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Full-Text Articles in Health Communication

“Tweeting During Emergencies”: The Egyptian Ministry Of Health Twitter Communication Strategy Under The Umbrella Of The Crisis And Emergency Risk Communication Model (Cerc) Case Study: Covid-19 Pandemic, Pakinam Elgohary Feb 2023

“Tweeting During Emergencies”: The Egyptian Ministry Of Health Twitter Communication Strategy Under The Umbrella Of The Crisis And Emergency Risk Communication Model (Cerc) Case Study: Covid-19 Pandemic, Pakinam Elgohary

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates using the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Model (CERC) for COVID- 19 communication by analyzing the content of Twitter messages posted by the Government of Egypt through the Egyptian Ministry of Health (MOHP). It further examines how official communicators and institutions utilize social media to contact the public during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting critical strategies of recommendations. Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC), a five-staged theory, recommends a set of messaging and pertained communication characteristics to implement at each stage of the identified following stages: (1) “Pre-crisis, (2) Initial event, (3) Maintenance, (4) Resolution, and …


Using Large Pre-Trained Language Models To Track Emotions Of Cancer Patients On Twitter, Will Baker May 2021

Using Large Pre-Trained Language Models To Track Emotions Of Cancer Patients On Twitter, Will Baker

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Twitter is a microblogging website where any user can publicly release a message, called a tweet, expressing their feelings about current events or their own lives. This candid, unfiltered feedback is valuable in the spaces of healthcare and public health communications, where it may be difficult for cancer patients to divulge personal information to healthcare teams, and randomly selected patients may decline participation in surveys about their experiences. In this thesis, BERTweet, a state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) model, was used to predict sentiment and emotion labels for cancer-related tweets collected in 2019 and 2020. In longitudinal plots, trends in …


#Zika #Olympics: The Use Of Dialogue In Tweets Regarding The Zika Virus And The 2016 Rio Olympics, Daniel W. Vieth May 2017

#Zika #Olympics: The Use Of Dialogue In Tweets Regarding The Zika Virus And The 2016 Rio Olympics, Daniel W. Vieth

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Previous research has observed the use of social media by health organizations; however, few studies have addressed how health organizations use these media to build relationships with publics. This thesis addresses this gap by applying Kent and Taylor’s (2002) dialogic tenets to Twitter messages regarding the 2015-2016 Zika virus epidemic and the 2016 Rio Olympics. First a pilot study used a quantitative survey to find that individuals were using online media to seek information about Zika, and that the public generally had high threat salience toward the virus. Next, social network analyzer Netlytic was used to collect Tweets that mentioned …


Motivational Strategies For Improving Healthy Eating Habits: A Thematic Analysis Of A Myplate Twitter Campaign, Md Jamal Uddin Jan 2017

Motivational Strategies For Improving Healthy Eating Habits: A Thematic Analysis Of A Myplate Twitter Campaign, Md Jamal Uddin

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This study examined the #MyPlateMyWins Twitter campaign from ChooseMyPlate.gov to understand the motivational strategies used to influence people to change their eating habits. Although studies have explored healthy diet promotion in a variety of contexts, researchers have been slower to explore how Twitter is used in this regard. Applying Uses and Gratification (U&G) theory and using a thematic analysis, this paper found three major strategies used by the campaign: Starting with small changes in health behavior; being a healthy eating role model for kids; and, remaining physically active. These findings should be helpful for organizations or individuals to design effective …


Let’S Tweet!: A Content Analysis Of Health Campaigns’ Usage Of Twitter, Chasiti Gaines Dec 2016

Let’S Tweet!: A Content Analysis Of Health Campaigns’ Usage Of Twitter, Chasiti Gaines

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

Twitter, a popular social networking platform, offers unique opportunities for sharing and disseminating health-related information to the public. Health campaigns frequently use Twitter to raise awareness and encourage a healthy lifestyle among users. The present study aims to investigate health campaigns’ use of Twitter for promoting strategic health messages and public engagement. Through a content analysis of a sample of national health campaigns’ (Let’s Move!, The Heart Truth, Breast Cancer Awareness & Truth) tweets, the research identifies interactive features and message functions across campaign profiles. This study found that most health campaigns use Twitter as a one-way communication tool. This …


Testing The Message: Making Sense Of Converging Multimodal Messages In A Foodborne Illness Outbreak, Bethney A. Wilson Jan 2014

Testing The Message: Making Sense Of Converging Multimodal Messages In A Foodborne Illness Outbreak, Bethney A. Wilson

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The goal of risk and crisis communication is to reduce and contain the harm inherent in a threat. In order to achieve this goal, risk and crisis scholars call for continued testing of messages surrounding these events; specifically, messages that address the needs of the at-risk message receiver. Previous scholarship suggests that these messages should include adapting and instructing information (Coombs, 2012), and should be designed using pedagogically sound instructional approaches (Frisby, Sellnow, Sellnow, Lane, & Veil, 2011; Sellnow & Sellnow, 2010). In order to meet this call, this dissertation tested an instructionally sound message that includes both adapting and …