Scuba diving-related fatalities in the Philippines from 2008 to 2022 as reported in online news media.

The present study aims to investigate the demographics and characteristics of scuba diving fatalities in the Philippines which can help in the identification of local trends and ultimately in the development of appropriate preventive measures. Data on scuba diving-related fatalities in the Philippines from 2008 to 2022 were manually retrieved from online news media sources. Information on age, sex, nationality, certification, purpose, and causative factors, whenever possible were collected and analysed. A total of 39 fatalities were identified having a median age of 43.5 (range 20-80). Majority of victims were males (n = 30), and of foreign ethnicity (n = 26). Asphyxia was identified as the possible disabling injury in almost half of the cases (n = 17). The causes of death based on autopsies were determined only for few cases which included drowning (n = 2), heart attack (n = 1), and traumatic injuries from a dynamite blast (n = 1). Potential vulnerable groups were identified to be the ageing population and foreign tourist divers. In the absence of an existing database, this preliminary report provides the best available evidence at this time concerning scuba diving fatalities in the Philippines.

Mediating effect of depression and acute stress between exposure to Israel-Gaza war media coverage and insomnia: a multinational study from five arab countries.

BACKGROUND: In the context of persistent wars and conflicts worldwide, the impact of acute, excessive and constant exposure to media coverage of such events on mental health outcomes becomes a serious problem for public health, and requires therefore urgent investigation to inform an effective prevention and management response. The objective of the present study was to test the hypothesis that war-related media exposure is directly and indirectly associated with insomnia through depression and perceived stress among adults from the general population of different Arab countries. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was carried-out two weeks after the beginning of Israel-Gaza war on the 7th of October 2023. An anonymous online survey and a snowball sampling method were adopted to collect data. A sample of 2635 general population adults (mean age of 23.98 ± 7.55 years, 73.1% females) took part of this study. RESULTS: The results of the mediation analysis showed that, after adjusting over potential confounders, depression and perceived stress fully mediated the association between war media exposure and insomnia; higher war media exposure was significantly associated with higher depression (Beta = 0.13; p < .001) and perceived stress (Beta = 0.07; p < .001), whereas higher depression (Beta = 0.43; p < .001) and perceived stress (Beta = 0.31; p < .001) were significantly associated with higher insomnia. It is of note that war media exposure was not significantly and directly associated with insomnia (Beta = - 0.01; p = .178 and Beta = 0.02; p = .098 respectively). CONCLUSION: The present study is the first to provide evidence that more time spent viewing the horrors of war is significantly associated with insomnia. In addition, symptoms of stress and depression were present as early as two weeks following the beginning of the war, and played a significant role in mediating the association between war media coverage and insomnia. These findings suggest that timely screening for, and management of depression and stress symptoms in clinical and preventive programs might be beneficial for community adults who have been heavily and indirectly exposed to war through media, and present with insomnia.

News Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Media and the Public's Negative Emotions: Computational Study.

BACKGROUND: Social media has become an increasingly popular and critical tool for users to digest diverse information and express their perceptions and attitudes. While most studies endeavor to delineate the emotional responses of social media users, there is limited research exploring the factors associated with the emergence of emotions, particularly negative ones, during news consumption. OBJECTIVE: We aim to first depict the web coverage by news organizations on social media and then explore the crucial elements of news coverage that trigger the public's negative emotions. Our findings can act as a reference for responsible parties and news organizations in times of crisis. METHODS: We collected 23,705 Facebook posts with 1,019,317 comments from the public pages of representative news organizations in Hong Kong. We used text mining techniques, such as topic models and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, to analyze news components and public reactions. Beyond descriptive analysis, we used regression models to shed light on how news coverage on social media is associated with the public's negative emotional responses. RESULTS: Our results suggest that occurrences of issues regarding pandemic situations, antipandemic measures, and supportive actions are likely to reduce the public's negative emotions, while comments on the posts mentioning the central government and the Government of Hong Kong reveal more negativeness. Negative and neutral media tones can alleviate the rage and interact with the subjects and issues in the news to affect users' negative emotions. Post length is found to have a curvilinear relationship with users' negative emotions. CONCLUSIONS: This study sheds light on the impacts of various components of news coverage (issues, subjects, media tone, and length) on social media on the public's negative emotions (anger, fear, and sadness). Our comprehensive analysis provides a reference framework for efficient crisis communication for similar pandemics at present or in the future. This research, although first extending the analysis between the components of news coverage and negative user emotions to the scenario of social media, echoes previous studies drawn from traditional media and its derivatives, such as web newspapers. Although the era of COVID-19 pandemic gradually brings down the curtain, the commonality of this research and previous studies also contributes to establishing a clearer territory in the field of health crises.

Exposure to anti- and pro-smoking messages among adults in China: Results from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, 2018.

SIGNIFICANCE: For decades, tobacco advertisements and promotions have been common in mass media and public places in China. In 2015, China amended the Advertising Law to prohibit the distribution of tobacco advertising, while also initiating waves of tobacco control media campaigns. This study investigates the associations between exposure to anti- and pro-smoking messages, smoking status, and people's smoking-related beliefs and willingness to support tobacco control policies. METHODS: A secondary data analysis was performed with the 2018 Global Adult Tobacco Survey of 19,376 adults aged ≥15 years in China. Anti- and pro-smoking message exposures were measured as the sum of sources (media or places) where respondents have seen the messages. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationships among smoking status, message exposure, and the outcome variables (health harm beliefs, support for increasing tax on cigarettes, support for using part of the increased tax on tobacco control) controlling for smoking status and demographic differences. RESULTS: Overall, 63.3% of the respondents reported being exposed to anti-smoking messages from at least 1 source, while 18.1% were exposed to pro-smoking messages from at least 1 source. Adults who currently, formerly, and never smoked differed in their beliefs about smoking and willingness to support tobacco control policies. Greater reported exposure to anti-smoking messages was positively associated with belief that smoking is harmful, support for increased cigarette tax, and support for using increased tax revenue for tobacco control measures. Meanwhile, greater reported exposure to pro-smoking messages was negatively related to willingness to support cigarette tax increases. CONCLUSIONS: While national and local tobacco control campaigns in China have reached a large proportion of the adult population, there is still room for improvement. China might consider expanding anti-tobacco campaigns, as reported exposure to these messages is associated with increased public awareness of the health hazards of smoking and support for increasing cigarette taxes.

The evolution of media reportage on GMOs in Ghana following approval of first GM crop.

Ghana's parliament in 2011 passed the Biosafety Act to allow for the application of genetically modified organism (GMO) technology in the country's agriculture. In a vibrant democracy, there have been extensive media discussions on whether GM crops will benefit or harm citizens. In June 2022, the state GMO regulator, the National Biosafety Authority (NBA), approved the country's first GM crop (Bt cowpea) for environmental release, declaring the crop does not present an altered environmental risk or a food/feed safety concern. This study identified 3 of the country's most vibrant digital news outlets and did a content analysis of all GMO stories reported 18 months pre- and post-approval to assess whether the approval changed the focus of GMO issues the media reports on. 91 articles were identified. The results show media reports on the likely impact of GMOs on the country's food security shot up after the approval. However, media reports on the possible health, sociocultural, and environmental impact of GMOs declined. We observe the media and the public appear interested in deliberations on how the technology could address or worsen food insecurity and urge agricultural biotechnology actors in Ghana to focus on that in their sensitization activities.

Analysis of a COVID-19 model with media coverage and limited resources.

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly impacted the global economy and human health. The paper mainly proposed an improved susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) epidemic model with media coverage and limited medical resources to investigate the spread of COVID-19. We proved the positivity and boundedness of the solution. The existence and local asymptotically stability of equilibria were studied and a sufficient criterion was established for backward bifurcation. Further, we applied the proposed model to study the trend of COVID-19 in Shanghai, China, from March to April 2022. The results showed sensitivity analysis, bifurcation, and the effects of critical parameters in the COVID-19 model.

Preferred sources of information on diabetes prevention programmes: a population-based cross-sectional study in Poland.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to analyse preferred sources of information on diabetes prevention programmes and to identify sociodemographic determinants influencing these preferences among adults in Poland. DESIGN: A cross-sectional survey was carried out between 15 and 18 September 2023 using a computer-assisted web interview. A self-prepared questionnaire included 10 questions on sources of information on type 2 diabetes prevention. PARTICIPANTS: Data were obtained from 1046 adults (18-82 years); 53.4% were females. RESULTS: Most respondents preferred email communication (46.4%), followed by a doctor or nurse (33.5%), and a letter or leaflet directly delivered to the mailbox (25.8%) for type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM2) prevention information. Younger respondents were more likely to indicate mass media (OR=1.81, 95% CI=1.12 to 2.95, p=0.01) and digital media (OR=1.65, 95% CI=1.02 to 2.67, p=0.04) as a source of information on DM2 prevention. Those who had higher education (OR=1.51, 95% CI=1.16 to 1.96, p=0.002), as well as those with chronic diseases (OR=1.50, 95% CI=1.14 to 1.97, p=0.004), were more likely to indicate digital media. Out of 10 different variables analysed in this study, passive occupational status (OR=1.43, 95% CI=1.04 to 1.96, p=0.03) as well as having chronic diseases (OR=1.51, 95% CI=1.16 to 1.96, p=0.002) were associated with higher odds of indicating healthcare workers as a preferred source of information. Marital status, having children, place of residence, household characteristics and financial status do not significantly decide communication preferences. CONCLUSION: Communication on DM2 prevention should be adjusted to public preferences and expectations. Tailoring interventions to different demographic groups can enhance outreach and engagement. Email emerged as a popular choice, suggesting the potential of digital communication in preventive health programmes.

Improving Mental Health Among Communication and Media Scholars: Four Structural Suggestions.

In recent years, multiple studies have called attention to the mental health of scholars across the academy. And yet, the mental health of communication and media scholars specifically has not received the focused attention it deserves. In their recent Journal of Communication article, Thomas Hanitzsch and colleagues begin the process of remedying this omission, providing important data on communication and media scholars' mental health and its correlates. Hanitzsch and colleagues stress that their work is a starting point only, and call for their fellow communication and media scholars to engage in discussion about potential solutions. In response to their call, this essay provides four structural recommendations aimed at improving the mental health of early and mid-career scholars.

Media reporting of violence against children in the Eastern Mediterranean Region during the early days of COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Violence against children constitutes a significant public health problem globally. Aim: To document and compare media reports of violence against children before and during COVID-19, and measures taken by countries to address such violence. Methods: This comparative review covered news reports of violence against children from 1 January to 30 June of 2019 and 2020 in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region countries. A total of 823 articles published in Arabic and English, covering incidents, initiatives, opinions and views on all types of violence among children under 18 years of age were sourced using search engines and platforms and reviewed. News on incidents was analysed quantitatively while news on initiatives and opinions was analysed qualitatively. Results: Some 40.3% of the news reports was on incidents, followed by interviews or opinions (31.5%) and initiatives (28.2%). There were 1129 reports of violence against children from 1 January to 30 June of 2019 and 1880 for the same period in 2020. Reports of physical violence increased from 34% in 2019 to 40% in 2020, while reports of sexual violence decreased from 45% in 2019 to 37% in 2020. Views and opinion reports showed 0.4-1.1% alignment with the 7 INSPIRE strategies. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic affected the incidence and reporting of violence against children across the region. It is essential to provide accurate and sensitive media coverage for incidences of violence against children so that survivors and at-risk children can receive adequate support and ensure that communities can tackle it appropriately.

Exposure to mass media chronic health campaign messages and the uptake of non-communicable disease screening in Ghana.

The main goal of this study was to examine the relationship between exposure to mass media health campaign massages and the uptake of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) screening services in Ghana and whether this relationship differs by place of residence. Available evidence suggests a general low uptake of NCDs screening in developing country settings. Unfortunately, many NCDs evolve very slowly and are consequently difficult to detect early especially in situations where people do not screen regularly and in settings where awareness is low. In this study, we contribute to understanding the potential role of the media in scaling up NCDs screening in developing countries. We fitted multivariate logistic regression models to a sample of 1337 individual surveys which were collected at the neighborhood level in three Ghanaian cities. Overall, the results show that exposure to mass media chronic NCD health campaign messages was significantly associated with increased likelihood of screening for NCDs. The results further highlight neighborhood-level disparities in the uptake of NCDs screening services as residents of low-income and deprived neighborhoods were significantly less likely to report being screened for NCDs. Other factors including social capital, knowledge about the causes of NCDs and self-rated health predicted the likelihood of chronic NCDs screening. The results demonstrate mass media can be an important tool for scaling up NCDs screening services in Ghana and similar contexts where awareness might be low. However, place-based disparities need to be addressed.

Using a novel 'difference-in-differences' method and syndromic surveillance to estimate the change in local healthcare utilisation during periods of media reporting in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

OBJECTIVES: Syndromic surveillance supplements traditional laboratory reporting for infectious diseases monitoring. Prior to widespread COVID-19 community surveillance, syndromic surveillance was one of several systems providing real-time information on changes in healthcare-seeking behaviour. The study objective was to identify changes in healthcare utilisation during periods of high local media reporting in England using 'difference-in-differences' (DiD). STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective observational study was conducted using five media events in January-February 2020 in England on four routinely monitored syndromic surveillance indicators. METHODS: Dates 'exposed' to a media event were estimated using Google Trends internet search intensity data (terms = 'coronavirus' and local authority [LA]). We constructed a negative-binomial regression model for each indicator and event time period to estimate a direct effect. RESULTS: We estimated a four-fold increase in telehealth 'cough' calls and a 1.4-fold increase in emergency department (ED) attendances for acute respiratory illness in Brighton and Hove, when a so-called 'superspreading event' in this location was reported in local and national media. Significant decreases were observed in the Buxton (telehealth and ED attendance) and Wirral (ED attendance) areas during media reports of a returnee from an outbreak abroad and a quarantine site opening in the area respectively. CONCLUSIONS: We used a novel approach to directly estimate changes in syndromic surveillance reporting during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in England, providing contextual information on the interpretation of changes in health indicators. With careful consideration of event timings, DiD is useful in producing real-time estimates on specific indicators for informing public health action.

Media Influence on Bystander Intervention for Health Protective Norms: The Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction Perspective.

Drawing upon the Integrative Model of Behavioral Prediction (IM) and the Bystander Intervention Model, this study investigates the impact of media health information on individuals' intentions to address violations of health norms, specifically noncompliance with mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our survey results (n=1,426) indicate a positive correlation between seeking health information from the media and the intention to confront norm violators regarding mask-wearing. This correlation is mediated through three intermediary pathways: attitudes, normative beliefs, and perceived behavioral control. These discoveries address a previously unexplored area concerning pro-social health behaviors, bystander intervention, and contribute to the field of health communication by linking them to research on media influences. Combining media and peer interventions could lead to more effective health outcomes. The discussion covers both theoretical and practical implications.

A Call for Nurses to Become Media Competent: An Interview With Barbara Glickstein.

In this column, Barbara Glickstein, a public health nurse, health reporter, and media strategist, shares insights about nurses' involvement and engagement in the media. She founded "Barbara Glickstein Strategies," a company that trains healthcare leaders to become media competent to advance population health and public policy.

A machine learning approach to detect potentially harmful and protective suicide-related content in broadcast media.

Suicide-related media content has preventive or harmful effects depending on the specific content. Proactive media screening for suicide prevention is hampered by the scarcity of machine learning approaches to detect specific characteristics in news reports. This study applied machine learning to label large quantities of broadcast (TV and radio) media data according to media recommendations reporting suicide. We manually labeled 2519 English transcripts from 44 broadcast sources in Oregon and Washington, USA, published between April 2019 and March 2020. We conducted a content analysis of media reports regarding content characteristics. We trained a benchmark of machine learning models including a majority classifier, approaches based on word frequency (TF-IDF with a linear SVM) and a deep learning model (BERT). We applied these models to a selection of more simple (e.g., focus on a suicide death), and subsequently to putatively more complex tasks (e.g., determining the main focus of a text from 14 categories). Tf-idf with SVM and BERT were clearly better than the naive majority classifier for all characteristics. In a test dataset not used during model training, F1-scores (i.e., the harmonic mean of precision and recall) ranged from 0.90 for celebrity suicide down to 0.58 for the identification of the main focus of the media item. Model performance depended strongly on the number of training samples available, and much less on assumed difficulty of the classification task. This study demonstrates that machine learning models can achieve very satisfactory results for classifying suicide-related broadcast media content, including multi-class characteristics, as long as enough training samples are available. The developed models enable future large-scale screening and investigations of broadcast media.

Epistemic language in news headlines shapes readers' perceptions of objectivity.

How we reason about objectivity-whether an assertion has a ground truth-has implications for belief formation on wide-ranging topics. For example, if someone perceives climate change to be a matter of subjective opinion similar to the best movie genre, they may consider empirical claims about climate change as mere opinion and irrelevant to their beliefs. Here, we investigate whether the language employed by journalists might influence the perceived objectivity of news claims. Specifically, we ask whether factive verb framing (e.g., "Scientists know climate change is happening") increases perceived objectivity compared to nonfactive framing (e.g., "Scientists believe [...]"). Across eight studies (N = 2,785), participants read news headlines about unique, noncontroversial topics (studies 1a-b, 2a-b) or a familiar, controversial topic (climate change; studies 3a-b, 4a-b) and rated the truth and objectivity of the headlines' claims. Across all eight studies, when claims were presented as beliefs (e.g., "Tortoise breeders believe tortoises are becoming more popular pets"), people consistently judged those claims as more subjective than claims presented as knowledge (e.g., "Tortoise breeders know…"), as well as claims presented as unattributed generics (e.g., "Tortoises are becoming more popular pets"). Surprisingly, verb framing had relatively little, inconsistent influence over participants' judgments of the truth of claims. These results demonstrate how, apart from shaping whether we believe a claim is true or false, epistemic language in media can influence whether we believe a claim has an objective answer at all.

Reports on sexual violence published in an online Chinese newspaper: A new frame research.

The leading role of the media is very important in the new media era to build the reporting system and framework of sexual violence crimes, guide people's awareness and public opinion, and improve society's vigilance on sexual crimes. This study took People's Daily Online, a representative online media in China, as a research object to analyse the reporting of sexual crimes over the past 15 years. We conducted relevant searches for specific keywords set in the Python crawler and used IBM SPSS Statistics 19 software to analyse the frequency of relevant content. The results of the research show that, firstly, there have been significant changes in the number of news stories about sexual crimes. Second, the majority of sexual crime news stories are from mainland China. Third, the focus of the news stories and people is relatively concentrated on the perpetrators. Fourth, the People's Daily Online's coverage of sexual crimes focuses on blaming the perpetrators. Fifth, sexual crimes show that the framework is more episodic. This paper examines changes in the coverage of sexual crimes in China and captures how the media cover socially relevant issues, providing important insights for future social health, psychological awareness and diversion, and media policy.

Media exposure to climate change information and pro-environmental behavior: the role of climate change risk judgment.

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between exposure to climate change information in traditional and modern media, cognitive and emotional aspects of climate change risk judgment, and pro-environmental behavior (PEB). METHOD: A cross-sectional online study was conducted on a quota sample of 1,075 participants (51.9% women) aged 18-79 years. Participants self-reported their exposure to climate change-related information in traditional (e.g. television) and modern media (e.g. social networks), cognitive assessment of climate change risk, level of worry about climate change, and the frequency of PEB. RESULTS: Structural equation modeling showed a good fit for the parallel mediation model, involving cognitive risk judgment and worry as mediators between exposure to climate change information in traditional and modern media and PEB. Exposure to climate change information in traditional media had indirect effect on PEB through heightened worry, but not cognitive risk judgment. In contrast, exposure to climate change information in modern media had no indirect effect on PEB. CONCLUSION: Since the link between exposure to climate change information in traditional media and PEB has been shown to be mediated by climate change worry, it is important to enhance the coverage of climate change in traditional media in Croatia, taking care to offer solutions to reduce possible negative impact on people's well-being.

Softly empowering a prosocial expert in the family: lasting effects of a counter-misinformation intervention in an informational autocracy.

The present work is the first to comprehensively analyze the gravity of the misinformation problem in Hungary, where misinformation appears regularly in the pro-governmental, populist, and socially conservative mainstream media. In line with international data, using a Hungarian representative sample (Study 1, N = 991), we found that voters of the reigning populist, conservative party could hardly distinguish fake from real news. In Study 2, we demonstrated that a prosocial intervention of ~ 10 min (N = 801) helped young adult participants discern misinformation four weeks later compared to the control group without implementing any boosters. This effect was the most salient regarding pro-governmental conservative fake news content, leaving real news evaluations intact. Although the hypotheses of the present work were not preregistered, it appears that prosocial misinformation interventions might be promising attempts to counter misinformation in an informational autocracy in which the media is highly centralized. Despite using social motivations, it does not mean that long-term cognitive changes cannot occur. Future studies might explore exactly how these interventions can have an impact on the long-term cognitive processing of news content as well as their underlying neural structures.

Nurses' media competency: A concept analysis.

OBJECTIVES: To analyze and define the concept of nurses' media competency. DESIGN: Concept analysis. DATA SOURCES: We conducted a literature search in PubMed, CINAHL, PsycInfo, and RISS International, as well as a hand-search, for relevant articles published between January 1990 and April 2023. A total of 57 articles related to nurses' media competency, published in English or Korean, were included in this study. REVIEW METHODS: We used Walker and Avant's method of concept analysis to identify the defining attributes, antecedents, and consequences of the concept. RESULTS: The seven defining attributes of nurses' media competency were networking with members of the media, selecting the appropriate media platform, considering that the target audience is the public, creating one's own media products, delivering intended messages through the media, monitoring and responding to the media, and maintaining professional dignity. Antecedents of the concept included cultivation of desirable nursing professionalism, critical evaluation of policies and issues, recognition of media influence, establishment of education and guidelines for media use, and having facilities and availability of technologies for media use. Consequences of the concept were improved influence of individual nurses, enhanced public awareness of the nursing profession, stronger networks and collaboration among professionals, and contributions to the promotion of public health. CONCLUSIONS: This concept analysis presents a theoretical definition of nurses' media competency that can provide guidance on how to educate nurses to develop media competency and how to measure nurses' media competency.