Examining the Intermedia Agenda Setting Effects amid the Changsheng Vaccine Crisis: A Computational Approach.

Scholars have long questioned whether the traditional media effects approach can still be applied in the current digital media era, especially in the non-Western, state-regulated Chinese media environment. This study examines the intermedia agenda setting of traditional media sources and we-media sources in the WeChat Official Accounts through a computational look at the Changsheng Bio-technology vaccine (CBV) crisis. Utilizing LDA topic modeling and Granger causality analysis, results show that both traditional media and we-media (i.e., online news sources operated by individuals or collectives) focus more consistently on two frames, the news facts and the countermeasure and suggestion frames. Interestingly, the traditional media agenda impacts the we-media agenda under the news fact and the countermeasure and suggestion frames, while the we-media agenda influences the traditional media agenda under the moral judgment and causality background frames. Overall, our study demonstrates the mutual effects between the traditional media agenda and the we-media agenda. This study sheds light on the theoretical meaning of network agenda setting and extends its application to social media platforms in Eastern countries and health-related fields.

How video calls affect mimicry and trust during interactions.

Many social species, humans included, mimic emotional expressions, with important consequences for social bonding. Although humans increasingly interact via video calls, little is known about the effect of these online interactions on the mimicry of scratching and yawning, and their linkage with trust. The current study investigated whether mimicry and trust are affected by these new communication media. Using participant-confederate dyads (n = 27), we tested the mimicry of four behaviours across three different conditions: watching a pre-recorded video, online video call, and face-to-face. We measured mimicry of target behaviours frequently observed in emotional situations, yawn and scratch and control behaviours, lip-bite and face-touch. In addition, trust in the confederate was assessed via a trust game. Our study revealed that (i) mimicry and trust did not differ between face-to-face and video calls, but were significantly lower in the pre-recorded condition; and (ii) target behaviours were significantly more mimicked than the control behaviours. This negative relationship can possibly be explained by the negative connotation usually associated with the behaviours included in this study. Overall, this study showed that video calls might provide enough interaction cues for mimicry to occur in our student population and during interactions between strangers. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction'.

Understanding the association of mass media with the timing of antenatal care in Ethiopia: an impression from the 2016 Ethiopia demographic and health survey.

INTRODUCTION: Although the timing of antenatal care has a high potential of reducing maternal and child health problems and can be improved through different mass media exposure, it has been overlooked and remained a major life-costing delinquent issue. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify the relationship between mass media exposure and ANC for further insight. METHODS: We used the 2016 Ethiopian Health and Demography (EDHS) data. EDHS is a community-based cross-sectional survey that applies a two-stage stratified cluster sampling and it is a country-representative. We included 4740 reproductive-age women with complete records in EDHS dataset in this study. We excluded records with missing data from the analysis. We used ordinal logistic regression followed by generalized ordinal logistic to examine mass media relationships with timely antenatal care (ANC). We presented data using numbers, mean, standard deviations, percent or proportions, coefficient of regression, and 95% confidence interval. All analyses were performed using STATA version 15. RESULT: We examined the data of 4740 participants for the history of timely initiation of ANC and found 32.69% (95% CI = 31.34, 34.03) timely ANC. Factors such as watching television (TV) less than once a week [coef. = -0.72, CI: -1.04, -0.38], watching TV at least once a week [coef. = -0.60, CI: -0.84, -0.36], listening to radio [coef. = -0.38, CI: -0.84, -0.25], and use internet every day[coef. = -1.37, CI: -2.65, -0.09], are associated with the timely ANC. CONCLUSION: Despite its association with improving the timing of ANC, our findings showed mothers need additional support on the use of the media and the timing of ANC. In addition to the mass media, other covariates such as educational status, family size, and husband's desire affected the timely ANC imitation. These need attention during implementation to avert the current. This is also an essential input for policy and decision-makers.

Impact of the first year of the "This girl can" physical activity and sport mass media campaign in Australia.

INTRODUCTION: Addressing gender inequalities in physical activity is an important public health goal. A major campaign, 'This Girl Can' (TGC) was conducted by Sport England from 2015, and TGC was licenced in 2018 by VicHealth in Australia for development and use in a 3-year mass media campaign. The campaign was adapted through formative testing to Australian conditions and implemented within the state of Victoria. The purpose of this evaluation was to assess the initial population impact of the first wave of the TGC-Victoria. METHODS: We assessed campaign impact using serial population surveys, with the target population being women living in Victoria who were not meeting the current physical activity guidelines. Two surveys were carried out before the campaign (October 2017 and March 2018), and the post-campaign survey immediately following the first wave of TGC-Victoria mass media (May 2018). Analyses were primarily on the cohort sample of 818 low-active women followed across all three surveys. We measured campaign effects using campaign awareness and recall, and self-report measures of physical activity behaviour and perceptions of being judged. Changes in perceptions of being judged and in reported physical activity were assessed in relation to campaign awareness over time. RESULTS: Overall, TGC-Victoria campaign recall increased from 11.2% pre-campaign to 31.9% post-campaign, with campaign awareness more likely among younger and more educated women. There was a slight increase of 0.19 days in weekly physical activity following the campaign. Feeling that being judged was a barrier to physical activity declined at follow up, as did the single item perceptions of feeling judged (P < 0.01). Feeling embarrassed decreased, and self-determination increased, but exercise relevance, theory of planned behaviour and self-efficacy scores did not change. CONCLUSIONS: The initial wave of the TGC-Victoria mass media campaign showed reasonably high levels of community awareness and encouraging decreases in women feeling judged whilst being active, but these did not yet translate into overall physical activity gains. Further waves of the TGC-V campaign are in progress to reinforce these changes and further influence the perception of being judged among low-active Victorian women.

Changes in health communication in the age of COVID-19: A study on the dissemination of preprints to the public.

Introduction: Preprints have become an important tool for meeting the challenges of health communication in the context of COVID-19. They allow scientists to disseminate their results more quickly due to the absence of a peer review process. Preprints have been well-received by scientists, however, there have been concerns about the exposure of wider public audiences to preprints due in part to this lack of peer review. Methods: The aim of this study is to examine the dissemination of preprints on medRxiv and bioRxiv during the COVID-19 pandemic using content analysis and statistical analysis. Results: Our findings show that preprints have played an unprecedented role in disseminating COVID-19-related science results to the public. Discussion: While the overall media coverage of preprints is unsatisfactory, digital native news media performed better than legacy media in reporting preprints, which means that we could make the most of digital native media to improve health communication. This study contributes to understanding how science communication has evolved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and provides some practical recommendations.

Content analysis of Dutch newspaper coverage of three tobacco control policies, 2017-2019.

OBJECTIVES: News media coverage can influence support for and implementation of tobacco control policies. This research aims to analyse and compare newspaper coverage of newly implemented policies: a substantial tobacco tax increase, point-of-sale display ban and plain packaging. DESIGN: We conducted a content analysis of articles covering the three policies from ten national Dutch newspapers. Articles published between November 2017 and November 2019 were coded for type and tone. The policy dystopia model was used to code arguments opposing the policies. Tobacco industry appearances in news articles were also analysed for frequency and type. RESULTS: A total of 134 news articles were analysed, of which the industry appeared in 28%. The majority of coverage was neutral in tone, although among articles that were coded as expressing a positive or negative tone, plain packaging and the point-of-sale ban were portrayed more negatively than positively. Negative coverage was predominantly accounted for by industry presence. Arguments opposing the policies focused on negative economic consequences, challenging the need for policy and adverse consequences for retailers for tax, plain packaging and the point-of-sale display ban, respectively. We identified six specific new arguments that fit within existing domains of the policy dystopia model. CONCLUSIONS: The tobacco industry and its allies still appear in a substantial proportion of news articles in relation to tobacco policy. This study identifies contemporary industry arguments against tobacco control policies in Europe which, alongside the policy dystopia model, can be used to predict and counter the tobacco industry's future attempts to oppose policies.

Examining Exposure to Messaging, Content, and Hate Speech from Partisan News Social Media Posts on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

We investigated the content of liberal and conservative news media Facebook posts on race and ethnic health disparities. A total of 3,327,360 liberal and conservative news Facebook posts from the United States (US) from January 2015 to May 2022 were collected from the Crowd Tangle platform and filtered for race and health-related keywords. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on a random sample of 1750 liberal and 1750 conservative posts. Posts were analyzed for a continuum of hate speech using a newly developed method combining faceted Rasch item response theory with deep learning. Across posts referencing Asian, Black, Latinx, Middle Eastern, and immigrants/refugees, liberal news posts had lower hate scores compared to conservative posts. Liberal news posts were more likely to acknowledge and detail the existence of racial/ethnic health disparities, while conservative news posts were more likely to highlight the negative consequences of protests, immigration, and the disenfranchisement of Whites. Facebook posts from liberal and conservative news focus on different themes with fewer discussions of racial inequities in conservative news. Investigating the discourse on race and health in social media news posts may inform our understanding of the public's exposure to and knowledge of racial health disparities, and policy-level support for ameliorating these disparities.

Stigmatizing Monkeypox and COVID-19: A Comparative Framing Study of The Washington Post's Online News.

BACKGROUND: Stigma relating to health can result in a broad range of vulnerabilities and risks for patients and healthcare providers. The media play a role in people's understanding of health, and stigma is socially constructed through many communication channels, including media framing. Recent health issues affected by stigma include monkeypox and COVID-19. OBJECTIVES: This research aimed to examine how The Washington Post (WP) framed the stigma around monkeypox and COVID-19. Guided by framing theory and stigma theory, online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19 was analyzed to understand the construction of social stigma through media frames. METHODS: This research used qualitative content analysis to compare news framings in The Washington Post's online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19. RESULTS: Using endemic, reassurance, and sexual-transmission frames, The Washington Post predominantly defined Africa as the source of monkeypox outbreaks, indirectly labeled gays as a specific group more likely to be infected with monkeypox, and emphasized that there was no need to worry about the spread of the monkeypox virus. In its COVID-19 coverage, The Washington Post adopted endemic and panic frames to describe China as the source of the coronavirus and to construct an image of panic regarding the spread of the virus. CONCLUSIONS: These stigma discourses are essentially manifestations of racism, xenophobia, and sexism in public health issues. This research confirms that the media reinforces the stigma phenomenon in relation to health through framing and provides suggestions for the media to mitigate this issue from a framing perspective.

Correlations between the selection of topics by news media and scientific journals.

The aim of this study is to reveal a robust correlation between the amount of attention international journalism devotes to scientific papers and the amount of attention scientific journals devote to the respective topics. Using a Mainstream-Media-Score (MSM) ≥ 100 (which we regard as an indicator for news media attention) from the altmetrics provider Altmetric, we link 983 research articles with 185,166 thematically similar articles from the PubMed database (which we use to operationalize attention from scientific journals). The method we use is to test whether there is a concomitant increase in scientific attention after a research article has received popular media coverage. To do so, we compare the quotient of the number of thematically similar articles published in scientific journals during the period before and after the publication of an MSM ≥ 100 article. Our main result shows that in 59 percent of cases, more thematically similar articles were published in scientific journals after a scientific paper received noteworthy news media coverage than before (p < 0.01). In this context, we neither found significant differences between various types of scientific journal (p = 0.3) nor between scientific papers that were originally published in renowned opinion-leading journals or in less renowned, non-opinion-leading journals (p = 0.1). Our findings indicate a robust correlation between the choice of topics in the mass media and in research. However, our study cannot clarify whether this correlation occurs because researchers and/or scientific journals are oriented towards public relevance (publicity effect) or whether the correlation is due to the parallelism of relevance attributions in quality journalism and research (earmark hypothesis). We infer that topics of social relevance are (more) likely to be picked up by popular media as well as by scientific journals. Altogether, our study contributes new empirical findings to the relationship between topic selection in journalism and in research.

Pandemic news information uncertainty-News dynamics mirror differential response strategies to COVID-19.

National differences in uncertainty, inequality, and trust have been accentuated by COVID-19. There are indications that the pandemic has impacted societies characterized by high uncertainty, inequality, and low trust harder than societies characterized by low uncertainty, equality, and high trust. This study investigates differential response strategies to COVID-19 as reflected in news media of two otherwise similar low uncertainty societies: Denmark and Sweden. The comparison is made using a recent approach to information dynamics in unstructured data. The main findings are that the news dynamics generally mirror public-health policies, capture fundamental socio-cultural variables related to uncertainty and trust, and may provide a measure of societal uncertainty. The findings can provide insights into evolutionary trajectories of decision-making under high uncertainty and, from a methodological level, be used to develop a media-based index of uncertainty and trust.

Analysis of top box office film poster marketing scheme based on data mining and deep learning in the context of film marketing.

With the development of science and technology and the continuous changes of social environment, the development prospect of traditional cinema is worrying. This work aims to improve the publicity effect of movie posters and optimize the marketing efficiency of movie posters and promote the development of film and television industry. First, the design concept of high grossing movie posters is discussed. Then, the concept of movie poster analysis based on Deep Learning (DL) technology is analyzed under Big Data Technology. Finally, a movie poster analysis model is designed based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) technology under DL and is evaluated. The results demonstrate that the learning curve of the CNN model reported here is the best in the evaluation of model performance in movie poster analysis. Besides, the learning rate of the model is basically stable when the number of iterations is about 500. The final loss value is around 0.5. Meanwhile, the accuracy rate of the model is also stable at the number of iterations of about 500, and the accuracy rate of the model is around 0.9. In addition, the recognition accuracy of the model designed here in movie poster classification recognition is generally between 60% and 85% in performing theme, style, composition, color scheme, set, and product recognition of movie posters. Moreover, the evaluation of the model in the movie poster style composition suggests that the style composition of movie poster production dramatically varies in different films, in which movie posters focus most on movie product, style, and theme. Compared with other models, the performance of this model is more outstanding in all aspects, which shows that this work has achieved a great technical breakthrough. This work provides a reference for the optimization of the design method of movie posters and contributes to the development of the movie industry.

Mass media pressure on physical build, psychological well-being and physical-healthy profile. An explanatory model in adulthood.

Background: The pressure exerted by the media on mental image, psychological well-being and the physical-dietary sphere is of vital interest in understanding human behavioral patterns at different stages of development. The present research reflects the objectives of developing an explanatory model of the associations between media pressure and physical build on psychological well-being, physical activity and the Mediterranean diet and testing the structural model using a multi-group model according to participants' stage of adulthood development. Methods: A descriptive, non-experimental, cross-sectional study was carried out on a sample of 634 participants aged between 18 and 65 years (35.18 ± 9.68). An ad hoc socio-demographic questionnaire, Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questtionnaire-4, Psychological Well-Being Scale, Predimed questtionnaire and International Physical Activity Questionnaire-Short Form were used for data collection. Results: Participants in early adulthood show higher scores for media pressure and for pressure on physical build. It is also observed that participants in middle adulthood show higher scores for psychological well-being and physical activity levels. Conclusions: In conclusion, it can be seen that there are a large number of physical, physical-health and psychological differences in each of the phases of adulthood.

Demonstration and Suggestion on the Communication Efficiency of New Media of Environmental Education Based on Ideological and Political Education.

With the rapid development of the economy, we are facing more and more problems, and the construction of ecological civilization has become the focus of our national concern. With the rapid development of network technology, the immediacy of the new media and the huge audience have brought new development trends to the dissemination of environmental information. The number of new environmental media is increasing, but there are still some problems, such as formality, rigid content and lack of innovation, which make it difficult to achieve better communication effects. However, the research on new environmental media is still in its infancy, and there is not yet a set of targeted and specialized new media evaluation systems. Based on the social function of new environmental news media and the social responsibility of media as the entry point, the article establishes a set of index systems to measure the efficiency of environmental news dissemination and proposes corresponding improvement measures accordingly. The results of the study show that the best use of environmental education publicity is at 81.3%. In terms of cognitive efficiency and attitudinal efficacy, the scores of environmental education weibo public numbers were not high, at 60.7% and 71.5%, respectively. From the perspective of ideological and political education, the environmental protection class of WeChat plays a good role in attracting the attention of college students, and can provide ideological and political education to them and improve their ideological awareness. In terms of cognition, new media is responsible for conveying environmental knowledge and concepts to college students, so the development of new media centers on environmental information, and the content directly affects the cognitive level of college students, fully reflecting the importance of cognitive efficacy in new media of environmental education. On attitude efficacy, only one indicator is set for identity shaping, which has the highest score, but the lowest is 4.0, showing that the public number is still not obvious enough in terms of identifying with college student groups, influencing college students' emotions and attitudes. Based on this, this paper points out the problems of the current communication efficiency of environmental education new media through the analysis of the evaluation results and puts forward suggestions to improve its communication efficiency in this regard.

The portrayal of electronic cigarettes in Indonesia: a content analysis of news media.

BACKGROUND: The news media play an essential role in shaping public opinion. Analyzing a specific issue reported in the news media provides insight and considerations for a government to form a policy. This study aimed to assess the portrayal of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in Indonesian news media, including the variety of arguments being presented and the actors behind them. METHODS: We used a paid service database from eBdesk to collect Indonesian news articles from 2020 to 2021 using the keywords 'rokok elektronik' (electronic cigarette), 'rokok elektrik' (electric cigarette), 'e-rokok' (e-cigarette), 'vape', and 'vaping'. Content analysis of 551 full-text news articles was conducted to identify the concepts, topics, and frames of quoted arguments and to examine whether any frames were presented by different types of organizations and the origin of actors. RESULTS: News articles related to e-cigarettes were mostly published in the national newspaper and in the non-health section of the newspaper desk. A total of 891 arguments from 393 persons representing 212 institutions were identified. Twenty-eight concepts were further categorized into 12 topics. Health impact was the most frequently reported topic, followed by regulation, tax/price, and e-cigarettes as smoking cessation tools. Overall, the articles and arguments with positive tones toward e-cigarettes outnumbered negative articles and arguments. The industry, university, and research-based institutions were the most involved types of organizations in the news articles. There were more neutral frames toward e-cigarettes among government, even though the frame within the non-health government sector was reported to be more positive toward e-cigarettes. CONCLUSIONS: Although health impact is the most reported topic, the actors involved in delivering arguments were mainly from the non-health sector, including when the news articles were published by the newspaper desk. The e-cigarette issue in Indonesia was mainly played by the non-health sector, which is more inclined toward economic interest than health.