[Sentiments in the COVID-19 crisis communication of German authorities and independent experts on Twitter : A sentiment analysis for the first year of the pandemic]. / Emotionalität in der COVID-19-Krisenkommunikation von Behörden und unabhängigen Expert*innen auf Twitter : Eine Sentiment-Analyse für das erste Pandemiejahr.

BACKGROUND: At the beginning of the COVID­19 pandemic in Germany, there was great uncertainty among the population and among those responsible for crisis communication. A substantial part of the communication from experts and the responsible authorities took place on social media, especially on Twitter. The positive, negative, and neutral sentiments (emotions) conveyed there during crisis communication have not yet been comparatively studied for Germany. STUDY AIM: Sentiments in Twitter messages from various (health) authorities and independent experts on COVID­19 will be evaluated for the first pandemic year (1 January 2020 to 15 January 2021) to provide a knowledge base for improving future crisis communication. MATERIAL AND METHODS: From n = 39 Twitter actors (21 authorities and 18 experts), n = 8251 tweets were included in the analysis. The sentiment analysis was done using the so-called lexicon approach, a method within the social media analytics framework to detect sentiments. Descriptive statistics were calculated to determine, among other things, the average polarity of sentiments and the frequencies of positive and negative words in the three phases of the pandemic. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The development of emotionality in COVID­19 tweets and the number of new infections in Germany run roughly parallel. The analysis shows that the polarity of sentiments is negative on average for both groups of actors. Experts tweet significantly more negatively about COVID­19 than authorities during the study period. Authorities communicate close to the neutrality line in the second phase, that is, neither distinctly positive nor negative.

[Reduce sedentary behaviour among children - a systematic review]. / Reduzierung von Sitzzeiten bei Kindern ­ ein systematisches Review.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Sedentary behaviour is itself a health-related behaviour. This systematic review examines whether family-based interventions can reduce sitting time among children and adolescents and which variables moderate potential intervention effects. METHODS: Using a systematic literature search we identified family-based randomised controlled intervention studies that focus on sedentary behaviour in 3­ to 18-year-old children and youth. The methodological quality of studies as well as the intervention effects according to different outcomes (screen-based vs. overall sitting) were analysed and evaluated for moderating effects. RESULTS: Of 29 studies, 17 reported significant effects and 11 studies showed positive trends for reduced sitting time. The content of interventions, the level of theoretical underpinning as well as the methodological quality of studies were heterogeneous. Most often, screen-based sitting and seldom overall sitting was examined. Concise characteristics of intervention success were not clearly apparent. The proportion of positive intervention effects was higher in reducing sitting in front of TVs compared to other outcomes. An analysis of moderators highlighted that intervention programs among pre-schoolers showed more often positive intervention effects. DISCUSSION: There are many promising opportunities to reduce sitting time using family-based approaches. Statements in terms of replication of interventions and explanations of the effective mechanisms within interventions are limited. Therefore, future interventions should use subjective as well as objective evaluation measures and consider overall sitting time. To strengthen the basis of interventional effort in this research field, a theoretical planning approach is recommended.

The Spread of COVID-19 Crisis Communication by German Public Authorities and Experts on Twitter: Quantitative Content Analysis.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic led to the necessity of immediate crisis communication by public health authorities. In Germany, as in many other countries, people choose social media, including Twitter, to obtain real-time information and understanding of the pandemic and its consequences. Next to authorities, experts such as virologists and science communicators were very prominent at the beginning of German Twitter COVID-19 crisis communication. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to detect similarities and differences between public authorities and individual experts in COVID-19 crisis communication on Twitter during the first year of the pandemic. METHODS: Descriptive analysis and quantitative content analysis were carried out on 8251 original tweets posted from January 1, 2020, to January 15, 2021. COVID-19-related tweets of 21 authorities and 18 experts were categorized into structural, content, and style components. Negative binomial regressions were performed to evaluate tweet spread measured by the retweet and like counts of COVID-19-related tweets. RESULTS: Descriptive statistics revealed that authorities and experts increasingly tweeted about COVID-19 over the period under study. Two experts and one authority were responsible for 70.26% (544,418/774,865) of all retweets, thus representing COVID-19 influencers. Altogether, COVID-19 tweets by experts reached a 7-fold higher rate of retweeting (t8,249=26.94, P<.001) and 13.9 times the like rate (t8,249=31.27, P<.001) compared with those of authorities. Tweets by authorities were much more designed than those by experts, with more structural and content components; for example, 91.99% (4997/5432) of tweets by authorities used hashtags in contrast to only 19.01% (536/2819) of experts' COVID-19 tweets. Multivariate analysis revealed that such structural elements reduce the spread of the tweets, and the incidence rate of retweets for authorities' tweets using hashtags was approximately 0.64 that of tweets without hashtags (Z=-6.92, P<.001). For experts, the effect of hashtags on retweets was insignificant (Z=1.56, P=.12). CONCLUSIONS: Twitter data are a powerful information source and suitable for crisis communication in Germany. COVID-19 tweet activity mirrors the development of COVID-19 cases in Germany. Twitter users retweet and like communications regarding COVID-19 by experts more than those delivered by authorities. Tweets have higher coverage for both authorities and experts when they are plain and for authorities when they directly address people. For authorities, it appears that it was difficult to win recognition during COVID-19. For all stakeholders studied, the association between number of followers and number of retweets was highly significantly positive (authorities Z=28.74, P<.001; experts Z=25.99, P<.001). Updated standards might be required for successful crisis communication by authorities.

Poverty dynamics in Germany: Evidence on the relationship between persistent poverty and health behavior.

Previous studies have found poverty to be related to lower levels of health due to poor health behavior such as unhealthy eating, smoking or less physical activity. Longer periods of poverty seem to be especially harmful for individual health behavior. Studies have shown that poverty has a dynamic character. Moreover, poverty is increasingly regarded as being a multidimensional construct and one that considers more aspects than income alone. Against this background this paper analyzes the relationship between health behavior and persistent spells of income poverty as well as a combined poverty indicator using data of the German Socio-Economic Panel (2000-2010). Next to cross-sectional logistic regression models we estimate fixed-effects models to analyze the effect of persistent poverty on dietary behavior, tobacco consumption, and physical activity. Cross-sectional results suggest that persistent poverty is related to poor health behavior, particularly regarding tobacco consumption and physical activity. Results also show that multidimensional and dynamic aspects of poverty matter. Complementary panel analyses reveal negative effects for the combined poverty indicator only for dietary behavior in the total sample. However, by analyzing the sample by gender we identify further effects of persistent poverty on health behavior. The analyses show that not only do individuals in poverty but also those in precarious situations show health-damaging behavior more often.