Media Response Research Articles

The Academic Boycott of Israel: Juxtaposing Academic Freedom and Human Rights in International Relations

ABSTRACT This article juxtaposes the principle of academic freedom with the call for an academic boycott of Israel to advance Palestinian human rights. It examines the controversy surrounding a conference that took place at Stellenbosch University in South Africa in 2018, where an Israeli delegation was disinvited from presenting a research symposium following calls for an academic boycott. The article is an analysis of the media responses of academic leaders, activists, and social commentators in Israel and South Africa to the cancellation of the Israeli symposium at the conference. The argument advanced is that scholarship is influenced, facilitated and restrained by political systems, and that the academy is more accurately viewed as a political space where some wield power while others do not. The case is made that universities and academic conferences function as a consequence of historical and political forces and reflect the challenges with which states constantly engage.

What media coverage of the 1968 Olympic protests reveals about the deep structure of attitudes about athletic activism in the United States

ABSTRACT How do cultural norms, ideologies, and beliefs shape public opinion and media framing of race-based athletic activism? This paper uses media coverage of and commentary on the 1968 American ‘revolt of the Black athlete’ to explicate the deep cultural structures that help explain both support and opposition. The paper begins with a brief, schematic overview of the proposal for a Black Olympic boycott that was the centrepiece of 1968 organising and how it was reported by sports journalists and in the mainstream media. The second section identifies the reasons American reporters were, on the whole, so opposed to the proposed boycott: the inherent lack of support for the athletes’ racial change agenda and the far-more-familiar arguments that sports were not the proper venue for activism. The third section argues that a whole constellation of cultural norms and beliefs—about sport culture, colour-blind visions of racial justice, and liberal democratic ideals about politics and social change—coalesced to make race-based sport protest appear both unnecessary and inappropriate. The conclusion summarises the implications for understanding both public reception of and media responses to contemporary, race-based athletic activism as well as for tracking institutional changes and cultural shifts unfolding in the Black Lives Matter era.

Appropriating media coverage of protests: A framing analysis of the ‘Save Akamas’ campaign in national news

News coverage of protests typically employs a protest paradigm: framing strategies for marginalizing protest actors and reducing the significance of protest issues and aims. However, recent studies are detecting less prototypical media responses, indicating the need to identify the extent of application of the protest paradigm and the underlying determinants for variations within media politics of dissent. This analysis of the framing of a Cypriot environmental campaign ‘Save Akamas’ by three national newspapers indicated that the coverage deviated from the protest paradigm. The results showed little emphasis on social deviance but validation of the protests in varying magnitudes through frames articulating governmental responsibility, environmental conservation, and ambivalence towards economic grievances. Finally, supplemented with interviews with two protest organizers and journalists, respectively, this article examines the conditions under which citizen protests mitigate media spectacles through appropriating legitimation strategies.

Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness in Japan: A Survey of Nuclear Emergency Core Hospitals

Based on experiences following the Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear power plant accident in 2011, Nuclear Emergency Core Hospitals (NECHs) were designated as centers for radiation disaster management in Japan. This study aimed to investigate their current status and identify areas for improvement. This cross-sectional study was conducted in October 2018. Demographic data were collected by a questionnaire with free text responses about attitudes toward NECHs. Considerations regarding risk communications during a radiation disaster were analyzed using qualitative text mining analysis. A total of 36 hospitals participated in this study. Only 31% of NECHs anticipated a radiation disaster. The importance of business continuity plans and risk communications was shown. Text analysis identified 7 important categories for health care workers during a radiation disaster, including media response, communications to hospital staff, risk communications, radiation effects on children, planning for a radiation disaster in the region, rumors, and the role in the region. The radiation disaster medical system and NECHs in Japan were surveyed. The importance of risk communications, planning for a radiation disaster in each region, and the role in the region are identified as issues that need to be addressed.

POS-277 AN ONLINE SURVEY ON THE AWARENESS OF NON-COMMUNICABLE DISEASES IN INDIA

Awareness is the corner stone for self-care. Prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) like Diabetes mellitus (DM) and Hypertension are increasing both in developed and developing world. They are associated with end-organ damage, poor quality of life and increased morbidity and mortality. Symptoms of NCDs or its complications appear late, delaying detection and loss of precious time for preventive interventions. It is important therefore for the general public to be aware of NCDs and their complications. The reach of social media is ever expanding being readily available on smart phones and can be put to good use to improve cognizance of NCDs among people. This study was done, with the intention to know the awareness of NCDs among the general public as compared to their knowledge of Corona Virus - COVID (SARS-COV2) infection, while in the midst of the pandemic, and Tuberculosis (TB), for both of which there is a government led education awareness program on traditional and social media in India. This was an online questionnaire survey in 6 Indian languages. The link for the questionnaire, was shared on the social media such as Twitter and Facebook and sent to known WhatsApp groups. They were requested to answer and forward it to their contacts. All the submissions were done between 21-01-2021 and 12-04-2021. Out of a total of 323, duplicates (156) were excluded and 167 responses were analyzed using excel sheet. The average age of the respondents (n=167) was 35.5 years, 159 (95.2%) had at-least 12 years of school education; 65 (38.9%) were males. There were 6.0%, 13.2% and 18.6% of respondents who had not heard of DM, hypertension and kidney diseases respectively; Of these respondents - 10.8%, 10.2% and 4.2% themselves had DM, hypertension and kidney diseases respectively (See Table 1). Among all the respondents, 20.4% and 17.4% could not recognize that high blood sugar was DM and high blood pressure was hypertension respectively. They were not aware that DM (59.9%) and hypertension (70.1%) could cause kidney disease. Among those who had DM, 44.4% were aware that kidney failure was a complication of DM: similarly, 23.53% of those who had hypertension, were aware that kidney failure was a complication of Hypertension. 77.78% of diabetics and 70.59% of hypertensives were aware that the medications should not be stopped even when there are no symptoms (See Table 1). In comparison to NCDs, information about TB and Corona Virus - COVID infection (SARS-COV2) was as follows. 124 (74.25%), were aware about TB; among them, 83.87% recognized blood in sputum as a symptom and 89.52% were aware of the availability of tablets for TB. 146 (87.43%) were aware about COVID, among them 87.1% recognized cough as a symptom and 89.52% were aware of the availability of treatment for COVID. At a time when vaccination for COVID was just being made available, 37.9% were not aware of the Vaccine. (See Table 2). Awareness about NCDs and their complications is poor. School curriculum should include spreading awareness. Even among patients with NCDs, understanding of the disease, tests to be done, symptoms, importance of compliance with medications and complications are lacking. There is an urgent need to appraise people about this. This study was limited by the small sample size, inadequate rural population representation and inherent bias of social media responses.

It Shouldn't Happen Here: Colonial and racial discourses of deservingness in UK anti-poverty campaign

In September 2012, Save the Children UK launched the It Shouldn't Happen Here campaign, to raise awareness of the incidence of poverty amongst British children, and raise funds for the charity's UK programmes. Shortly after the launch, SCUK experienced severe media and political backlash, as primarily centre and right-wing commentators described the campaign as a political stunt, and sought to discredit, deny and depoliticise the claims that severe child poverty ‘happens here’. Drawing on interviews with former staff, and an analysis of the media response, this article explores the ways in which the campaign and the ensuing backlash were embedded in a set of colonial and racialized discourses around ‘who is poor’ and who is deserving/undeserving both in Britain and globally. Crucially, the findings from this study raise important challenges to the recent reintroduction of questions of race (as whiteness) in populist discussions around class and poverty.

The social media response to twice-weekly mass asymptomatic testing in England

BackgroundFrom 9th April 2021, everyone in England has been encouraged to take two COVID-19 tests per week. This is the first time that national mass asymptomatic testing has been introduced in the UK and the effectiveness of the policy depends on uptake with testing and willingness to self-isolate following a positive test result. This paper examines attitudes towards twice-weekly testing, as well as barriers and facilitators to engaging in testing.MethodsBetween 5th April and 28th May 2021 we searched Twitter, Facebook, and online news articles with publicly available comment sections to identify comments relating to twice-weekly testing. We identified 5783 comments which were then analysed using a framework analysis.ResultsWe identified nine main themes. Five themes related to barriers to engaging in testing: low perceived risk from COVID-19; mistrust in the government; concern about taking a test; perceived ineffectiveness of twice-weekly testing policy; and perceived negative impact of twice-weekly testing policy. Four themes related to facilitators to engaging in testing: wanting to protect others; positive perceptions of tests; a desire to return to normal; and perceived efficacy for reducing asymptomatic transmission.ConclusionsOverall, the comments identified indicated predominately negative attitudes towards the twice weekly testing policy. Several recommendations can be made to improve engagement with twice weekly testing, including: 1) communicate openly and honestly about the purpose of testing; 2) provide information about the accuracy of tests; 3) provide financial support for those required to self-isolate, and; 4) emphasise accessibility of testing.

Complex dynamics of an epidemic model with saturated media coverage and recovery.

During the outbreak of emerging infectious diseases, media coverage and medical resource play important roles in affecting the disease transmission. To investigate the effects of the saturation of media coverage and limited medical resources, we proposed a mathematical model with extra compartment of media coverage and two nonlinear functions. We theoretically and numerically investigate the dynamics of the proposed model. Given great difficulties caused by high nonlinearity in theoretical analysis, we separately considered subsystems with only nonlinear recovery or with only saturated media impact. For the model with only nonlinear recovery, we theoretically showed that backward bifurcation can occur and multiple equilibria may coexist under certain conditions in this case. Numerical simulations reveal the rich dynamic behaviors, including forward-backward bifurcation, Hopf bifurcation, saddle-node bifurcation, homoclinic bifurcation and unstable limit cycle. So the limitation of medical resources induces rich dynamics and causes much difficulties in eliminating the infectious diseases. We then investigated the dynamics of the system with only saturated media impact and concluded that saturated media impact hardly induces the complicated dynamics. Further, we parameterized the proposed model on the basis of the COVID-19 case data in mainland China and data related to news items, and estimated the basic reproduction number to be 2.86. Sensitivity analyses were carried out to quantify the relative importance of parameters in determining the cumulative number of infected individuals at the end of the first month of the outbreak. Combining with numerical analyses, we suggested that providing adequate medical resources and improving media response to infection or individuals’ response to mass media may reduce the cumulative number of the infected individuals, which mitigates the transmission dynamics during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moral grandstanding, narcissism, and self-reported responses to the COVID-19 crisis

The present study aimed to understand how status-oriented individual differences such as narcissistic antagonism, narcissistic extraversion, and moral grandstanding motivations may havelongitudinally predicted both behavioral and social media responses during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Via YouGov, a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults was recruited in August of 2019 (N = 2,519;Mage = 47.5,SD = 17.8; 51.4% women) and resampled in May of 2020, (N = 1,533). Results indicated that baseline levels of narcissistic antagonism were associated with lower levels of social distancing and lower compliance with public health recommended behaviors. Similarly, dominance oriented moral grandstanding motivations predicted greater conflict with others over COVID-19, greater engagement in status-oriented social media behaviors about COVID-19, and lower levels of social distancing.

ANALISIS RESPON SISWA TERHADAP PENGGUNAAN VIDEO TIKTOK SEBAGAI MEDIA PEMBELAJARAN BAHASA INDONESIA PADA SISWA SMP

Using Tiktok as a medium for teaching Indonesian to seventh-grade junior high school students was the primary goal of this study. Researchers were inspired to conduct this study because to students' growing use of social media, which led them to focus on Tiktok as a platform for learning process activities in this digital age. Additionally, this study aims to find out how students feel about the use of Tiktok as a learning tool for Indonesian. For future learning, the degree of responses and reactions of students to the teaching medium may be used as a guide for future learning. An internet-based distribution of media response surveys was used to gather data for this study, which used a descriptive quantitative research technique The average percentage score for all indicators is then calculated, and the results are matched with the response categories obtained, using the Likert scale (1-5) results. Students from SMPN 1 Batujajar received an average of 85 percent on the overall indicators. Using Tiktok as a medium for studying Indonesian seems to be a success for the learner. However, pupils will be more interested and confident after using media if the presentation of video displays and the structure of information dissemination are given special care.

Reclaiming the indigenous knowledge(s): English curriculum through ‘Decoloniality’ lens

ABSTRACT When government announced removal of the Goodbye Mr. Chips from intermediate-level English textbooks in one of the provinces of Pakistan, the public and media response was overwhelming. Students in particular took a sigh of relief because many believed it was a boring story by a foreign author, depicting a foreign setting. Drawing on this development as a reference point, this article examines the perspectives of students and teachers about the teaching of English literature in part of Pakistan. The method used combines semi-structured interviews with a questionnaire survey. Using Coloniality and Decoloniality as conceptual frames, the paper discusses the significance of participants’ perspectives at theoretical, ideological and implementational levels. Findings suggest a paradigmatic shift from the Anglo-normativity. Participants call for an overhaul of the current English literature-dominated curriculum. Their alternative paradigm is more pluralist, which should: reclaim the indigenous/local knowledge, be firmly grounded in students’ sociocultural ecologies, and take into consideration students’ cognitive engagement and identity investment. We interpret their reflective agency as a significant epistemic break from the normative deterministic logic of the unassailable position of English, and their voices as robust intellectual tools. Symbolically, these voices seek to liberate academia from the yoke of coloniality.

ОПТИМІЗАЦІЯ МАРКЕТИНГОВОЇ СТРАТЕГІЇ НА РИНКУ FMCG

The article contains the results of applying marketing mix modeling based on Data Science technologies for FMCG companies. The market share in packages (sales level) was modeled using regression analysis depending on the key elements of the marketing complex (price, place, promotion), seasonality and media activity of the competitors in all communication channels. Econometric modeling helps to assess the return of media investment by calculating the level of sales generated by media activity in each communication channel and comparing it with the level of media investment, respectively. The influence of distribution on the company’s position in the market and media efficiency has been studied in detail. There is a connection between distribution and media response: less distribution affects the decline in media performance, and vice versa. In conditions of low distribution, it is important to increase the presence in regional communication channels through media pressure in critical sales regions for FMCG brands and try to increase distribution levels nationally. The article contains an assessment of price sensitivity (elasticity) and recommendations for optimizing pricing policy to increase market share by volume or by value depending on the company’s goals. The price elasticity curve was determined by estimating the impact of the price index on the level of sales in packages and deals in money using econometric modeling and simulations of sales levels depending on different options of the price index vs competitors. Based on the research, recommendations for optimization of the marketing and media strategies to maximize sales of FMCG companies are formed. Marketing mix modeling and Data Science provide the most efficient ways to achieve business KPIs.

IMPACT OF MEDIA RESPONSES AND PUBLIC OUTCRY TO POLITICAL ADS IN INDIA

IMPACT OF MEDIA RESPONSES AND PUBLIC OUTCRY TO POLITICAL ADS IN INDIA

How to Catch Customers' Attention? A Study on the Effectiveness of Brand Social Media Strategies in Digital Customer Engagement.

Enterprises often post branded content on social media and adopt a proactive response approach to improve digital customer engagement to gain a competitive advantage. However, there are many brands which fail to operate social media as effectively as expected. The effective use of brand social media strategies to improve digital customer engagement remains an ongoing challenge for the enterprises. Based on firm-generated content theory and social presence theory, this study aims to identify the impact of brand social media strategies on different levels of digital customer engagement, including positive filtering, cognitive and affective processing as well as advocacy from content strategy and response strategy. Based on 1,519 brand posts on the official Weibo pages of eight of the top 500 Chinese brands in 2021, this study uses a multiple linear regression model to examine the impact of brand social media strategies on digital customer engagement and the moderating effects of brand image and discretionary purchases. The findings show that, on the one hand, among the brand social media content strategies, action content strategy is associated with higher levels of digital customer engagement. On the other hand, different brand social media response strategies have a differential impact on digital customer engagement levels, with cohesive response being the best strategy for increasing digital customer engagement level. In addition, the effectiveness of brand social media response strategy in digital customer engagement is further moderated by the brand image and discretionary purchases. In contrast, the effectiveness of brand social media response strategy in digital customer engagement is stronger when the brand image emphasizes its “competence” or the discretionary purchases focus on “material purchases.” This study not only enriches the research on digital customer engagement but also provides a reference for the brand strategy selection, design and management based on social media.

Conflict and chaos: A case study of Ireland’s COVID-19 outbound travel market

During the COVID-19 pandemic the international outbound travel market from Ireland collapsed, declining at one point by 94%. This case study paper explores the environment which framed the collapse in travel, positioning it as one of conflict and chaos. The main objective is to document and analyse the legal, industry and societal factors which may have contributed to the collapse, identifying the key regulations, decisions, metrics, and societal responses, and exploring their intersection with outbound tourism. Three areas of inquiry are explored, namely: 1) the legal instruments used by government to restrict travel, 2) operational decisions made by industry, and 3) societal and media response to the pandemic. Three findings are presented from the desk research. First, it is suggested that the conflicting agendas of government and public health, the mainstream media and the travel industry would be more effectively dealt with in private as opposed to via news articles, social media arguments, and openly published letters. Second, clarity of communication from all three bodies needs improvement due to its impact on consumer confidence. Finally, the article proposes lessons for government in relation to future crisis management situations regarding outbound travel.

“Kung Flu”—The Dynamics of Fear, Popular Culture, and Authenticity in the Anatomy of Populist Communication

The article presents results of a study on the dynamics between Donald Trump’s use of terms that relate COVID-19 to China and news media publications concerning this use. Qualitative content analysis with elements of discourse analysis was conducted to 1) describe the case as a type of populist discourse on COVID-19, and 2) illustrate the following hypotheses with the help of empirical material: 1) News media and the dynamics of political communication based on the difference of friend and enemy help legitimizing populist claims and directing public attention toward them while feeding into a narrative of a diffuse category of threats that creates objects ofangstand thereby enhances social cohesion. 2) With resources derived from popular culture, populists exploit the culture of political correctness, which is facilitated through the ascription of authenticity. The hypotheses emerged in the course of organizing and preliminarily examining the data collected for an ongoing broader study on populist communication and its repercussions in different public spheres in view of the following assumptions: 1) Political communication is guided by the distinction of friend and enemy. 2) In populist communication, this distinction appears as the difference of ‘the people’ and allegedly corrupt elites, including news media. 3)Angstenhances social cohesion among the audiences of populist speakers directly or mediated by fear. 4) Populist communication is more likely to produce a type of fear that populists benefit from when it depicts the elite as a diffuse category composed of various interlinked enemies. Trump’s contextualized use of the following terms in the time period between March 13 and September 15, 2020, was examined: China flu, China plague, China virus, Chinese plague, Chinese flu, Chinese virus, Wuhan virus, and Kung flu. 38 speeches from Trump’s election campaign or rallies, 28 talks at presidential events or meetings, 47 interviews, 37 press conferences, 35 tweets and seven re-tweets as well as selected news media responses were subjected to analysis. The case has been successfully described as a type of populist discourse on COVID-19 and both hypotheses have been illustrated with empirical material.

The Potential for a ‘Tiger King Effect’: Analysis of Public and Media Response to the Netflix Series 'Tiger King'

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Netflix aired the docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness. This aligned with the United States declaring a national emergency and the beginning of stay-at-home orders. Netflixexperienced a significant increase in viewership and a large number of responses to Tiger King’s content from viewers and media outlets (e.g., Stoll 2021). In this article, we present an analysis of social media responses on the Netflix official Facebook page and online news articles associated with Tiger King published between 20 March 2020 and 30 March 2020. This thematic analysis reveals that public response was mainly related to expressions of sentiment, characters featured in the docuseries, and references to the show’s content (e.g., specific scenes). We also identified character references, series content descriptions, and real-life events as themes within media sources. We conclude this article by discussing the potential for a ‘Tiger King Effect’ in the U.S. and the media’s role in distributing human-animal related materials to the general public.

Adult male victims of female-perpetrated sexual violence: Australian social media responses, myths and flipped expectations

In the era of #metoo, conversations regarding rape and sexual violence have received increased attention in mainstream media, giving voice to some of the many victims impacted by sexual assault. Despite the significant social upheaval this movement has given credence to, male victims of female-perpetrated sexual assault remain largely absent from Australian media. Adherence to strict representations of masculinity and femininity, often reinforced on social media, has resulted in cultural omission and problematic characterisations of both offenders and victims. International research has examined socially-constructed, gendered perceptions; however, Australian literature remains limited. This study examined what factors influence perceptions of male victims of female-perpetrated sexual violence, evaluated through Christie’s (1986) Ideal Victim/Offender framework. This mixed-method study analysed social media users’ comments on incidents of female-perpetrated sexual assault on men, presented in 28 Facebook posts, across 13 popular Australian newspapers. The findings identified a tendency of users to question victims’ masculinity, downplay harms experienced by male victims, or deny victimisation entirely. Furthermore, women were typecast as ‘fragile nurturers’ who did not have the capacity to offend, rejecting the possibility of male victims. Conclusions highlight the need for further Australian-based research and practical support, as male victims are more than simply an online myth.

Burden 2020: The German Burden of Disease Study Informative, comprehensive, appealing and digital: Providing health data to users. Accessibility of scientific results in the burden context

Abstract The aim of the BURDEN 2020 project is to calculate the Burden of Disease for Germany at the national and regional level. Based on the methods of the Global Burden of Disease study, the results will assess the impact of diseases on population health thus providing a freely accessible information basis for policy making and health care planning. How can the transfer from science to society take place on a low-threshold basis? We will talk about our strategy reaching out to decision-makers within health care planning in Germany and Europe. In addition, it will be examined how we wanted our results to be accessible, which possibilities of publication we choose beyond scientific articles and what options we had when talking about research marketing. We will also have a closer look on our demands for data visualization and transparency. In an ongoing process, two things were at stake: how do we define our target groups and how we address them. It has been proven to be a good strategy to continuously build up (international) networks, to share our knowledge and implement feedback. When publishing scientific results, it has turned out to be helpful for the project to approach a well-known bi-lingual journal with a wide range of coverage. We aimed to present the pilot project online with an appealing data visualization and graphic formats. This type of presentation made it easier to approach members of the press. Also, the inclusion of current topics such as COVID-19 helped to increase the media response. There are plans to include the use of the data in media formats such as webinars. Burden of Disease assessments can be challenging in implementation and communication. Before the start, the use of the metrics for Germany had to be thoroughly explained to national stakeholders. Within the project, we had to discuss how our data should be communicated to the public, to explain strength and weaknesses, and to produce publication formats that suit different target groups.

The Power of Brand Selfies

Smartphones have made it nearly effortless to share images of branded experiences. This research classifies social media brand imagery and studies user response. Aside from packshots (standalone product images), two types of brand-related selfie images appear online: consumer selfies (featuring brands and consumers’ faces) and an emerging phenomenon the authors term “brand selfies” (invisible consumers holding a branded product). The authors use convolutional neural networks to identify these archetypes and train language models to infer social media response to more than a quarter-million brand-image posts (185 brands on Twitter and Instagram). They find that consumer-selfie images receive more sender engagement (i.e., likes and comments), whereas brand selfies result in more brand engagement, expressed by purchase intentions. These results cast doubt on whether conventional social media metrics are appropriate indicators of brand engagement. Results for display ads are consistent with this observation, with higher click-through rates for brand selfies than for consumer selfies. A controlled lab experiment suggests that self-reference is driving the differential response to selfie images. Collectively, these results demonstrate how (interpretable) machine learning helps extract marketing-relevant information from unstructured multimedia content and that selfie images are a matter of perspective in terms of actual brand engagement.