South African tabloid coverage of Covid19: The Daily Sun

Around the world, tabloid newspapers are routinely surrounded by a moral and cultural panic. They are criticised for lowering standards of journalism and privileging sensation above substance, diverting readers from serious news to entertainment, or foregoing ethical principles. However, scholarship about tabloids have also highlighted the ways in which these papers are frequently better attuned to their readers' everyday lived experience. In South Africa, tabloid newspapers have also received much criticism in the past for their perceived superficial treatment of important news. This article examines South African tabloid newspapers' coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, focussing specifically on a case study of the national newspaper the Daily Sun. The national Daily Sun newspaper boasts the country's largest circulation figures. Through a quantitative content analysis of 1050 online news stories in the Daily Sun, we found that unlike mainstream front-page news reporting which was largely episodic, negative and alarmist, the majority of Daily Sun coverage was thematic and neutral. Daily Sun news coverage countered Covid-19 related misinformation and provided contextual coverage, with a large focus on the social impacts of Covid-19. The analysis concludes that despite the popular discourse of the reporting, Daily Sun reporting on Covid-19 provided readers with access to information and a focus on the micro aspects of the pandemic versus broader political issues and the views of political or scientific elites.

Monetization of digital newspapers: Experimentation with brand extension and buying influence

With digitization, journalistic companies tested out different ways of creating value through the capabilities that technology provides. Online newspapers applied the experience they had with their print versions to brand extensions, aiming to build revenue models that went beyond the classic models for advertising and charging for content. Their goal was to leverage brand value by expanding their name to a new product. This study focuses on Unidad Editorial, which under-took various initiatives testing the power of the digital brand elmundo.es and expanding the boundaries of the business. We use information obtained from 23 semistructured in-depth interviews with executives from the early days of their online business to the present, providing a comprehensive picture. Elmundo.es's experimentation with brand extensions and other non-advertising revenue sources helps us understand digital media's shift towards charging for content –which the Covid-19 pandemic provided a favorable environment for– in their search for alternatives to compensate for the decline in advertising revenue. New brand extension projects, for which brand strength and consistency with the original product are determinative, remain open. In addition, these new practices will be subject to the journalistic companies' investment capabilities. © 2023, El Profesional de la Informacion. All rights reserved.

Women scientists in Italian media in times of coronavirus: Between low recognition and success as experts

During the months of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Italian media helped provide an unprecedented degree of exposure for women scientists. The essay highlights the results of a quantitative and qualitative study on the portrayal and self-portrayal of Italian women scientists based on the digital editions of eight daily national newspapers and ten talk shows on the main national television channels from February to May 2020. The aim of the study is to show if and how those women scientists were valued as ‘experts' or, alternatively, discredited professionally. The picture that emerges is ambivalent: on the one hand, most journalists of both sexes minimize the role of women scientists, and on the other hand, their ability to appear as authoritative in science as their male colleagues makes us optimistic about the role they can hypothetically play in convincing the new generation of Italian women to study STEM subjects. © 2023 Intellect Ltd Article. English language.

South African tabloid coverage of Covid19: The Daily Sun

Around the world, tabloid newspapers are routinely surrounded by a moral and cultural panic. They are criticised for lowering standards of journalism and privileging sensation above substance, diverting readers from serious news to entertainment, or foregoing ethical principles. However, scholarship about tabloids have also highlighted the ways in which these papers are frequently better attuned to their readers' everyday lived experience. In South Africa, tabloid newspapers have also received much criticism in the past for their perceived superficial treatment of important news. This article examines South African tabloid newspapers' coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic, focussing specifically on a case study of the national newspaper the Daily Sun. The national Daily Sun newspaper boasts the country's largest circulation figures. Through a quantitative content analysis of 1050 online news stories in the Daily Sun, we found that unlike mainstream front-page news reporting which was largely episodic, negative and alarmist, the majority of Daily Sun coverage was thematic and neutral. Daily Sun news coverage countered Covid-19 related misinformation and provided contextual coverage, with a large focus on the social impacts of Covid-19. The analysis concludes that despite the popular discourse of the reporting, Daily Sun reporting on Covid-19 provided readers with access to information and a focus on the micro aspects of the pandemic versus broader political issues and the views of political or scientific elites. © The Author(s) 2023.

Lessons Learned From Community Workers Beat the Virus, a Multimedia Campaign Cocreated With Trusted Community Leaders

[...]per recommendation from community leaders, we designed 52 Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram posts in Spanish and English;2 print ads published in multiple local newspapers;and 27 thirty-second radio spots (Selected videos from the campaign are posted here: https://tinyurl.com/ 4wb48yxr;Social media posts are here: https://tinyurl.com/2x8awty9). LESSONS LEARNED FOR FUTURE PUBLIC HEALTH CAMPAIGNS The academic-community partnership to codevelop COVID-19 public health communication serves as a model for responding to information needs in public health crises. Engaging community health workers and leaders took a considerable amount of coordinated effort but showed significant potential to reach diverse groups (via media monitoring of impression), aid in debunking myths, and address misinformation to respond to the impact of COVID-19 in underresourced communities. Capitalizing on the community health workers' lived experiences and working knowledge of their communities offers a sustainable resource for the development of public health communication strategies that resonate with underresourced groups.

The potential human health hazard of nitrates in drinking water: a media discourse analysis in a high-income country.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies linking low levels of nitrate in drinking water to colorectal cancer have raised public concerns over nitrate contamination. The aim of this study was to analyze the media discourse on the potential human health hazard of nitrates in drinking water in a high-income country with a large livestock industry: New Zealand (NZ). METHODS: Searches of media sources ("major newspapers") held by the Factiva database for the NZ setting in the five-year period 17 December 2016 to 20 December 2021. RESULTS: The largest number of media items was observed for 2017 (n = 108), the year of a NZ general election, with a notable decrease in 2020 (n = 20) that was likely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which dominated health media. However, the percentage of these media items with a health focus steadily increased over time, from 11.1% of all articles in 2017 to 51.2% in 2021. The most commonly mentioned health hazard was colorectal cancer, followed by methemoglobinemia. The temporal pattern of media items suggests that the release of scientific studies and scholarly blogs was associated with the publication of subsequent media items. Major stakeholders involved in the discourse included representatives of local and central government, environmental and recreational interest groups, researchers, local residents, agricultural interest groups, and health organizations. Maori (Indigenous New Zealanders) values or perspectives were rarely mentioned. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of major newspapers for a five-year period indicated that a wide range of expert comment and opinions were made available to the public and policy makers on the issue of nitrates in water. While many different stakeholder views were captured in the media discourse, there is scope for the media to better report the views of Maori on this topic. There is also a need for articles detailing the health issues to also refer to the environmental, recreational, and cultural aspects of protecting water quality to ensure that the public, policy makers, and regulators are aware of co-benefits.

Thematic Analysis of the COVID-19 related agendas by Pakistani English Newspapers

The world faces an extraordinary public health emergency and consequent massive socioeconomic impact due to the outbreak of novel type of coronavirus known as COVID-19. While commenting what and how should media report on this pandemic, Powell (2020) from Future Science Group said that "it's also important to communicate the story behind the numbers, what countries are doing to respond to the disease and what individuals can do too, ensuring stories have practical and actionable information." Obregón et al, (2009) admired Pakistan's efforts for lowering cases due to effective media strategies by, "mobilizing social networks and leaders, creating political will, increasing knowledge and changing attitudes, ensuring individual and community-level demand, overcoming gender barriers and resistance to vaccination." Themes are more implicit and , categories explicit context of the text whereas subthemes focus on a notable event with a central organizing context having implicit meanings like themes. [...]this study coded major agendas through pilot study and then extracted subthemes/ or issues or notable events from the population of the study.

Coverage of Farmers' Issues in Newspapers during COVID-19: An Analysis of Major Kannada Dailies

[...]in this background, the present study aimed to explore the farmers' subjects covered in Kannada significant dailies, the presentation of the problems and which newspaper emphasizes more farmers' issues. In India, 50 per cent of working labourers are involved in agricultural activities, and 68 per cent of household income is dependent on agriculture. Because of COVID-19, they are suffering from marketing their product and earning money for livelihood [1]. Even though various programmers such as renting agricultural equipment, Kisan call centers to guide the farmers, PM Kisan Maan Dhan Yojana, etc., farmers struggle to get seeds and fertilizers quickly. Since its beginning, newspapers have played a vital role in drawing public and administration attention to many social issues. Many people lost their jobs and returned to their villages to lead safe lives. Because of the inverse migration, villages get infected, and COVID-19 started spreading among village communities.

The Impact of Covid-19 on the Print Media: A Kerala Perspective

The print media has played a significant role in Indian history. During the early decades of the 19th century newspapers began to circulate in Kerala. The State is best known for its literacy, healthcare, and socio-economic development. Nearly 60 per cent of the population reads newspapers every day (Indian Readership Survey, 2019). News consumption in Kerala is high compared to other States because of political consciousness, demography, literacy rate and standard of living of the people. The print media has been playing a vital role in newsgathering and reporting across the country during the Covid-19 pandemic. This article intends to identify the consequences of Covid-19 and the subsequent lockdown on the print media in Kerala. A sharp decline in circulation and advertisement revenue has disrupted the printing and distribution of newspapers and periodicals across the State. This paper looks at the various managerial measures taken by the media for their survival and the government policies and initiatives as a stakeholder in order to improve the present scenario. For this study, published reports of the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), WHO and various online newspaper reports have been referred to. Government interventions at central and State levels have been made to mitigate advertisement dues from government entities. Moreover, many newspaper establishments have resorted to salary cuts, edition cuts and work from home arrangements to reduce their operational costs.

Prominence and Format of Covid-19 Reportage by the Media

According to Ogundele (2021), the virus's rapid spread increased citizens' fear and anxiety, triggering an urgent need for rapid crisis communication, enlightenment, sensitization, and education among Nigerian citizens by the Federal Government and concerned bodies through various mass media channels such as radio, television, film, and the internet, among others, to promote healthy practices. According to Akinfeleye (1987), health communication is a type of communication that is transmitted through the media in order to provide sufficient health care. According to Reuben, Danladi, Saleh, and Ejembi (2020), the COVID-19 pandemic has become a serious public health concern around the world, with governments taking unprecedented Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) efforts to halt the virus's spread. According to Okunna (1999), mass media are a range of platforms through which mass communication occurs, yet fake news and conspiracy theories have thrived in recent years, particularly on social media.

Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu

We study the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on mortality and economic activity across U.S. cities during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. The combination of fast and stringent NPIs reduced peak mortality by 50 percent and cumulative excess mortality by 24 to 34 percent. However, while the pandemic itself was associated with short-run economic disruptions, we find that these disruptions were similar across cities with strict and lenient NPIs. NPIs also did not worsen medium-run economic outcomes. Our findings indicate that NPIs can reduce disease transmission without further depressing economic activity, a finding also reflected in discussions in contemporary newspapers.

Framing of COVID-19 in Newspapers: A Perspective from the US-Mexico Border.

The degree to which the media report a health emergency affects the seriousness with which the people respond to combat the health crisis. Engagement from local newspapers in the US has received scant scrutiny, even though there is a sizable body of scholarship on the analysis of COVID-19 news. We fill this void by focusing on the Rio Grande Valley area of the US-Mexico border. To understand the differences, we compared such local news coverage with the coverage of a national news outlet. After collecting the relevant news articles, we used sentiment analysis, rapid automatic keyword extraction (RAKE), and co-occurrence network analysis to examine the main themes and sentiments of COVID-19 news articles. The RAKE identified that county-specific news or local regulations are more prevalent among the key terms in The Monitor which are absent in USA Today. The co-occurrence network shows the coverage of the disruption of sports season in USA Today which is not present in The Monitor. The sentiment analysis presents fear emotion is more dominant in USA Today, but trust emotion becomes more prevalent in The Monitor news coverage. These findings show us that, although the subject of the health emergency is the same, local and national newspapers describe it in different ways, and the sentiments they convey are also not the same.

Internet Usage by Young Kids in India

India is one of the countries with the highest number of kids under the age of 18 years. This paper adds value in understanding the usage in the current covid scenario. The research objectives for the current study are to examine how young kids in India use their time on internet for varied purposes, to study how young kids find the websites that are of interest to them and to examine how young kids obtain information about sensitive issues. A cross-sectional web survey was conducted to examine the various aspects of the use of the Internet and traditional media (television/radio/magazines/newspapers/billboards) among kids in India. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire. The sampling method used in the study was purposive sample (522 kids). Internet emerged as the first choice of media for kids for all the nine selected activities that include homework, shopping, restaurant/food-ordering, travel and tour, information search, health related information, weather forecast, entertainment, and news/current events. Girl respondents as compared to boys have consumed Internet at a higher rate for learning about the fashion (trends) and health related issues such as seeking preventative health care and specific information about medical issues.

VigiNetWork: a Community Pharmacists-Network on Pharmacovigilance in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto Region: An International Journal of Medical Toxicology and Drug Experience

Introduction: The literature shows that in Italy community pharmacists and patients are not active enough in reporting adverse drug reactions (ADRs) [1-3]. To improve these replies it has been set up VigiNetWork project (September 2020-September 2022): it is a multiregional (Emilia-Romagna and Veneto Region) pharmacovigilance (PV) project funded by the Italian Medicines Agency, joining pharmacists and citizens in pharmacovigilance activities within the community pharmacies. Objective: To develop a pharmacovigilance network among community pharmacies, to promote spontaneous ADRs reporting by pharmacists and patients and to improve pharmacists' knowledge on drug safety. Methods: The project has been promoted through social networks, webinars, local newspapers, and the Category Professional Associations. An information leaflet explaining its characteristics, a free access to two e-learning courses and a personal access to a website (www.vigirete.it) have been made available to enrolled pharmacists. A similar leaflet has been developed for patients. To evaluate the effectiveness of VigiNetWork we assessed the number of enrolled community pharmacies/pharmacists and of ADR reports submitted by them, their participation to e-learning courses and their visits to the website. Results: From September 2020 to March 2022 a total of 669 and 371 community pharmacies were enrolled respectively in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto Region (Table 1). A total of 339 and 516 (about 90% of total reports from community pharmacists) ADR reports were submitted from the pharmacists of VigiNetWork respectively in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto Region and an increase in comparison to the previous 18 months was observed. The impact of the project in patient reporting was presumed, but not assessable. In our study period 40% and 58% of enrolled pharmacists registered for distance learning courses respectively in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto Region, even if only about 5% of them completed the training in both Regions. The website reached 2113 (86% of enrolled pharmacists) unique visitors.Conclusion: Our project showed a great attention of community pharmacists to PV, increased also due to COVID-19 pandemic. The total number of submitted reports, even if limited, represented almost the totality of all reports from community pharmacists in both Regions and their interest in our website contents was appreciable. More efforts could be done to continue these activities in daily practice.

The Media in the Construction of Reality in the Context of Colombian Social Nonconformity

Introduction: Convergence of linguistics and semiotics materializes in the text not only the conceptual content that is expressed through codes, but the message also underlies the realism of the communicative intentions of the issuing agent in a specific context and the value of the interactions of the actors of the communicative act. Methodology: The vision of reality that is established in the collective imaginary must be analyzed from the interpretation of society and culture, the laws of operation and their constituent parts. For this, this research approached two newspapers of national circulation, five general radio channels of national coverage, and two television newscasts of private channels, and through the use of quantitative instruments, the posts, tweets or videos were reviewed in order to analyze the constituent elements of the discourse—text, images, hashtags, or keywords—which are appreciated from the syntactic and semantic perspectives (structural) and pragmatics (functional). Results: The communication process in its social context denotes the intervention of nonlinguistic elements of sociocultural order that demarcate the generation and interpretation of the meanings and senses of linguistic expressions. Discussion: The linguistic structure offers conditions for communication, but any generation and transmission of meanings is a product of the intention of the subjects who use it for specific purposes and in specific communicative situations within a social context. Conclusions: Intensive use of digital technology and social networks naturalized a relationship of proximity and familiarity in the communication process, satisfaction of needs in the multiplicity of information that is created and distributed in the network bundled to mobile devices and the political and social ecosystem of the nation.

COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights of Newspaper Trends

The study aims to analyze the change in coverage of health issues awareness, printed on the front page of Indian e-papers (The Hindustan Times and The Times of India) for the pre- and peri-coronavirus period. The collected news articles are examined by performing the latent dirichlet allocation algorithm. The sentiment analysis is performed to analyze the change in the emotions aroused from news articles. The outcome regarding the pre-coronavirus period reveals that the focus of the e-papers was mostly on politics, crime, and economy whereas, in the peri-coronavirus period, the e-papers are focusing more (i.e. 40% topics) on publishing the news related to disseminating the awareness about the coronavirus disease. The priority of news topics includes the active number of cases, medical facilities, and COVID-19 testing. The outcome regarding sentiment analysis reveals that negative sentiments are prominent in the peri-coronavirus period due to fear of the outbreak of the virus.

MEDIA FRAMING ON COVID-19 BOOSTER SHOTS NEWS REPORTING IN MALAYSIA: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF THE STAR ONLINE

As of May 2022, the death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia reached more than 35,000. To battle the pandemic, since February 2021, Malaysia accelerated its vaccination program nationwide and has become one of the countries with the highest vaccination rate. However, the new Omicron variant set the alarm to the country again for a new wave is approaching. People in the country who have completed two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine were urged for the booster shot. As most people get to know public health and policy information from mediated sources, news media play a crucial role in communicating the importance and the urgency of booster shots. This study examined the salient news themes and the media framing on booster shot news reporting in the highest circulated newspaper in Malaysia, The Star Online. The news about booster shots were content analysed from 1 August to 31 December 2021 where the extensive stories were covered within these 5 months. This study aimed to advance knowledge on Covid-19 booster shot news coverage from a framing perspective. Based on the principle that media have a momentous effect, frames enable audiences to discover a particular point of view in a given situation that was set more noticeably. It takes an inductive approach to the analysis. The findings revealed vaccine information is the dominant news theme where the framing generally carried an urging tone. It concluded media framing of the Covid-19 booster shot transformed the infodemic into informing, assuring, and urging modes in confronting the new wave of a health crisis.

Diffusion of coronavirus and awareness among the people of western India: Analyses the role of print media

Introduction: Media is considered the most powerful platform to create awareness in human society. It plays an important role in spreading public awareness and disseminating information about pandemic diseases such as coronavirus. A survey through a questionnaire was used and the descriptive analysis of questions as asked to the people on COVID 19 published by the leading newspapers of Rajasthan, western India was done to analyze the role print media played in spreading awareness about Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19). Materials and Methods: The objectives used both quantitative and qualitative methodology. In the quantitative method, a self-structured questionnaire was circulated among the various professionals. A descriptive method of secondary sources was also used to measure the effect of articles and advisements on the people published in the newspapers. Results: A total of 106 various professionals participated in the study. The research reveals that 56 percent of males and 43 percent of females are part of this research;more than 80 percent of respondents belong to the age group of fewer than 40 years. Among the active respondents, 91 percent are said to read the newspaper regularly. The study also shows that 96 percent of respondents are read articles, news, columns related to COVID-19 and particular about Coronavirus. Nearly 91 percent of respondents are in favor that media coverage of COVID-19 has improved their knowledge of Coronavirus. Around 93 percent of respondents agree that media spreading awareness among the people on Coronavirus through newspaper published articles, news, and advisements. The study exhibits that 95 percent of respondents expressed their views that print media has played an active role in disseminating the government directives on Coronavirus and almost 97 percent of the respondents are opined that print media will play a more effective role in spreading awareness on coronavirus. Conclusion: The respondents expressed that print media has played a vital role in spreading awareness on the pandemic of coronavirus disease. The newspaper spread awareness among the people on coronavirus through newspaper published articles, news and advisements. The newspaper also published a variety of queries and doubts as asked by the people to Doctors on coronvirus. © 2022, Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine. All rights reserved.

Expert knowledge, communication and government in pandemics

This paper analyzes the discourses produced in two digital newspapers about the link between expert knowledge and the State during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic in Argentina. It explores the treatment that the media constructed about the configuration of technical-political elites, the discourses that are legitimized by them and the disputes and tensions present in this process. It focuses on contents, sources, actors and assessment. The data are elaborated on the basis of discourse analysis, taking into account the complex relationships between the text (structures of journalistic discourse) and its context of production (socio-historical conditions). The results obtained point out the importance of the presence of the role of expert knowledge in the media, as an element that guides the discussion and provides legitimacy to the communication of the measures taken during the pandemic, the focus of the discussion around the measures and the tensions that emerge in it with respect to the expert knowledge protagonists and the reproduction of the biomedical model. Finally, the need for comprehensive responses in strategies that take into account the psychosocial-economic dimension and the social particularities of the scenarios to which they are oriented is discussed.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine: some readings from Italian newspapers (20 February–5 March 2022)

Over the last two years, the metaphor of war has often been used in Italy when discussing the fight against the pandemic, to describe the restrictions that have been introduced as a result, from lockdown to the Green Pass. Paradoxically, once the state of emergency ended, just as we were on the cusp of the long-awaited return to normality (to 'peace' in a sense), Russia's sudden invasion of Ukraine meant that war truly became part of Italians' lives through the media. In this context, I have analysed the positions taken by the major Italian periodicals (Avvenire, Corriere della Sera, Il Fatto Quotidiano, Il Foglio, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Mattino di Napoli, Il Messaggero and Il Tempo di Roma) between 20 February and 5 March. What becomes clear through examination of the main articles is that the themes that would characterise the subsequent Italian debate – from a strategic, humanitarian, political, and economic point of view – were already present in the two weeks from the end of February to the beginning of March 2022. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Modern Italy is the property of Cambridge University Press 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.)