Personal Blogs Research Articles

“Social Media Has Been Helpful in Learning About Myself and Finding My Community”: The Affordances and Constraints of ICT‐Based Queer History Content Creation

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on findings from 31 semi‐structured interviews with North American Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)‐based content creators who focus on LGBTQIA+ history. While the research broadly explored the information practices and digital preservation strategies of these content creators, this paper highlights how the participants navigated their respective ICT choices (ranging from personal blogs to Instagram accounts) and what affordances and constraints emerged from these choices. The paper highlights how such potentialities and pitfalls across varied social media and web‐based platforms informed the sociotechnical practices of queer historical knowledge production and how the participants leveraged the features of various ICTs to expand the visibility of queer‐affirming content and resources. The paper concludes by exploring these practices and their theoretical and practical implications for practitioners at the intersection of digital curation and archiving marginalized histories with an explicit emphasis on collaborative rather than extractive opportunities for collaboration between such content creators and cultural heritage institutions.

Digilite Content Management System Digital Library Lite

Digital library is a system that organizes and provides access to digital information content. Unlike conventional publishing, which has physical content like books, journals, and journals, digital publishing offers content in electronic format that can be accessed through a computer or other device connected to the internet. It allows users to search, download, and create various types of content, such as e-books, articles, videos, and more, from various sources. In the rapidly evolving digital era, effective and efficient content management is crucial for organizations, businesses, and individuals who want to build online presence. Content Management Systems (CMS) are a useful tool for creating, editing, and distributing content on the web without technical knowledge about coding. CMS provides user-friendly tools, allowing users to easily use text, images, videos, and other elements in their sites. Web-based digital library is a platform that uses CMS to create and distribute content without requiring technical knowledge. Users can search, download, and create digital content from various sources connected to the internet. CMS also provides a user-friendly interface and allows users to manage content efficiently, making it an ideal solution for various web publishing needs, from personal blogs to large business portals. Digital library is designed for ease of use and infrastructure, avoiding various issues. It can help create a modern, literate culture and contribute to the development of a more efficient and user-friendly system.

Hybridism, edutainment, and doubt: Science blogging finding its feet

Blogs have become everyday acquaintances in digital life. Although personal, political, and fashion blogs may be the best known, academics also engage in blogging about research. With fast-expanding digital publishing of all kinds, we may have to rethink the status of blogging in relation to our on-going research. This article discusses the perception of science blogs, and their status as a genre. It explores some blog threads talking about research blogging: are blogs a great way to improve outreach, or just dumbing down? Should we use blogs for publishing serious findings, or brush them aside as edutainment – preferably done by somebody else? Research blogs are explored in the context of science communication and research writing traditions, and their old and new features discussed.

Impacts of Dacwah Activities of Selected Muslim Scholars on Social Media Platforms on Yoruba Muslims

Social media has become an integral part of Muslims' personal and public lives. Through the advancement of the Internet, Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Telegram, Tik-Tok and personal blogs have gloriously allocated space for Dacwah activities. Thus, this study aims to assess the utilization of Social media platforms by selected Yoruba Muslim scholars for Dacwah activities and the impacts they have on Yoruba Muslims. Descriptive and analytical methods of research have been employed in carrying out this research. The descriptive method assists in describing how social media platforms are utilized by selected Yoruba Muslim scholars. The analytical method helps in analyzing the content of social media post by Yoruba Muslim scholars. Participatory observation, as a research tool, is used to follow some Ducāt in order to have access to their discussions and posts as well as get information on their impacts. The paper reveals that, as a result of advance in modern information dissemination, social media has provided innovative platforms for religious leaders to spread their messages and engage with various Muslims conveniently. The paper also reveals the effectiveness of religious scholars’ message in influencing attitudes, behaviors and perceptions among their followers. The paper concludes that the role of Social media in fostering unity, promoting values, and countering misconceptions about Islam cannot be underestimated. Therefore, it is recommended that the Yoruba Muslim scholars should make strategic use of Social media positively to impacts the Nigerian Muslims by disseminating knowledge fostering unity and countering misinformation.

In many voices: exploring end-of-life care through patient, caregiver and physician narratives

As the focus on end-of-life care intensifies, so too does the need to better understand the experiences of patients, caregivers and physicians. Delivering empathetic care requires a shared understanding of...

The influence of social media on psychological well-being: examination and outlook

The article is dedicated to assessing the impact of social networks on the mental health of the population. Social networks have gained global popularity and are integral to modern life. Nowadays, social networks are platforms for personal development, communication skills, and socialization, searching for like-minded individuals and new friends, maintaining personal blogs, distance learning, and work. This study aims to analyze the impact of social networks on the mental health of the population and assess the possible perspectives of this influence. Theoretical methods were used to achieve the set goal: studying, analyzing, and systematizing scientific literature data. Currently, about 60% of the world's population uses social networks, with about 40% of users using them not only for entertainment and relaxation but also for work and education, which determines their socio-economic significance. According to statistics, the most popular social networks worldwide are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, and TikTok. Besides, most social media users are registered in one or several of them. On the one hand, social networks can help people communicate regardless of distance, acquire new knowledge, meet like-minded individuals, exchange ideas, and increase social support. On the other hand, their excessive use is associated with the development of addiction, low self-esteem, levels of anxiety and depression, and deterioration of social and physical health. These problems are particularly acute with increasing time spent in the virtual world. Therefore, in recent years, there has been increased interest in studying the impact of social networks on the health of the population as a whole and persons in particular and in developing and implementing effective methods to prevent the negative aspects of their us. This is a promising direction for further research.

Sentiment Analysis Web App

This research explores how our approach to seeking information has evolved, particularly in understanding others' perspectives through platforms like online reviews and personal blogs. With the widespread use of technology, there's a growing interest in systems that can handle opinions. The paper focuses on techniques for creating opinion- centric information systems, particularly dealing with challenges in sentiment-aware applications. It categorizes information into facts and opinions, concentrating on expressions of positive or negative sentiments. Using typed dependency parsing, the study investigates the functional connections among words in sentiment analysis, allowing for a thorough examination of grammar and semantics in textual data. emphasizing the role of machine learning in ASP.NET Core for effective feedback and opinion handling.

Developing the Framework Using Deep Neural Network for Detection of Spam and Fake Spam Messages in Twitter

Social media plays vital role among the user communities for social gathering, entertainment, communication, sharing knowledge so on. Twitter is one such network to connect millions of users to share information. Nowadays, there are humpteen numbers of users using social media for social engagements. Due to the fact that wide publicity of individuals and products get viral in social media, everyone wish to use social media as a platform to promote their product. Furthermore, large number of people relies on social media contents to take decisions. Twitter is one of the social media platforms to post the media contents by the user. Spammers are illegal users intrude the twitter account and send the duplicate messages to promote advertisement, phishing, scam and personal blogs etc. In this paper, a novel spam detection mechanism is introduced to detect the suspicious users on twitter. The system has been designed such a way that it initially set with semi-supervised at the tweet level and update into supervised level for learning the input tweets to detect the spammers. The proposed system will also identify the type of spammers and will also remove duplicate tweets. We have applied with multi-classifier algorithms like naïve Bayesian, K-Nearest neighbor and Random forest into twitter data set and the performance is compared. The experimental result shows very promising results.

Attitudes and Experiences of the Preschool Teachers in the Application of Digital Technologies in Environmental Education

This study was based on the experiences and attitudes of the preschool teachers in the application of digital technologies when teaching environmental contents. 180 preschool teachers from preschool institutions in the Republic of Serbia, with different work experience and different digital skills, participated in the research. The obtained results demonstrated that the preschool teachers’competencies decrease with the increase in the number of years of work experience, indicating that competencies for the application of digital tools were more developed in the preschool teachers with modest work experience. They also exhibited a greater level of experience in using digital technologies regarding environmental education. The results also showed that there was a significant connection between the application of digital technologies in different domains of the preschool teacher’s work (such as: ideas search, research on the grounds and topics that initiate the project, project development, a portfolio design and evidence of one’s own practice, publication of activities in digital format – in scientific publications, at congresses, on a personal blog and/or preschool institution’s website). Thus in the mentioned domains of work, preschool teachers with significant work experience, applied digital technologies less often when compared to the colleagues with shorter employment history.

Traditional and Social Media Usage Associated With COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake in Sapporo, Japan.

This study aimed to determine the relationship between specific information source usage and uptake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine. We analyzed 3348 participants aged 20 to 65 years who were not diagnosed with COVID-19 in a case-control study in Sapporo, Japan. The most prevalent information source on COVID-19 was television (TV; 87.8%), followed by online news sites (74.3%), newspapers (38.7%), websites of public institutions (30.9%), and families (29.7%). Multivariate logistic regression showed that the adjusted odds ratios of incompletion of second vaccinations for users of TV and newspaper to gather COVID-19 information were 0.31 and 0.32, respectively, whereas those for users of books, commercial video sites, Facebook, and "personal blog or bulletin board system" were 3.34, 2.22, 2.36, and 4.81, respectively. Social media use among older or male participants was associated with lower vaccine uptake.

Quality, Reliability, and Readability of Online Information on Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension.

To evaluate the quality & reliability, technical quality, and readability of patient-targeted online information on idiopathic intracranial hypertension. In this cross-sectional study, we searched Google and Bing search engines for the terms "idiopathic intracranial hypertension" and "pseudotumor cerebri." We evaluated the first 50 search outcomes for each search term. Peer-reviewed articles, targeted advertisements, book chapters, videos, personal blogs, websites intended for healthcare professionals, and non-English websites were excluded. Websites were classified as institutional or private. Two independent reviewers assessed each website for 1) quality and reliability using DISCERN, Health on the Net Code of Conduct (HONcode), and JAMA criteria and 2) technical quality based on 11 criteria. Readability was evaluated using 6 measures (Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score and grade level, Gunning Fog, Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (Smog) index, Coleman-Liau index, and automated readability index). Sixty-three websites (37 institutional) were included. The mean scores for the DISCERN, HONcode, and JAMA criteria were 3.6 ± 1 (1-4.8; 1: worse, 5: best), 10.3 ± 2.8 (2-16; 0: worse, 16: best), and 2 ± 1.3 (0-4; 0: worse, 4: best), respectively. The mean technical quality score was 0.8 ± 0.1 (0.5-1). The mean Flesch-Kincaid grade level score was 8.9 ± 1.8 (3.3-13.3). For Flesch-Kincaid grade level, 47 (74.6%) websites scored a grade level of 10 or less. For Gunning Fog Score, 35 websites (55.6%) scored from 7.3 to 10.8. For the Smog Index, 46 (73%) websites scored 5.7-8. The mean Coleman Liau Index was 16 ± 2.1 (9.6-22.2). For the automated readability index, 30 (50.7%) websites scored less than the eighth grade. No statistically significant difference was present between institutional and private websites except for JAMA, which scored higher in private websites (2.4 vs 1.7, P = 0.03). Our findings suggest that online information on idiopathic intracranial hypertension/pseudotumor cerebri for patients generally demonstrates moderate to good quality and reliability. Although most websites maintain credible technical quality, the readability exceeds recommended levels for the average American reader. This may impede understanding, emphasizing the need for future improvements.

Being Human under Inhuman Conditions: Meanings of Living with Severe Dissociative States Involving the Experience of Being in Parts

Severe dissociative states involving the experience of being in parts, typically associated with diagnosis such as dissociative identity disorder and other specified dissociative disorders, continue to be a controversial and rarely studied area of research. However, because persons with severe dissociative states are at risk of being harmed instead of helped within psychiatric care, their experiences of living with such states warrant further examination, while innovative ways to include them in research remain necessary. Against that background, this study aimed to illuminate the meanings of living with severe dissociative states involving the experience of being in parts. This is a phenomenological hermeneutic study with data collected from three social media sources, one personal blog and two Instagram accounts, in February and March 2023. The results were illuminated in light of four themes; Striving to remain in the world, Balancing exposure and trust, Balancing belonging and loneliness and Owning oneselves. The interpretation of the themes suggests that living with severe dissociative states means being a human under inhuman conditions, striving for coherence and meaning in a world that is often unsupportive. This calls for a trauma-informed care to better support recovery for persons with severe dissociative states.

The Shift of Philippine Architectural Media toward Digitalization (2018-2023)

This research examines how Philippine architectural communication experienced a renewal after the pandemic crisis. First, through a shift from the country’s flagship architectural magazine, BluPrint, toward a personally initiated digital platform, Kanto. Since BluPrint started to become digital in 2018, the publishers aimed at more aggressive targets for new articles. When Covid hit the Philippines in the beginning of 2020, it made BluPrint suffer and confused. The publisher company focused on the business side to diminish the encountered deficit. They started reaching out to a common lifestyle market but the journalists wished to continue addressing architects and the public interested in architecture. As the company wanted to broaden the target, the journalists felt that most of their content did not fit for that expansion. As result of the tension, in December 2020, most of BluPrint’s former staff decided to leave and “migrate” for Kanto. Kanto, a digital platform was created out of the former personal blog of one the migrant journalists to be an intellectual venue for art and architecture advocacy. Upon this departure, BluPrint’s publisher noticed that not only the magazine could not be published for a whole year in 2020 but also, it lost its journalists for a new competitor. Thus after a significant interruption, the publisher decided to renew BluPrint with a fully new staff. This marks the second shift, the complete digital transition of the originally printed, then blended BluPrint. These dynamic communication aspects of architecture, construction and built environment have not yet been sufficiently investigated, unlike their physical aspects. In order to elaborate findings, after a review of literature on worldwide shifts towards digital media, this paper matches observations on the institutional history and performance of BluPrint and Kanto with a second line of premises, qualitative statements. It reviews how former BluPrint, now migrant journalists are successful on the digital platform Kanto, in a fully different organizational and financial system. It also presents how BluPrint also experienced a renewal with its fully new staff. Behind both shifts, an underlying dilemma between financial success and content success became sharper in times of the increasing and now almost obligatory digitalization. Events and festivals are strongly needed by both online publications to create a tangible and interactive basis for gathering experiences of architecture lovers among themselves and with their “star architects”. In summary, the digitalization established a wider variety of journalistic forms which appear in more spontaneous, less focused presentations. While BluPrint strives after a wider viewership with an entertaining character, Kanto tries to deliver more depth in the profession embedded in a variety of artistic and cultural forms. As conclusion, in both shifts, content curation strategies prevailed over technological skills. The described genre shifts propelled deeper changes in both the content and nature of architectural discourse in the Philippines. The shifts also drew up a new relationship pattern between practicing architects, contractors and architectural media.

Lost in a sea of highlight reels: The use of social media and mental health metaphors in online health blogs

This article explores the metaphorical conceptualisation of social media and its relationship with mental health and well-being in a specialised corpus of online health blogs, with the aim of discovering how people communicate their experience of social media use, and whether it has a positive or negative influence in their lives. For this purpose, a 20,000-word corpus of blog posts from online health communities, charities and personal blogs were collected and analysed. The main research questions are: a) How is social media conceptualised? b) Are metaphors used to conceptualise social media evaluative? c) How are mental health and well-being conceptualised? d) How are metaphors used to discuss the benefits and challenges of social media use for individuals who suffer from illness? Results show that the DRUGS, PLACE, PATH and FOOD source domains are used to conceptualise social media, and that metaphor is used to highlight both the positive impact of social media in providing social support and its negative impact on symptoms when used excessively.

Strategies and Tactics for Representing the Life of the City in the Socio-Political Telegram-Blogosphere of Ekaterinburg

The article examines the problems of the functioning of the city telegram blogosphere in Yekaterinburg, the peculiarities of the representation of content in socio­political telegram channels. The role of the telegram blogosphere in the formation and discussion of the socio­political agenda is described. The telegram blogosphere is presented as a system that includes official, corporate blogs, blogs of public organizations, mass media and journalists, personal telegram blogs of citizens. The features of the Ekaterinburg telegram blogosphere are highlighted and described. Numerous examples from the publications of several popular telegram channels show strategies and tactics for representing socially significant events in the life of the capital of the Urals.

Translational activity in the focus of presentational discourse

The actualization of a translator’s presentational potential and competence within the framework of discourse linguistics contributes to the expansion of the contemporary paradigm of translation studies and motivates the study of language features of web discourse and its genre forms in the synergy of professional (institutional) and personally oriented communication. The aim of this article is to study the genre features of a professional translator’s presentational discourse focusing on their web-based interaction. The methods used in the paper, i.e. contextual, comparative and distributive analysis, allowed us to identify the features of self-presentation and self-expression of the translator, promoting text and presentational discourse within the framework of web interaction, and thus to justify the hypothesis about the tendency of professional translators to actively express themselves in Internet not only for professional but also personal purposes. Considering the multi-layered nature of web-based communication and the multi-genre palette of web discourse, the authors of the paper analyze the presentation forms of a translator on the material of various online genres: personal website, blog, webinar, and YouTube channel. The novelty of the research lies in the analysis of presentation forms of professional translation discourse focusing on web discourse. The positioning of translator’s professional personality on the Internet is studied from the perspective of their individuality, the synergy of personal and professional communication. It is concluded that all possible genre forms of self-presentation are realized in the presentation discourse of translators in the web-based communicative space: demonstratives; reportatives; sociatives; creatives; agitatives; instructives; prescriptives; attractives. The conclusion is drawn that among the many forms of translator’s self-expression, the most effective in terms of web-based presentation discourse is the translator’s personal blog, which requires further detailed and in-depth analysis. Based on a comprehensive analysis of empirical material, the authors have been able to outline a new direction for research of the professional personality of translators, to define accents, trends, and specific features of self-presentation and self-expression of translators in the modern world. In the future, it is planned to examine the socio- and lingua-cultural features of the translator’s professional personality on the material of various blogs in different linguo-pragmatic conditions.

Responsible Research Assessment

Felix Schönbrodt, Professor of Psychology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, tells about an initiative that he coordinates within the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie (German Psychological Society). Motivated by the Reproducibility Crisis and a rising frustration with the publishers of high-ranking journals, Schönbrodt has co-authored three position papers on the theme of responsible research assessment. The suggestion is to develop a two-stage evaluation system for hiring, the first of which will use responsible metrics with emphasis on open data, pre-registration and several aspects of reproducibility, whereas the second stage will focus on a qualitative (content-oriented) evaluation of selected candidates. The propositions of Schönbrodt’s group have so far led to published feedback from more than 40 different scholars. Besides his nation-wide work within the German Psychological Society, Schönbrodt is the managing director of LMU’s Open Science Centre, where scholars from different disciplines convene for workshops on various aspects of Open Science. Under the nickname «nicebread» (Schön = nice, Brodt = bread), he also runs a personal blog and a project webpage on GitHub.
 Interview recorded in Munich, October 2023. First published online: November 29, 2023.

Korean adolescents' coping strategies on self-harm, ADHD, insomnia during COVID-19: text mining of social media big data.

Since the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), public safety measures, including social distancing and school closures, have been implemented, precipitating psychological difficulties and heightened online activities for adolescents. However, studies examining the impact of the pandemic on adolescent mental health and their coping strategies in Asian countries are limited. Further, most studies have used survey measures to capture mental health challenges so far. Accordingly, this study aimed to examine the psychological challenges South Korean adolescents experienced and their coping strategies during the pandemic using the Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Text mining (TM) technique on adolescents' social media texts/posts. The data were gathered from social media texts/posts such as online communities, Twitter, and personal blogs from January 1, 2019, to October 31, 2021. The 12,520,250 texts containing keywords related to adolescents' common psychological difficulties reported during the pandemic, including self-harm, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), and insomnia, were analyzed by TM, NLP using information extraction, co-occurrence and sentiment analysis. The monthly frequency of the keywords and their associated words was also analyzed to understand the time trend. Adolescents used the word "self-harm" in their social media texts more frequently during the second wave of COVID-19 (August to September 2020). "Friends" was the most associated word with "self-harm." While the frequency of texts with "Insomnia" stayed constant throughout the pandemic, the word "ADHD" was increasingly mentioned in social media. ADHD and insomnia were most frequently associated with ADHD medications and sleeping pills, respectively. Friends were generally associated with positive words, while parents were associated with negative words. During COVID-19, Korean adolescents often expressed their psychological challenges on social media platforms. However, their coping strategies seemed less efficient to help with their difficulties, warranting strategies to support them in the prolonged pandemic era. For example, Korean adolescents shared psychological challenges such as self-harm with friends rather than their parents. They considered using medicine (e.g., sleeping pills and ADHD medication) as coping strategies for sleep and attention problems.

Social Media Platforms and Their Role in Misinformation: An Analytical Study of the Information Laundering Phenomenon

This study discusses the significant impact of social media platforms on the proliferation of information, particularly misleading and unreliable content. With the rise of these platforms, media organizations have shifted from traditional sources to social networking sites and personal blogs, compromising the credibility and integrity of news. The study aims to delve into the concept of "information laundering," exploring its various dimensions and the role of social media in fostering the spread of misleading information. The objectives include understanding the altered landscape of media ethics, analyzing the influence of trending topics and fame-seeking on misinformation, and investigating the motivations behind media organizations' shift to non-traditional sources. Furthermore, the study seeks to shed light on the strategies employed by misinformation purveyors, assess the impact of republishing information from unreliable sources, and propose effective measures to combat information laundering and uphold media credibility. Overall, the research aims to raise public awareness about the dangers of misinformation, contribute to the development of strategies to combat fake news, and enhance the quality and credibility standards in the digital age.

Factors influencing uptake of the COVID-19 vaccination among pregnant women in Australia: A cross-sectional survey.

Mounting evidence shows the risk of COVID-19 on perinatal outcomes, as well as the safety and efficacy of vaccination during pregnancy. However, little is known about vaccine uptake among pregnant women in Australia, including women who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), and about sources of information pregnant women use when making decisions about vaccines. We aimed to determine the proportion of pregnant women who had been vaccinated and to identify factors associated with vaccine uptake or decline during pregnancy. A cross-sectional, anonymous, online survey was conducted from October 2021 to January 2022 in two metropolitan hospitals in New South Wales, Australia. Of 914 pregnant women, 406 (44%) did not speak English at home. Overall, 101 (11%) received a vaccine prepregnancy and 699 (76%) during pregnancy. In the nonvaccinated cohort, 87 (76%) declined vaccination during pregnancy. The uptake was more than 87% among women during pregnancy who received information from government or health professional websites but 37% when received from personal blogs. The main reasons for vaccine uptake were (1) hearing that COVID-19 affects pregnant women, (2) being concerned about the COVID-19 outbreak, and (3) receiving vaccine recommendation from a general practitioner. In a multivariable logistic regression, three main factors associated with declining or feeling unsure about vaccination were (1) concerns about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine, (2) lack of trust and being unsatisfied with the information received about COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy, and (3) doubting the importance of COVID-19 vaccine. Clinicians play a critical role in counseling women to alleviate vaccine fear, support vaccine acceptance, and direct women to use reliable information sources, such as government and professional healthcare organizations, for information about vaccines.