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In this paper, a mathematical model with a standard incidence rate is proposed to assess the role of media such as facebook, television, radio and tweeter in the mitigation of the outbreak of COVID-19. The basic reproduction number R0 which is the threshold dynamics parameter between the disappearance and the persistence of the disease has been calculated. And, it is obvious to see that it varies directly to the number of hospitalized people, asymptomatic, symptomatic carriers and the impact of media coverage. The local and the global stabilities of the model have also been investigated by using the Routh-Hurwitz criterion and the Lyapunov's functional technique, respectively. Furthermore, we have performed a local sensitivity analysis to assess the impact of any variation in each one of the model parameter on the threshold R0 and the course of the disease accordingly. We have also computed the approximative rate at which herd immunity will occur when any control measure is implemented. To finish, we have presented some numerical simulation results by using some available data from the literature to corroborate our theoretical findings.
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PurposeThis paper investigates the impact of global sentiment and various coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related media coverage news (Media-Hype index;Panic Index;Media Coverage Index, infodemic index and coronavirus statistics) on the dynamics of bitcoin returns during the COVID-19 pandemic using an asymmetric framework.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use an asymmetric framework based on quantile regression (QR) and quantile-on-quantile regression.FindingsQR results show that COVID-19 panic news negatively affects bitcoin market returns at times of extreme bearish. However, COVID-19 bullish sentiment negatively impacts bitcoin market returns during bullish market conditions. Quantile-on-quantile approach's (QQA) empirical results show that the effects of COVID-19-related news on bitcoin returns were heterogeneous, mainly negative and varied across quantiles.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors find some significant differences regarding the impact of news on bitcoin return dynamics compared to stock markets, suggesting the safe-haven role of bitcoin against stock during the ongoing epidemic.Practical implicationsThe authors find some significant differences regarding the impact of news on bitcoin return dynamics compared to stock markets, suggesting the safe-haven role of bitcoin against stock during the ongoing epidemic.Originality/valueThis study contributes to understanding the dynamics of bitcoin returns using various COVID-19 media news.
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This paper examines the static and dynamic return and volatility connectedness among Islamic equity indices and a Coronavirus coverage index over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic crisis. We employ ten major sectoral equity indices covering main economic sectors and the Coronavirus media coverage index (MCI) and apply the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive methodology (TVP-VAR). The results show a high degree of connectedness between the return and volatility series of the different sectoral indices. Moreover, the information transmission between these indices and the media coverage index shows that Islamic equities are net receivers of shocks from the coronavirus MCI. Additionally, we investigate the causality between the different connectedness measures and the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU). Our results indicate that EPU has predictive power on the net connectedness between the Islamic sectoral equities and the Coronavirus MCI. © 2022 Elsevier B.V.
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The wavelet approach covering simultaneously the time and frequency domains is employed to study the impact of the Covid-19 coverage in mass media on the performance of the Dow Jones Sukuk investment grade total return indices. The overall coherence level for the media-coverage – sukuk pairs is found to increase with the investment horizon. Multiple time-frequency regions with low level of coherence, observable along the Covid-19 systemic crisis, imply attractive diversification attributes of investing in Islamic fixed-income securities especially in times of financial stress and turmoil. We investigate coherence and phase difference patterns, which differ for distinct maturity buckets of the Sukuk indices, further highlighting their potentiality for the downside risk hedge, workable under economic and financial distress.
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We apply wavelet analyses to study the impact of COVID‐19 pandemic on the performance of emerging market bonds, in both investment grade and high yield ranges of creditworthiness. Our results show varying level of coherence ranging from low, medium and high between the Coronavirus Media Coverage index and the price moves of the emerging market USD‐denominated debt. We attribute the intervals of low coherence levels to the diversification potential during a systemic pandemic such as COVID‐19 of investments in bonds issued by developing economies. We document differences in patterns exhibited by various indices describing behaviour of option‐adjusted spreads and total returns as a function of credit quality of issuers form emerging market economies. We report well‐defined zones of the regime switching between the lead and lag roles of the emerging market bonds vis‐à‐vis the media coverage.
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This article analyses the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and the evolving United Kingdom (UK) Eurosceptic discourse in the context of the UK's departure from the European Union (EU). It applies a mixed-method approach of content analysis and critical discourse analysis of newspaper reporting of the EU's handling of the pandemic vis-à-vis the UK during the first lockdown and the rollout of the vaccination programme. During the first lockdown, UK newspapers opted for muted politicisation and polarisation – they downplayed the success of strategies within the EU Member States, but attacked the EU. While during the vaccination rollout they shifted to vocal politicisation and vaccine nationalism which praised the UK, heavily criticised the EU and claimed the EU's Member States suffered as a result of EU incompetence. Against this backdrop the COVID-19 pandemic has put into motion a self-reinforcing discursive shift in which the UK's ability to go it alone not only justifies Brexit, but serves to prove that it will be a success. [ FROM AUTHOR]
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Building upon two previously published research papers exploring Canadian media reporting of childhood in the first wave of the pandemic, this paper investigates how constructions of childhood evolved from the first wave to the fourth wave of the pandemic. This qualitative research is guided by the central research question: Over the span of 2 years, from 2020 to 2022, what changes are evident in discourses reported within media focused on the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on Canadians under the age of 18 years? Findings from this study suggest that in the fourth wave young people were constructed as innocent victims of pandemic restrictions framed through an adult-centric lens;noticeably absent were representations of young people under the age of 18 in their voices. A key recommendation emerged from this study: any future research investigating the impact of the pandemic on young people under aged 18 years must include their full participation.
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The spread of COVID-19 news on social media provided a particularly prolific ground for emotional commotion, disinformation and hate speech, as uncertainty and fear grew by the day. In this paper, we examine the media coverage of the COVID-19 outburst in Portugal (March-May 2020), the subsequent emotional engagement of audiences and the entropy-based emotional controversy generated as a gateway to detect the presence of hate speech, using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis (CAQDAS) embedded in a cross-sectional descriptive methodology. Our results reveal that negative and volatile categorical emotions ("Angry", "Haha" and "Wow") serve as main engines for controversy, and that controversial news have the highest sharing ratio. Moreover, using a small sample of the most controversial news with the highest overall emotional engagement, we establish a relation between the entropy-based emotional controversy obtained from Facebook's click-based reactions and the presence of cultural and ethnic hate speech, plausibly confirming the click-based categorical emotions as a gateway to hatred comment pools. In doing so, we also reveal that negative emotions alone do not always indicate the presence of hate speech, which may sprout in seemingly humorous social media posts where irony proliferates, and negativity is not apparent. This work adds to the literature on social media categorical emotion detection and its implications for the detection of hate speech.
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Misinformation is a serious problem in scientific debates ranging from climate change to vaccines to nuclear power. In this study we quantitatively assess the phenomenon of misinformation - defined as information which is at variance with widely-accepted scientific consensus - on genetically modified crops and food ("GMOs") in the mainstream and online news media over a two-year period. We found an overall falsehood rate of 9% with a potential readership of 256 million. None of the misinformation was positive in sentiment; most was negative. About a fifth of Africa's media coverage on GMOs contained misinformation, a worrying finding given the potential for genetic engineering to deliver improved nutrition and food security in the continent. We conclude that misinformation about GMOs in the mainstream media is still a significant problem, and outranks the proportion of misinformation in other comparable debates such as COVID-19 and vaccines.