Between information campaign and controversy: a quantitative newspaper content analysis about COVID-19 vaccination in Switzerland and Austria.

AIMS: Because media portrayal reflects and shapes public opinion and health policy, investigating news coverage of public health issues is highly relevant for public health research and practice. Addressing a topical issue, this study investigated how newspaper coverage framed COVID-19 vaccines in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland and how it developed over time. METHODS: A quantitative newspaper content analysis of six newspapers from Austria and German-speaking Switzerland published between January 1 and 31, 2022 was conducted. Frames were identified for each country separately through hierarchical cluster analysis (Ward's method) based on frame elements. RESULTS: Four frames were identified in both countries: (1) Evaluating new vaccines, (2) Discussing mandates, (3) Promoting vaccination, (4) Mentioning vaccines. In Frames 1 (Switzerland 86.4%, Austria 93.3%) and 3 (Switzerland 92.7%, Austria 98.9%), most articles included vaccine-endorsing statements, with Swiss coverage including additional negative statements more often than Austrian coverage (43.2%/44.6% vs 4.0%/3.3%). Frame 2 was closely linked to vaccine skepticism only in Austria and contained more evaluative statements in Austrian newspapers (25.4% endorsing, 35.4% rejecting; in Switzerland 14.5%/18.1%). The Austrian tabloid Kronen Zeitung published most articles (497/1091, 45.6%). CONCLUSIONS: The commercialized and comparatively high share of tabloid news coverage in Austria may have contributed to oversimplified and polarizing COVID-19 vaccine debates in this context. Insufficiently balanced and adequate information may contribute to a loss of public trust in vaccination and may therefore affect vaccination uptake. Authorities and public health professionals should consider this effect when designing information campaigns.

Who tweets what about personalised medicine? Promises and concerns from Twitter discussions in Denmark.

Digital health data are seen as valuable resources for the development of better and more efficient treatments, for instance through personalised medicine. However, health data are information about individuals who hold opinions and can challenge how data about them are used. Therefore it is important to understand public discussions around reuse of digital health data. Social media have been heralded as enabling new forms of public engagement and as a place to study social issues. In this paper, we study a public debate on Twitter about personalised medicine. We explore who participates in discussions about personalised medicine on Twitter and what they tweet about. Based on user-generated biographies we categorise users as having a 'Professional interest in personalised medicine' or as 'Private' users. We describe how users within the field tweet about the promises of personalised medicine, while users unaffiliated with the field tweet about the concrete realisation of these ambitions in the form of a new infrastructure and express concerns about the conditions for the implementation. Our study serves to remind people interested in public opinion that Twitter is a platform used for multiple purposes by different actors and not simply a bottom-up democratic forum. This study contributes with insights relevant to policymakers wishing to expand infrastructures for reuse of health data. First, by providing insights into what is discussed about health data reuse. Second, by exploring how Twitter can be used as a platform to study public discussions about reuse of health data.

Coordinated inauthentic behavior: An innovative manipulation tactic to amplify COVID-19 anti-vaccine communication outreach via social media.

Coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) is a manipulative communication tactic that uses a mix of authentic, fake, and duplicated social media accounts to operate as an adversarial network (AN) across multiple social media platforms. The article aims to clarify how CIB's emerging communication tactic "secretly" exploits technology to massively harass, harm, or mislead the online debate around crucial issues for society, like the COVID-19 vaccination. CIB's manipulative operations could be one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression and democracy in our society. CIB campaigns mislead others by acting with pre-arranged exceptional similarity and "secret" operations. Previous theoretical frameworks failed to evaluate the role of CIB on vaccination attitudes and behavior. In light of recent international and interdisciplinary CIB research, this study critically analyzes the case of a COVID-19 anti-vaccine adversarial network removed from Meta at the end of 2021 for brigading. A violent and harmful attempt to tactically manipulate the COVID-19 vaccine debate in Italy, France, and Germany. The following focal issues are discussed: (1) CIB manipulative operations, (2) their extensions, and (3) challenges in CIB's identification. The article shows that CIB acts in three domains: (i) structuring inauthentic online communities, (ii) exploiting social media technology, and (iii) deceiving algorithms to extend communication outreach to unaware social media users, a matter of concern for the general audience of CIB-illiterates. Upcoming threats, open issues, and future research directions are discussed.

Moving beyond narrow definitions of gene drive: Diverse perspectives and frames enable substantive dialogue among science and humanities teachers in the United States and United Kingdom.

Gene drive is an emerging biotechnology with applications in global health, conservation and agriculture. Scientists are preparing for field trials, triggering debate about when and how to release gene-drive organisms. These decisions depend on public understandings of gene drive, which are shaped by language. While some studies on gene drive communication assume the need to persuade publics of expert definitions of gene drive, we highlight the importance of meaning-making in communication and engagement. We conducted focus groups with humanities and science teachers in the United Kingdom and United States to explore how different media framings stimulated discussions of gene drive. We found diversity in the value of these framings for public debate. Interestingly, the definition favoured by gene drive scientists was the least popular among participants. Rather than carefully curating language, we need opportunities for publics to make sense and negotiate the meanings of a technology on their own terms.

Poly-truth, or the limits of pluralism: Popular debates on conspiracy theories in a post-truth era.

Conspiracy theories are central to "post-truth" discussions. Official knowledge, backed by science, politics, and media, is distrusted by various people resorting to alternative (conspiratorial) explanations. While elite commentators lament the rise of such "untruths," we know little of people's everyday opinions on this topic, despite their societal ramifications. We therefore performed a qualitative content analysis of 522 comments under a Dutch newspaper article on conspiracy theories to study how ordinary people discuss post-truth matters. We found four main points of controversy: "habitus of distrust"; "who to involve in public debates"; "which ways of knowing to allow"; and "what is at stake?" The diverging opinions outline the limits of pluralism in a post-truth era, revealing tensions between technocratic and democratic ideals in society. We show that popular opinions on conspiracy theories embody more complexity and nuance than elite conceptions of post-truth allow for: they lay bare the multiple sociological dimensions of poly-truth.

Does China have a public debate on genetically modified organisms? A discourse network analysis of public debate on Weibo.

We examine stakeholder participation in the online debate on genetically modified organisms in China and assess how the debate has changed over time. Therefore, we compare messages posted between 2013 and 2020 on the Chinese microblog website Weibo by using discourse network analysis. Our findings reveal strong opposition to genetically modified crops, along with the existence of two competing coalitions of supporters and opponents. We further observe an increasing number of posts supporting genetically modified organisms by the public in recent years. Consequently, there is an indication that the positions of stakeholders have changed over time. We discuss the policy implications for China and draw conclusions for other countries.

Edición genética humana entre el deber de curar, la libertad de investigación científica y el principio de precaución: una lectura de la opinión del Comité Nacional de Bioética italiano / Human gene editing between the duty to cure, the freedom of scientific research and the precautionary principle: a reading of the opinion of the Italian National Bioethics Committee

En 2017 el Comité Nacional de Bioética de Italia publicó una opinión sobre la nueva técnica de edición genética nombrada CRISPR-Cas9. El artículo presenta el contenido de dicha opinión y presenta la discusión que se produjo en el seno del propio Comité mismo sobre la experimentación con embriones no destinados a la implantación. La reflexión finaliza con la indicación de algunas cuestiones bioéticas abiertas que merecen una especial atención crítica por parte de los científicos y de los responsables de la comunidad civil.(AU)

In 2017 the National Bioethics Committee of Italy published an opinion on the new gene editing technique named CRISPR-Cas9. The article presents the content of such opinion and presents the discussion that took place within the Committee itself on experimentation with embryos not destined for implantation. The reflection ends with a brief discussion about some open bioethical questions that deserve special critical attention on the part of scientists and those responsible for the civil community.(AU)

The public debate on organ donation and presumed consent in Denmark: Are the right issues being addressed?

The legal framework for organ donation in Denmark is informed consent. But due to the unsatisfactory number of organ donors, Denmark is considering changing legislation to presumed consent. This article discusses the public debate on organ donation and presumed consent in Denmark, and asks whether the right issues are being addressed in the quest towards more available organs and better donor rates? Basing our considerations on the various arguments in the debate and on scientific findings, we question the potential benefits of presumed consent and challenge some of the assumptions and rationalizations that characterize the discussions in Denmark regarding public support, public trust and the role of the family in donation decisions.

Responding to Risk: Regulation or Prohibition? New Zealand Media Reporting of Thoroughbred Jumps Racing 2016-2018.

Jumps racing involves a higher risk of accident and fatality than flat racing. The wide accessibility of media, combined with alternate views regarding the place of animals in society, raises the question of the acceptability of the continuation of jumps racing. Racing data and media articles from Newztext and Google news search were collected for the 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 jumps racing seasons, during which the fatality rate was 5.8 per 1000 starters. Jumps racing articles comprised 3.4% of all race reporting, and the volume of discussion about jumps racing was minimal (2.9% of jumps race articles related to the continuation of jumps racing), short-lived and related to horse fatalities. Articles were categorised and analysed using rhetorical analysis to determine the main arguments. The inherent risk posed by jumps racing to the horse formed a basis for two argumentative positions. Proponents of jumps racing argued that risks were reasonable, with risk minimisation measures best determined by expertise and care from within the racing industry, labelling opponents as naïve extremists. Opponents of jumps racing used anthropomorphism of the horse to argue that any risk was unacceptable and jumps racing should be banned. Horses were attributed with rights, and from this perspective, the racing industry exploited horses for entertainment. These two different arguments were used to shape claims for and against the continuation of jumps racing, allowing both to be built upon a shared acceptance of inherent risk.

Health professionals prepared for the future. Why Social Sciences and Humanities teaching in Medical Faculties matter.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. A public debate took place place in France in 2018 concerning ethical and social issues of biomedicine and life science and technologies. As faculty members of French medical schools and scholars in Social Sciences and Humanities, we contributed to introduce the central theme of health professionals education. What roles and what place should we assign to the social sciences and Humanities in preparing health professionals who will work in a transforming and largely unpredictable context? In this paper, we list 4 crucial issues for the present and the future of healthcare profession, concerning changes of medical roles; new biomedical concepts and innovations; long term consequences on health social contract; ethical issues in health care daily life settings. Then, we list 4 kinds of resources that are brought to students by Social Sciences and Humanities courses. They concern the connection to patients's experiences the social and cultural construction of these experiences; the social responsibility of medical doctors; and the independence of their professional judgments. This is a plea for the development of reflexivity and critical thought backed up by well identified, well integrated and sufficiently developed Social Sciences and Humanities courses in French medical schools.

The fate of the new pharmacy bill: going backwards or forwards?

BACKGROUND: The proposed Pharmacy Bill of Malaysia which served to consolidate and harmonise the existing pharmacy legislation which has been used for more than 60 years. This new Pharmacy Bill contains 17 parts and a total of 170 legislative sections covering laws governing pharmacy practice, medicinal products classification, registration, sale, supply, licensing etc. Our article could serve as a case study on pharmacy jurisprudence and drug regulation as well as the governance for medicines. DISCUSSION: Changes to the colonial era legislation are long overdue as the present pharmaceutical and medical controls are not integrated and various overlaps exist in terms of roles of control. However, various organisations of private general practitioners strongly opposed this Pharmacy Bill and lobbied for a revised version that greatly favours themselves. Thus, the latest revision of this Pharmacy Bill renders the power to medical doctors to not only continue selling and supplying medications but also compound medication. SUMMARY: A complete overhaul of pharmacy legislation in view of the current challenges faced in providing efficient and comprehensive health services in Malaysia is necessary. For the sake of patients' safety and good governance for medicines, the private general practitioners should empower the patients with their needs for prescription and itemised billing. The proposed Pharmacy Bill could make the whole mechanism of managing and controlling the use of medicines more transparent and synchronised.

Access to new cancer medicines in Australia: dispelling the myths and informing a public debate.

Despite the high level of spending on cancer medicines in Australia, consumer organisations and the pharmaceutical industry often make claims of delayed or lack of access to new cancer medicines-claims that are frequently supported by prominent coverage in the Australian media. These claims, while morally and psychologically compelling, tend to ignore the complexity of medicines funding decisions. In this commentary we summarise the current situation regarding the registration and funding of cancer medicines in Australia, elucidate the main challenges associated with access to cancer medicines in the Australian context, and describe some of the steps that have been taken to address these challenges.

Jump Horse Safety: Reconciling Public Debate and Australian Thoroughbred Jump Racing Data, 2012-2014.

Thoroughbred jump racing sits in the spotlight of contemporary welfare and ethical debates about horse racing. In Australia, jump racing comprises hurdle and steeplechase races and has ceased in all but two states, Victoria and South Australia. This paper documents the size, geography, composition, and dynamics of Australian jump racing for the 2012, 2013, and 2014 seasons with a focus on debate about risks to horses. We found that the majority of Australian jump racing is regional, based in Victoria, and involves a small group of experienced trainers and jockeys. Australian jump horses are on average 6.4 years of age. The jump career of the majority of horses involves participating in three or less hurdle races and over one season. Almost one quarter of Australian jump horses race only once. There were ten horse fatalities in races over the study period, with an overall fatality rate of 5.1 fatalities per 1000 horses starting in a jump race (0.51%). There was significant disparity between the fatality rate for hurdles, 0.75 fatalities per 1000 starts (0.075%) and steeplechases, 14 fatalities per 1000 starts (1.4%). Safety initiatives introduced by regulators in 2010 appear to have significantly decreased risks to horses in hurdles but have had little or no effect in steeplechases. Our discussion considers these Animals 2015, 5 1073 data in light of public controversy, political debate, and industry regulation related to jump horse safety.

The GMO case in France: politics, lawlessness and postmodernism.

The GMO debacle in France is analyzed in the light of the balance of forces around this controversy, the changes in position of governments and the opponents' strategic use of intimidation. These factors have caused insurmountable difficulties for scientific experimentations and assessment of the technology, as well as for farmers attempting to grow GM maize in this country. The change from a "modern" to a "postmodern" framing of official public debates and scientific institutions has not appeased confrontations concerning GMOs.

Rights versus morality: online debate about decriminalization of gay sex in Singapore.

This article presents a quantitative content analysis of 10,473 comments from two opposing online petitions related to the legal status of a section of the penal code in Singapore used to ban sex between men. Results indicate numerous significant differences in how the two sides discussed the law and its significance. In particular, they used different types of arguments to support their views and expressed different kinds of concerns over the potential impact of changing or maintaining the law. The patterns of language use seem to reflect distinctly different approaches to the debate and suggest the difficulty of finding common ground amid this contentious social issue, but they also reveal similarities to how Western cultures have framed the debate.

GM crops and foods: what do consumers want to know?

Agricultural biotechnology--GMOs--has a huge positive impact on farming and farmers but remains controversial among the skeptical public. Curious but anxious consumers, driven by scare stories and pseudo-science provided by anti-GMO activists, seek accurate and authoritative answers to their questions. Here, I address a sample of such queries directed to me from the public, including the ubiquitous "Is it safe?" and also discuss some of the shameful tactics used by anti-GM activists in the public debate to garner support at the cost of inciting unnecessary anxiety among the public.

Attitudes and attitudinal ambivalence change towards nanotechnology applied to food production.

The strategic development of novel nanotechnologies will be determined by their public acceptance, which in turn may be influenced by public perceptions of the risks and benefits associated with the specific applications. At the present time, public opinions towards nanotechnologies remain largely inchoate, although this is likely to change with increasing public exposure to relevant information. In two experiments, a total of 618 participants, from the UK population, were provided with different risk-benefit information on nanotechnology application in food. The results show that the provision of both risk and benefit information does not influence average attitude, but results in some individuals becoming more positive and less ambivalent and others more negative and less ambivalent towards nanotechnologies. A third group maintained a neutral attitude and became more ambivalent. It is concluded that to understand public opinion formation about nanotechnology keeping track of polarization and ambivalence is important.

Contrasts and synergies in different biofuel reports.

The societal debate on biofuels is characterised by increased complexity. This can hinder the effective governance of the field. This paper attempts a quantitative bird's eye meta-analysis of this complexity by mapping different stakeholder perspectives and expected outcomes as seen in the secondary literature on biofuels, along the lines of the People-Planet-Profit framework. Our analysis illustrates the tension between stated and actual drivers of large scale biofuel development, especially for first generation biofuels. Although environmental (Planet) aspects have dominated the biofuel debate, their overall assessment is mostly negative with regard to first generation biofuels. By contrast, economic (Profit) aspects are the only ones that are assessed positively with regard to first generation biofuels. Furthermore, positive and negative assessments of biofuel development are strongly influenced by the differences in focus between different stakeholder clusters. Stakeholders who appear generally supportive to biofuel development (industry) focus relatively more on aspects that are generally assessed as positive (Profit). By contrast, non-supportive stakeholders (NGO's) tend to focus mainly on aspects that are generally assessed as negative (Planet). Moreover, our analysis of reference lists revealed few citations of primary scientific data, and also that intergovernmental organizations produce the most influential publications in the debate. The surprising lack of listed references to scientific (primary) data reveals a need to assess in which arena the transition of scientific data towards secondary publications takes place, and how one can measure its quality. This work should be understood as a first effort to take some control over a complex and contradictory number of publications, and to allow the effective governance of the field through the identification of areas of overlapping consensus and persisting controversy, without reverting to claims on technical detail.