State Of Panic Research Articles

Previously unknown regulatory role of extracellular RNA on bacterial directional migration.

Bacterial directional migration plays a significant role in bacterial adaptation. However, the regulation of this process, particularly in young biofilms, remains unclear. Here, we demonstrated the critical role of extracellular RNA as part of the Universal Receptive System in bacterial directional migration using a multidisciplinary approach, including bacterial culture, biochemistry, and genetics. We found that the destruction or inactivation of extracellular RNA with RNase or RNA-specific antibodies in the presence of the chemoattractant triggered the formation of bacterial "runner cells» in what we call a "panic state" capable of directional migration. These cells quickly migrated even on the surface of 1.5% agar and formed evolved colonies that were transcriptionally and biochemically different from the ancestral cells. We have also shown that cell-free DNA from blood plasma can act as a potent bacterial chemoattractant. Our data revealed a previously unknown role of bacterial extracellular RNA in the regulation of bacterial migration and have shown that its destruction or inhibition triggered the directional migration of developing and mature biofilms towards the chemoattractant.

The Terrorism and International Public Law

Despite the international community's interest in terrorism, it has not been able to develop a consistent and comprehensive definition of terrorism or to achieve tangible results on the ground concerning its definition of the phenomenon of terrorism because this concept is intertwined with other concepts such as patriotism, nationalism, and legitimacy. This article determines the nature of terrorism, and its elements, and characteristics independent of other crimes, The study aims to clarify points of disagreement and agreement between Arab and Western viewpoints, And both of them agreed that the goal of terrorism is to create a state of terror and panic among the population, However, they differ as to whether the liberation movements have a legitimate or terrorist character, which is reflected in the definition of terrorism by each of the two parties in their internal laws, not to mention the dispute that arose at the level of international forums, including the UN. Despite the many causes, forms, types, and objectives of terrorism, they agree about the element of violence, creating a state of chaos in the targeted societies, and trying to change regimes.

Corona Pandemic Representations on Contemporary Graffiti Art

Over the ages, plastic art has dealt with societal issues and the multiple crises of human society. In light of the crisis of the outbreak of the Corona pandemic --the most prominent crisis in the world of the twenty-first century-- contemporary graffiti art around the world addressed the repercussions of the pandemic in its various aspects. This study aimed to shed light on the interactive artistic and social role presented by this type of art, through its patterns, techniques and materials available during the Corona pandemic. The study also aimed to document that technical interaction with the pandemic. The researchers followed the descriptive analytical method, to describe and analyze the study samples, which numbered eight, from different countries. The study concluded that the products of this contemporary art form reflect visions that express the reality of the Corona crisis, through symbolic connotations of the lived reality, and provide moral support and positive energy to overcome the state of fear and panic in societies. Keywords: Pandemic, Corona, Graffiti Art, Contemporary Art

ICT-Based Lombok Disaster Management Communication Model in Indonesian

When a natural disaster occurs, information and communication technology (ICT)-based disaster communication must be carried out, especially from the government to the affected community. The needs for information on the location and the number of victims and data collection on their needs are highly required to ease officers and volunteers to assist disaster victims. When an earthquake occurred on July 29, 2018, the community was in a state of panic, anxiety, and fear, making it prone to the confusion of information, resulting in slow disaster management. This study aims to determine the communication model of Lombok earthquake disaster management based on ICT carried out by the Public Relations of the North Lombok Regency Government to the people of Gangga Village, North Lombok. This research utilized a descriptive qualitative method by conducting in-depth interviews with the Public Relations of the North Lombok Regency Government, the people of Gangga Village, North Lombok Regency, and the North Lombok Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD). The results disclosed that the ICT-based disaster communication model during the July 29, 2018 earthquake integrated related Regional Work Units (SKPDs), such as the Public Relations, BPBD, Public Works Service, and Health Service through Handy Talky (HT), Hand Phone (HP), websites, and social media. The North Lombok Regency Government also explicitly coordinated with the Ministry of Communication and Information, who asked the NTB Regional Frequency Spectrum Monitoring Center to continuously coordinate with telecommunications operators, ORARI, and RAPI in NTB to ensure excellent telecommunications services for the community

HAPC Model of Crowd Behavior during Crises

The dynamics of pedestrian crowds during exceptional tragic events are very complex depending on a series of human behaviors resulting from combinations of basic interaction principles and self-organization. The Alert–Panic–Control (APC) model is one of the mathematical models in the literature for representing such complicated processes, mainly focusing on psychologists’ points of view (i.e., emotion contagion). This work proposes a Hybrid APC (HAPC) model including new processes, such as the effect of resonance, the victims caused by people in state of panic, new interactions between populations based on imitation and emotional contagion phenomena and the ability to simulate multiple disaster situations. Results from simulated scenarios showed that in the first 5 min 54.45% of population move towards a state of alert, 13.82% enter the control state and 31.73% pass to the state of panic, highlighting that individuals respond to a terrible incident very quickly, right away after it occurs.

Sexual and Gender-Based Violence at the << One Stop Center Care Unit >> The Referral Health Centre In Commune V of the District of Bamako, Mali

Summary: Introduction: Sexual violence is an all-encompassing term that refers to "any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, comment or advance of a sexual nature directed against a person's sexuality using coercion" according to the WHO. Objective: Study sexual violence based on gender at the level of the care unit << One Stop Center >> the Reference Health Center of Commune V of the District of Bamako. Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional retrospective study from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2020. We included in this study, all survivors of sexual violence at least 10 years old admitted to the "One Stop Center" care unit of the Reference Health Center of Commune V of the District of Bamako. Results: The prevalence of sexual violence was 54.62% in relation to all cases of gender-based violence and 3.36% in relation to all gynaecological emergencies. The age group less than or equal to 19 years accounted for 54.18% of survivors, 69.68% of survivors were single. In 39.95% of the cases the incident took place in the home of the alleged perpetrator of the sexual assault. The survivors had presented a state of fear and panic in 23.92% of cases. Penetration was << penis-vagina >> in 37.1% of survivors. Survivors received psychiatric assistance in 12.87% of cases. Conclusion: Sexual violence is relatively common in our care unit << One Stop Center >>. They had constituted the majority of cases of gender-based violence. The care was holistic.

Symptoms of Mental Health during Covid-19 Survivors: A Cross-Sectional Study in Indonesia

Abstract
 The Covid-19 pandemic can influence the mental condition of patients and affect their immunity levels. This article aims to investigate the mental health symptoms and disorders of Covid-19 survivors. This was observational and cross-sectional research. A total of 175 respondents participated, 84% of them being women and 16% being men. Their work history includes health workers at 75.4% and others at 24.6%. Respondents who have experienced anxiety are 32%, sadness was 25.7%, fear was 22.9%, and panic was 14.3%. The logistic regression showed that all of the tested characteristics have no significant effect on the respondents’ mental states of anxiety, fear, and panic, with p-values ​​of 0.388, 0.893, and 0.166; 0.245, 0.691, and 0.353; 0.612, 0.410, and 0.828. However, from the test results, it was observed that gender has a significant effect on sadness with a p-value of 0.027 and OR value of 5.308 (CI = 1.204-23.399). The percentage of women respondents that experienced sadness was 29.3% and men respondents were 7.1%. Other characteristics, which are age and work history, have no significant effect on sadness, with p-values ​​of 0.650 and 0.844 respectively. There are no variables that affect anxiety, fear, and panic. Feelings of sadness in patients are influenced by gender.
 Keywords: anxiety; Covid-19; mental disorder; mental health

Panic Detection Using Machine Learning and Real-Time Biometric and Spatiotemporal Data

It is common sense that immediate response and action are among the most important terms when it comes to public safety, and emergency response systems (ERS) are technology components strictly tied to this purpose. While the use of ERSs is increasingly adopted across many aspects of everyday life, the combination of them with real-time biometric and location data appears to provide a different perspective. Panic is one of the most important emergency indicators. Until now, panic events of any cause tend to be treated in a local manner. Various attempts to detect such events have been proposed based on traditional methods such as visual surveillance technologies and community engagement systems. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it presents an innovative multimodal dataset containing biometric and spatiotemporal data associated with the detection of panic state in subjects that perform various activities during a certain period. For this purpose, time-enabled location data are combined with biometrics coming from wearables and smartphones that are analyzed in real-time and produce data indicating possible panic events that are geospatially described. Second, the proposed dataset is used to train various machine learning models, and their applicability to correctly distinguish panic states from normal behavior is thoroughly examined. As a result, the Gaussian SVM classifier ranked first among seven classifiers, achieving an accuracy score of 94.5%. The dataset was also tested in a deep learning framework, achieving an accuracy level of 93.4%. A long short-term memory approach was also used, which reached a top accuracy of 94%. Moreover, the contribution of the various biometric and geospatial features is analyzed in-depth to determine their partial importance in the overall panic detection process. This is moving towards the creation of a smart geo-referenced ERS that could be used to inform the authorities regarding a potentially unpleasant event by detecting possible crowd panic patterns and helping to act accordingly, getting the information right from the source of the event, the human body. The proposed dataset is freely distributed to the scientific community under the third version of GNU General Public License (GPL v3) through the GitHub platform.

Anxiety, fear, panic: An approach to assessing the defensive behavior system across the predatory imminence continuum

In order to effectively thwart predation, antipredator defensive behaviors must be matched to the current spatio-temporal relationship to the predator. We have proposed a model where different defensive responses are organized along a predatory imminence continuum (PIC). The PIC is a behavior system organized as a sequence of innately programmed behavioral modes, each representing a different interaction with the predator or threat. Ranging from low threat to predator contact, the PIC categorizes defense modes as pre-encounter, post-encounter, and circa-strike, corresponding to states of anxiety, fear, and panic, respectively. This experiment examined if the same significant stressor caused overexpression of all defensive responses along the PIC, including anxiety-like behavior, freezing, and panic-like responses. Female and male mice were exposed to acute stress that consisted of a series of ten pseudorandomly presented unsignaled footshocks (or no shocks). Mice were subsequently tested on a battery of tasks to assess stress effects on pre-encounter (anxiety-like), post-encounter (fear), and circa-strike (panic-like) behaviors. Results revealed that following stress, mice exhibited increased anxiety-like behavior shown through reduced average velocity within a modified open field. Furthermore, stressed mice showed increased fear following a single footshock in a new context as well as an increase in reactivity to white noise in the original stress context, with stressed mice exhibiting a more robust circa-strike-like response than controls. Therefore, significant stress exposure influenced the defensive states of anxiety, fear, and panic across the predatory imminence continuum. This research could therefore reveal how such responses become maladaptive following traumatic stress in humans.

Study on Evacuation Behavior of Urban Underground Complex in Fire Emergency Based on System Dynamics

During a fire evacuation, long lateral evacuation distances, large crowds waiting for evacuation at the same level, and easily panicked populations are common. This research aimed to look into the large-scale evacuation behavior of urban underground complexes with limited evacuation and egress during a fire. A simplified model for large-scale group evacuation of urban subsurface complexes was constructed using system dynamics theory. The Vensim software was used for quantitative simulation. The model could represent the typical phenomenon of group evacuation behaviors, such as quick or slow, under seven operating situations with total initial numbers of 350, 400, 450, 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000. The results of an analysis of critical affecting factors show “total initial number” and “panic state” during a large-scale group evacuation: a large beginning population will result in a rapid reduction in system evacuation capability, delaying the completion of the evacuation process significantly; meanwhile, if the level of panic is deficient, the system’s evacuation efficiency will remain low for an extended period, making it difficult to evacuate trapped persons promptly. According to the findings, the developed system dynamics model, which combines the advantages of a continuous model with the advantages of a discrete model, is very accurate. At the same time, we should emphasize the importance of the evacuation guide and reinforce the fire education and behavior drills for the building’s workers. This research presents a simplified model for the evacuation of large groups of people from metropolitan underground complexes. Furthermore, the findings may give theoretical support for the development of rules and safety management practices.

Public psychological crisis reports: an investigation during the remission of COVID-19 in China

PurposeThe COVID-19 outbreak has been effectively controlled in China, but the resulting public psychological crisis is a latent, persistent and torturous disaster. This crisis affects not only the individual’s health but also social stability. This study aims to reveal the structure and situation of public psychological crisis during the remission period of the COVID-19 epidemic.Design/methodology/approachA questionnaire survey of the psychological crisis was conducted from February to May 2021. Data was collected from 1,056 respondents from different provinces in China.FindingsThe findings reveal the dangerous risks of public psychological crises. The specific results are as follows: first, a hierarchical state structure of psychological crisis is constructed and characterized as a significant gradient decline, namely, anxious state>panic state>depressive state>hostile state. Second, 43.939% of respondents reported an anxious state, 46.780% reported a panic state, 40.909% reported a depressive state, 28.883% reported a hostile state and 22.254% of the respondents had four psychological crisis states. Third, those with 56–65 years of age, equal or below high school and PhD, with monthly family incomes of ¥50,000–¥100,000 and living in the county and city areas have relatively high levels of psychological crisis.Originality/valueThis study enriches the research on the evolution of the psychological crisis in terms of structure and periods. This study also provides substantial evidence for hierarchical intervention and differentiated intervention of psychological crisis.

How much can we rely on a scrambled COVID-19 vaccine? It is not the only way out!

The COVID-19 pandemic has engulfed the world in the blink of an eye and created a state of panic. Vaccine is one of the suggested ways to counter the menace. Smallpox was an ideal vaccine candidate yet, it took about 182 years to eradicate. Vaccines are associated with incidents of mishap like the “Cutter incident”. COVID-19 vaccine has a political, commercial angle to it, with at least 62 vaccine candidates in the pipeline. Potential obstacles in development of vaccines are mutations in strains of SARS-CoV-2, lack of details of biological properties of the virus and incomplete information of pathogenicity, lack of suitable animal models. The potential side effects of the vaccine are eosinophilic infiltration, increased infectivity following challenge infections, antibody-dependent enhancement of infections. The general public has to stop anticipating that a vaccine is nearby and believe that for now, vaccine is face mask, hand wash, and social distancing and hope that either the virus goes weak or an effective vaccine arrives rather early than late.

Free Papers Compiled

Many experts believes this undoubtedly that Panic is dangerous than pandemic. Fear, stress, anxiety, depression and obsession out of continuous panic state of mind would be more dangerous than the infection caused by covid19 corona virus during pandemic because if one member of a family is infected by infection than all other members of same family were found to be suffering from the stress and fear of being infected next. This situation give a clue that numbers of people having fear and panic of infection is more than sufferer of actual pandemic due to covid infection.During years 2019,2020,2021 pandemic and post covid pandemic periods , there were sudden raising pattern is seen in the psychological disorder noted worldwide as per the panelists of different organization and private research analysts. It has shaken every one from individual to institutes .Sudden application of break in the modern life style and prolong home bounded situation exacerbated the mental health issue beyond the expectation of experts. Pandemic has hampered the life style of all age group specially children ,adolescents and young who are captivated at home . Prolong sitting front of computer for school from home,work from home , different on line courses from home . This forced home living situation creating many psychological disorder among different age group .This is why application of yoga and mediation has raised in treatment of psychological disorder . Modern psychiatry is still far away from the application of ancient knowledge of yoga ,meditation and holistic understanding of human psychological nature its constitution and disorders . Therapeutic approach of meditation and yoga is only at surface level and need to be explored up to deep .Lack of deep knowledge and ignorance of same is the reason for that modern psychiatry is unable to provide the holistic approach for treating psychological disorder in comprehensive away . It has been got evident that yoga and meditation has helped many people who were kept in their houses for long time to stay healthy and to create mental well-being too .In this scientific paper application of knowledge,skill,approach,perception ,hidden intellect from ancient books on yoga sutra and meditation is done for treating different psychological disorders .Many experts either lack the idea or ignore to accept about different approaches written for treating differ psychological disorders in many books like swami Vivekananda translation of patanjali yoga sutra that’s written by by maharishi Patanjali 600bc , the Veda,the Upnishad ,The Bhagwat Gita and many more ancient books and ancient philosophy of yoga and meditation .By application of these skill , knowledge and perception and holistic approach towards the cessation of mental waves that common in mental disorder. As the modern age is the age of psychological disorders. Hence the holistic approach towards the study of human mind, its nature and disorders is the crucial need of the day. Efforts for this are going on in eastern as well as western countries. In western countries modern psychology developed as the branch of natural sciences is also trying to find out the solution for the problem at its own level. However due to its materialistic prejudices and single sided vision towards the human mind and nature it is unable to reach at the root cause of the problem and adopt the holistic approach for its therapy. for ANCIP2022 -BYDR.SANTOSH KUMAR PANDIT, Email-Panditsant79@gmail.comMobile-7980309435.

The Essence and Causes of Mass Panic: An Analysis of Data on the Beginning of Quarantine in Ukraine

Based on the analysis of scientific information sources and empirical material (development and processing of the electronic questionnaire survey "Characteristics of mass behaviour in relation to COVID-19" in the social network "Facebook" at the beginning of the quarantine) clarified the nature of "mass panic" as a state of uncontrolled fear , panic state, confusion, a state of horror that increases when the real threat (COVID-19 pandemic) has become inevitably more threatening, and the imaginary danger of the consequences and further escalation of the pandemic acquires the magnitude of a real danger in person's consciousness, which blocks the ability to rationally evaluate the threat of disease and mobilize internal and external potential, self-control for individual/group/mass resistance to this danger. Four causes of the occurrence and intensity of mass panic are specified: individual and psychological, physiological, socio-situational, politically ideological conditions. Another dimension of mass panic, which the authors call "self-isolated individual-mass panic" is defined. It was stated that if people had the opportunity to gather on the street at the beginning of quarantine, there would be mass panic in its classic form. The panic developed at home, so people did not communicate physically, did not gather in crowds, interacted only by means of communication equipment. The mass mental state of Ukrainian citizens during the quarantine period can be considered a state of mass panic of various stages of intensity.

نقطة التماس بين الذات والموضوع دراسة تطبيقية على قصيدة ابن قلاقس الإسکندري

نقطة التماس بين الذات والموضوع دراسة تطبيقية على قصيدة ابن قلاقس الإسکندري ثناء محمد کيلانى محمد عبد الله قسم اللغة العربية، کلية الألسن، جامعة عين شمس، القاهرة، مصر. البريد الإليکترونى :aolady2@yahoo.com الملخص : هذا البحث دراسة لقصيدة ابن قلاقس الإسکندرى ، التى يصف فيها تعرض سفينته للغرق ـ أثناء إحدى رحلاته ـ وحالة الخوف والفزع التى انتابته ورکاب السفينة ، وأمله فى النجاة والعودة إلى وطنه . يهدف البحث إلى إبراز أثر العامل النفسى للأديب فى إبداعه ، من خلال التماس بين الذات والموضوع ، والتطبيق على قصيدة ابن قلاقس بوصفها أنموذجا واضحا لذلک.اعتمد البحث على کل من المنهج النفسى والمنهج البنيوى ؛ لما للعامل النفسى من أثر واضح فى بناء القصيدة . من أهم نتائج البحث أنه أثبت أثر الحالة النفسية والشعورية ـ للأديب ـ فى تجربته الأدبية ، وأثر المکونات النفسية لشخصية الأديب ـ مثل ملابسات حياته الاجتماعية والثقافية والفکرية ـ فى بناء قصيدته ، وتشکيل الصورة والإيقاع ،کما أثبت البحث دور العامل النفسى ـ لدى الشاعر ـ فى وجود نقطة تماس بين الذات والموضوع ؛ وذلک لواقعية التجربة الذاتية ـ الجمعية فى القصيدة ؛ ولبراعة الشاعر فى إشراک المتلقى فى تجربته ؛ ومهارته فى الجمع بين الشعر والقصص ، مما يؤثر فى نفس المتلقى ، ويحفز انفعاله بتجربة الشاعر. الکلمات المفتاحية :ابن قلاقس، الذات والموضوع، أدب البحر ، الخوف، المنهج النفسي. The Point of Contact between Oneself and Object: An Applied Study on a Poem by the Alexandrian Ibn Qalaqis Thanaa Mohammad Kilani Mohammad Abdullah . Department of Arabic Language, Faculty of Al-Alsun, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. Email: aolady2@yahoo.com Abstract : The present study examines Ibn Qalaqis’ poem, in which he describes one of his journeys where his ship sank as well as the state of fear and panic that he and the other passengers have experienced along with his hope to survive and return to his homeland. The study aims to highlight the psychological factor over the poet’s creativity, through the contact between oneself and object. This is applied on the poem of Ibn Qalaqis as a clear example for that. The study adopts both psychological and structural approach; as the psychological factor has clear effect on the poem's construction. One of the most important conclusions of the study is that it proves the influence of the psychological and emotional state of the poet in his literary experience, and the impact of psychological traits of the poet, such as the circumstances of his social, cultural, and intellectual life on writing his poem, and forming image and rhythm. The study also proves the role of the poet's psychological factor in the creation of a point of contact between oneself and subject matter; this is due to a number of factors including: the realism of the collective self-experience in the poem, the poet's creativity to engage the recipient in his experience, and his skill to combine poetry and stories to affect the recipient and stimulate his/her emotions to feel the experiment of the poet. Keywords: Ibn Qalaqis, Oneself and Subject matter, Sea’s literature, Fear, Psychological methods.

The State of Panic and Pandemics in History

The State of Panic and Pandemics in History

Cloud-Fog Assisted Energy Efficient Architectural Paradigm for Disaster Evacuation

The disasters often lead to panic among people resulting into life threatening crowd movements. An efficient and systematic evacuation can mitigate the impact of devastation on human life. The evacuation, on the wake of extreme events, requires delay-sensitive computation and energy conserving mechanisms for power constrained data collection devices. In this paper, an IoT based Cloud-Fog assisted layered evacuation system is proposed for mass evacuation during emergency situation. The system utilizes fog computing paradigm to evaluate the panic health state in real-time using fuzzy K-nearest neighbour (FK-NN) method. The energy conserving mechanisms at fog layer performs data selection and data reduction to reduce the amount of data transmission to upper layer. Spatio-temporal Data Selection layer chooses the data for further transmission on the basis of its spatio-temporal analysis. Data reduction component reduces the dimensions of data using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The cloud layer examines the future temporal health state of evacuees by employing Holt-Winters method. Geographic Analysis layer at cloud determines the priority evacuation status of person on the basis of current and future temporal panic state. Moreover, it specifies the priority evacuation status of region using the count of currently panicked and predicted health status. Experimentation proves the efficiency of proposed system at various levels.

The New Coronavirus and World Geopolitical Transformations

This article studies the major transformations resulting from the global Covid-19 pandemic and how to examine it from the point of view of social philosophy through two sub-themes. The first relates to understanding the state of collective panic in Spain, France, and Italy. It is logical that fear of the pandemic should not turn into a state of collective panic in societies living under technologically advanced political systems, except in cases where these societies lack the basic elements on which social ties are based. Therefore, how do we understand the fragility of these social ties in European countries where mass panic is threatening daily life? The second sub-theme is related to the gestures and features of creating a new geopolitical map that has benefitted from the geopolitical retreat of the West to consolidate other political and regional alliances, mainly the Chinese initiative to tender aid to Italy at a time when other European countries turned their backs on and closed their borders with that European Union member state. How do we understand the contribution of the pandemic in forming new geopolitical alliances that could reset the balance of power in the world? We will observe the political behavior of countries that are supposed to be the first to have shown solidarity with Italy, Spain, and France, which are members of the European Union. We analyze the factors related to the erosion of the basis on which classical European society is based, where collective panic represents one of the manifestations of this disintegration. This panic, which was expressed in the rush to buy foodstuffs and the outbreak of a “toilet paper” buying fever that spread throughout Europe and the United States, saw shelves suddenly empty without a direct reason for this fact. Also, the study determines the relationship that binds these factors to the political disintegration expressed in the lack of solidarity from parts of the European Union with the three countries most affected by the pandemic. The second part of the study discusses how China will benefit from these political developments in the West with the prevalence of collective panic due to the pandemic, especially in the case of Italy, and how China is consolidating solidarity relations with these countries, drawing a map of new international political relations as part of its Silk Road project. Also, there is a discussion of the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s study on plague as a theoretical framework.

Likely Exacerbation of Psychological Disorders from Covid-19 Response.

Anxiety and fear felt by people around the world regarding the coronavirus pandemic is real and can be overwhelming, resulting in strong emotional reactions in adults and children. With depressive and anxiety disorders already highly prevalent in the general population (300 million worldwide), depression and/or anxiety specifically because of the pandemic response is likely. Moreover, the current state of panic in the face of uncertainty is apt to produce significant amounts of stress. While this situation has the potential to cause psychological disorders in previously unaffected populations, perhaps more impactful is the exacerbation of symptoms of many existing disorders including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and hoarding disorder.

Journalistic clichés under the conceptual “umbrella” of isotopies: “linguistic pathologies in vogue” or “mirror-words” of psychosocial reality?

The present paper examines the dominant isotopies under which linguistic clichés emerge in the context of the intense media coverage of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis of the linguistic automatisms excerpted from the online journalistic discourse proved to be prolific in identifying additional features of the linguistic “behaviour” of clichés. Furthermore, the investigation facilitated our understanding of the underlying motivations, implications, and potential effects triggered by the use of specific prefabricated structures. As a general remark, the analysis of these dominant overused schemes revealed how media institutions overuse, under the pressure of the international model, specific lexico-semantic isotopies which exploit prefabricated structures from distinct fields: war, particularly the area of pyrotechnic elements (“explosion of new cases”, “huge explosion of Covid cases”), the semantic area of natural disasters subsumed to liquidity (“a new wave of COVID”, “anti-Covid control wave”, “death wave”, “a wave of hateful comments”, “wave of infections/confirmations/illnesses”, “flood of accusations/fines”, “tsunami of COVID-19 patients/displacements”). We have also identified journalistic automatisms circumscribed to the isotopy of the economy (“epidemiological balance”), ranking and sports competition (statistical clichés: “top of infections”, “Covid top”, “top Covid infections”, “European top of Covid evolution”, “vaccine race”, among others), disaster (clichés of melodramatic excess, salient to tabloid journalism: “disaster”, “chaos”, “nightmare”, “COVID-19 drama”). For the present article, we channeled our investigative effort only towards the first two dominant isotopies. To achieve these objectives, we proposed a two-dimensional research model. Specifically, we correlated the data obtained through conjugating linguistic micro-parameters (semantic, stylistic features, lexical and morpho-syntactic patterns) and macrolevel variables (pragmatic, psycholinguistic aspects, perspectives derived from the sociology of media communication, critical analysis of discourse, among others). The investigation results revealed that these linguistic patterns, analyzed under the conceptual “umbrella” of isotopy, can function as rhetorical and lexico-semantic strategies through which journalists activate the receptors’ affective responses. Consequently, media discourse can trigger and maintain artificial states of anxiety, panic, and restlessness. Over time, this journalistic operation leads, through the impact of obsessive repetition, to the passive consumption of media representations and cultural stereotypes, of preconceived ideas.