors propose SanJeeVni, a blockchain (BC)-assisted UAV vaccine distribution at the backdrop of sixth-generation (6G) enhanced ultra-reliable low latency communication (6G-eRLLC) communication. The scheme considers user registration, vaccine request, and distribution through a public Solana BC setup, which assures a scalable transaction rate. Based on vaccine requests at production setups, UAV swarms are triggered with vaccine delivery to NCs. An intelligent edge offloading scheme is proposed to support UAV coordinates and routing path setups. The scheme is compared against fifth-generation (5G) uRLLC communication. In the simulation, we achieve and 86% improvement in service latency, 12.2% energy reduction of UAV with 76.25% more UAV coverage in 6G-eRLLC, and a significant improvement of [Formula: see text]% in storage cost against the Ethereum network, which indicates the scheme efficacy in practical setups.

Corrigendum: Mind the "vaccine fatigue".

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2022.839433.].

Batteryless wireless magnetostrictive Fe30Co70/Ni clad plate for human coronavirus 229E detection.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been garnered increasing for its rapid worldwide spread. Each country had implemented city-wide lockdowns and immigration regulations to prevent the spread of the infection, resulting in severe economic consequences. Materials and technologies that monitor environmental conditions and wirelessly communicate such information to people are thus gaining considerable attention as a countermeasure. This study investigated the dynamic characteristics of batteryless magnetostrictive alloys for energy harvesting to detect human coronavirus 229E (HCoV-229E). Light and thin magnetostrictive Fe-Co/Ni clad plate with rectification, direct current (DC) voltage storage capacitor, and wireless information transmission circuits were developed for this purpose. The power consumption was reduced by improving the energy storage circuit, and the magnetostrictive clad plate under bending vibration stored a DC voltage of 1.9 V and wirelessly transmitted a signal to a personal computer once every 5 min and 10 s under bias magnetic fields of 0 and 10 mT, respectively. Then, on the clad plate surface, a novel CD13 biorecognition layer was immobilized using a self-assembled monolayer of -COOH groups, thus forming an amide bond with -NH2 groups for the detection of HCoV-229E. A bending vibration test demonstrated the resonance frequency changes because of HCoV-229E binding. The fluorescence signal demonstrated that HCoV-229E could be successfully detected. Thus, because HCoV-229E changed the dynamic characteristics of this plate, the CD13-modified magnetostrictive clad plate could detect HCoV-229E from the interval of wireless communication time. Therefore, a monitoring system that transmits/detects the presence of human coronavirus without batteries will be realized soon.

The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mobile Messaging Application Among Millennials in Public Universities in Malaysia

Mobile messaging apps are currently a popular method in Malaysia for communicating while on the go, owing to its convenience, reliability, and contact-free feature of mobile application. Fueled by mobile internet and smartphone growth, mobile messaging apps have become a strong force in the mobile app sector, offering users an alternative to SMS-based texting paired with social media elements and enhanced features, such as group chats and photo sharing. The study was anchored using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 theory. A survey with 150 respondents and PLS analysis is used to determine the antecedents of mobile application continuance usage during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results revealed that there is an influence in the usage of mobile messaging apps among the younger generation in Malaysian public university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main implication shows that mobile application among young generations in public universities has become popular. The convenience usage of the internet has turned the world into a global village.

Defence organizations in emergency networks: the early response to COVID-19 in Europe

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyse the crisis network response of European countries and the role played by defence organizations (DOs) during the early response phase of the pandemic, here set to encompass 75 days.Design/methodology/approachPublished materials – reports, news and communications – provided by authorities and DOs were used. Some of the authors actively participated in national pandemic response networks. An exploratory approach and qualitative content analysis were applied. The data were collected in national languages from 13 European countries, and they were coded and analysed using the actors, resources and activities (ARA) framework.FindingsThis study identified three main categories of activity structures in which the DOs interacted with civilian members of response networks, health-related services, logistics services and public support services. These networks among actors were found within formal response systems and emergent networks. The DOs engaged as actors that provided a range of services when civil authorities could not cope with the huge demand for specific services and when resources were scarce in the initial response phase.Originality/valueThis study contributes by filling an important research gap with regard to the civil-military relations associated with the use of DO resources in the civil response to the pandemic crisis in Europe, which is described as an untraditional response. The ARA network approach provides a framework for arranging ARA and extends the wider civil-military network to expand the formal networks of the early crisis response. The study lays knowledge about the co-operation between civilian and military actors in different contexts and provides a broader understanding of the roles that DOs played in the response operations.

COVID-19 IN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA: GLOBAL PANDEMIC PERSPECTIVES

Kanajet reviews COVID-19 in International Media: Global Pandemic Responses edited by John C. Pollock and Douglas A. Vakoch.

An Investigation on the Online Learning Engagement of Malaysian Secondary School Students from Different School Types

This study explored the perceptions of students from different types of schools in Malaysia towards their online learning engagement during COVID-19's movement control order using Fredricks et al.'s framework of behavioural, cognitive, and emotional engagement. In addition to these variables, external support provided to the students was also considered. To this end, a questionnaire that examined the students' general online practices and online learning engagement was administered. Seven hundred sixty-eight students from four different types of secondary schools (national, Chinese, international, and high performing schools) responded to the questionnaire. The findings from the ANOVA analysis indicated that generally the respondents demonstrated positive online learning practices. However, the amount of time spent interacting with teachers online should be much improved. The findings also indicated significant differences in perceptions towards online learning engagement and external support based on school types.

Characterization of Airborne Pathogen Transmission in Turbulent Molecular Communication Channels

Airborne pathogen transmission mechanisms play a key role in the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19. In this work, we propose a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach to model and statistically characterize airborne pathogen transmission via pathogen-laden particles in turbulent channels from a molecular communication viewpoint. To this end, turbulent flows induced by coughing and the turbulent dispersion of droplets and aerosols are modeled by using Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations coupled with realizable k-epsilon model and the discrete random walk model, respectively. Via the simulations realized by a CFD simulator, statistical data for the number of received particles are obtained. These data are post-processed to obtain the statistical characterization of the turbulent effect in the reception and to derive the probability of infection. Our results reveal that the turbulence has an irregular effect on the probability of infection which shows itself by the multimodal distributions as a weighted sum of normal and Weibull distributions. © 2022 IEEE.

DEZINFORMACIJE I TEORIJE ZAVJERA O CJEPIVU PROTIV BOLESTI COVID-19: INFODEMIJA NA DRUŠTVENIM MREŽAMA I U MEDIJIMA U HRVATSKOJ

Dezinformacije, teorije zavjera i negativni komentari na društveni mrežama utječu na dostupnost točnih zdravstvenih informacija i na stavove prema cijepljenju. Cilj je rada istražiti mišljenje i stavove javnosti, odnosno dezinformacije i teorije zavjera o cijepljenju i cjepivu protiv bolesti COVID-19 na internetskim portalima i društvenoj mreži Facebook. Od 9. studenog 2020. do 30. siječnja 2021. analizirano je ukupno 4576 komentara, odnosno 113 postova pod temom cijepljenje i cjepiva kategoriziranih s obzirom na sentiment (pozitivni, neutralni, irelevantni i negativni). Unutar negativnih komentara (20,60 %) identificirano je 13 glavnih tematskih kategorija. Najzastupljenije su kategorija teorije zavjera (35,84 %) i kategorija iskazi nepovjerenja u sastav, učinkovitost, sigurnost i nuspojave cjepiva (19,93 %), dok je postotak dezinformacija bio 20,90 %. Rezultati upućuju na nužnost oblikovanja pravovremenog plana i strategije zdravstvenih kampanja te sadržaja za online edukativne materijale i platforme, kao i pokretanja programa zdravstvenog obrazovanja na nacionalnoj razini.Alternate :Misinformation, conspiracy theories, and negative comments on social networks affect the availability of accurate health information and attitudes toward vaccination. The aim of this paper is to explore the opinions and attitudes of the public, i.e. misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccination and the vaccine against the disease caused by the COVID-19 virus on Internet portals and the social network Facebook. From November 9, 2020 to January 30, 2021, a total of 4,576 comments were analyzed, i.e. 113 posts in the topic of vaccination and vaccines categorized according to sentiment (positive, neutral, irrelevant, and negative). Among the negative comments (20,60 %), 13 main thematic categories were identified. The most represented were in the category of conspiracy theories (35,84 %) and the category of expression of distrust in the composition, effectiveness, safety, and side effects of vaccines (19,93 %), while the percentage of misinformation was 20,90 %. The results highlight the necessity of designing a timely plan and strategy of health campaigns and content for online educational materials and platforms, as well as the initiation of nationwide health education programs.

Making Freedom Great Again: Conspiracy Theories, Affective Nostalgia and Alignment, and The Right-Wing Base Grammars of the #Freeedomconvoy (*)

The so-called "freedom convoy," which began in January 2021 in Ottawa, Canada, garnered international attention and sparked a flood of social media conversations. Farright extremists and Twitter users sympathetic to this cause employed various strategies of "affective rhetoric"-the practice of instilling emotion in readers by appealing to their values and beliefs-in order to incite emotional reactions and influence public opinion. These extremists and sympathizers used these affective rhetorical techniques, such as fear mongering, demonizing, exaggeration, and polarization, to both maintain public engagement and increase public acceptance of their ideas, not only about the convoy, but about their larger ideals and aims as well. These larger extremist ideals include: the desire of a "golden age" of freedom;the concept of an "us" vs. a "them";and the restoration of a "traditional" patriarchal white supremacy. The danger of this flooding of social media channels with such strategies and ideals can lead to increased public acceptance and reinforcement of the radicalized views of extremists, which can eventually lead to even more radical and dangerous ideas becoming acceptable in public conversation, particularly through conspiracies. As my research shows, online actors exploited a variety of conspiracy theories, including: The Great Reset;vaccines as weapons of mass genocide;medical martial law;and framing the Ukraine war as a hoax or a distraction. Thus, in the wake of the "freedom convoy," movement, to get a sense of how these extremist conversations were framed, I analyzed tweets circulating with #IStandWithTruckers and #TruckersForFreedom2022. Using discourse analysis, I examine the affective rhetorical strategies of persuasion, ideals, and conspiracy theories that Twitter extremists and sympathizers employed to maximize political conflict and to shift the acceptability of extremist discourse in the public sphere.

Untapped sources of contextualized knowledge: Exploring occupational disruption during COVID-19 as showcased through YouTube parodies

The COVID-19 pandemic led to stay-at-home mandates and lockdowns around the globe. During this time of occupational disruption and social distancing measures, many engaged through online environments. Social media are ever-increasing hosts of occupation and participation, rich with research opportunities. In this study, we explored COVID-19 experiences by analyzing parody videos posted on YouTube by various content creators. We analyzed the lyrics of 27 viral videos (accrued 1 million or more views) by 20 content creators. Using a transactional framework, we identified five themes related to occupational disruption in the lyrics and explored the polarity of the concepts within each theme: old norms vs. new normal, time expanded vs. time condensed, control seeking vs. lack of control, social isolation vs. excess socialization, and cynicism vs. hope. Our findings demonstrated the complex transactions between previous habits and routines, changing spaces of occupation, and meaning of daily occupations within evolving social, economic, and physical contexts. While this study showcased YouTube videos as one untapped source of contextualized knowledge for occupational science, there is a need for further exploration of methodological and ethical challenges of studying digital content. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Chinese) COVID-19 ,,, YouTube COVID-19 20 27 ( 100 ),,:,,, YouTube -,- (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Spanish) La pandemia de la Covid-19 dio lugar a mandatos de confinamiento y cierres patronales en todo el mundo. Durante esta epoca de interrupcion laboral y medidas de distanciamiento social, muchas personas se involucraron a traves de plataformas en linea. Cada vez mas, los medios de comunicacion social se han vuelto un lugar para ejercer la ocupacion y la participacion, y ofrecen muchas oportunidades orientadas a realizar investigaciones. En este estudio examinamos las experiencias vinculadas a la Covid-19, analizando videos de parodia publicados en YouTube por varios creadores de contenido. En este sentido, analizamos las letras de 27 videos virales (que han alcanzado un millon de visitas o mas) de 20 creadores de contenido. Utilizando un marco transaccional, en las letras de las canciones identificamos cinco temas relacionados con la interrupcion ocupacional y examinamos la polaridad de los conceptos dentro de cada tema: antiguas normas versus nueva normalidad, tiempo expandido versus tiempo condensado, busqueda de control versus falta de control, aislamiento social versus exceso de socializacion y cinismo versus esperanza. Nuestros resultados dan cuenta de las complejas transacciones entre los habitos y las rutinas anteriores, los espacios de ocupacion cambiantes y el significado de las ocupaciones diarias dentro de contextos sociales, economicos y fisicos en evolucion. Aunque este estudio mostro que los videos de YouTube son una fuente de conocimiento contextualizado sin explorar para la ciencia de la ocupacion, es necesario seguir analizando los retos metodologicos y eticos que supone el estudio de los contenidos digitales. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Communication Channels and their Challenges: An Analysis of Sofware Development Teams during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Software development teams depend on the constant and varied use of technological tools that contribute to the fluidity of development activities. The communication channels provided by these tools contribute to the participatory culture of software development, where requirements include getting involved, learning and co-producing the code. However, the choice of channels to support development is still an open question in the scientific community. Through an investigation of closed remote software teams from a large public educational institution in Brazil during the COVID-19 Pandemic, we identified their preferred communication channels and analyzed them to learn how to improve collaboration. We also drew some comparison with social developers and took a look at the challenges that these channels impose and solutions adopted to mitigate these problems. © 2023 ACM.

Who to Blame This Pandemic On: A Qualitative Study of the Politicization of COVID-19 through Political Memes in Canada

Memes are a curious object of study, easy to identify but harder to contextualize. Working with the growing literature on the study of memes and their communities, our paper offers a method to study the shared values or stories worked out and maintained by memes that Whitney Phillip and Ryan Milner describe as a "deep memetic frames." Our interest is less on the individual memes then how memes accumulate and help communities express their own ways of interpreting events. One of these events has been the COVID-19 pandemic. We developed our method while studying how Canadian partisan groups - or what we call scenes - reacted to the pandemic. Was the pandemic a chance for partisans to make peace or recontextualize politics over a health crisis? Through researcher journals, team meetings, and observational notes, we evaluated the use of memes across 14 Canadian partisan communities on Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 summer of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Our approach extracts three distinct partisan scenes: established partisan, negative partisan, and emergent right-wing populism. We focus on their memetic contexts to evaluate the central themes of understanding, extract the worldviews that maintain these digital spaces, and construct a deeper comprehension of memetic frames. As a term widely used but challenging to study, we recognize this research as a novel approach and conclude by discussing its utility for researchers more broadly and acknowledging its limitations while providing the various research directions this work offers.