Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Agendamelding And Covid-19: The Dance Of Horizontal And Vertical Media In A Pandemic, J. Benjamin Taylor, Milad Minooie, Chris J. Vargo

Faculty and Research Publications

How are attitudes formed in the 21st Century, and who sets the agenda for initial COVID-19 coverage in the United States? We explore these questions using a random sample of 6 million tweets from a population of 224 million tweets collected between January 2020 and June 2020. In conjunction with a content analysis of legacy media such as newspapers, we examine the second-level agendamelding process during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The findings demonstrate that in the early weeks of the pandemic, public opinion on Twitter about the virus was distinctly different than the coverage …

Courage To Engage, Brooke Zimny, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

Ouachita prides itself in its personal approach to higher education, from the thoughtful attention prospective students receive during their college search, to the ways faculty and staff invest in students’ lives, to our commitment to tight-knit Christian community, which is built in dozens of ways for students whether they live on campus or attend classes online. During the pandemic, this level of engagement was challenged. Physical distance separated us; events, classes and residence life took new approaches.

While life over the last year slowly began to look more like the pre-pandemic world, things came into focus on campus even more …

Transition To Distance Learning: Student Experience And Communication During The Covid-19 Pandemic In The United Arab Emirates, Soumaya Abdellatif, Aizhan Shomotova, Safouane Trabelsi, Salwa Husain, Najeh Alsalhi, Mohamed Eltahir

All Works

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 prompted higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to switch to online learning for the safety of their citizens. The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between four indicators of digital learning experience and the intensity of student socio-pedagogical communication after the transition to distance learning. The data were collected from Ajman University, a private university in the UAE, during the spring of 2020. The sample consisted of 381 students who were surveyed using an online survey tool or email. First, this study found that the majority of students …

Growing Pains (Immediate Change Does Not Equal Long-Term Growth), Hannah Pilcher, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

What did we learn? Where do we go from here? These two questions have been at the forefront of my mind after attending a professional development conference that was equally challenging and inspiring. In a room full of higher education professionals, the speaker posed these questions in relation to the last two years as we have dealt with the reality of how COVID-19 affected our work life and the lives of our students.

We were challenged not to give in to the urge to skip these questions because they felt too daunting to answer. She asked the audience to reflect …

El Impacto De La Pandemia En La Formación De Los Hábitos De Alimentación En Niñes Pequeñes En La Villa 21-24 En Barracas, Buenos Aires / The Impact Of The Pandemic In The Creation Of Nutritional Habits In Young Children In Villa 21-24 In Barracas, Buenos Aires, Hannah Seewald

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Durante la Pandemia COVID-19 en Argentina, la inflación aumentó, y el desempleo aumentó especialmente entre los trabajadores informales, lo que dejó a muchos de ellos dependientes de los comedores comunitarios y de la ayuda nutricional para alimentar a sus familias. La violencia doméstica y la pobreza aumentaron aún más. Problemas estructurales como la falta de agua potable y los cortes de luz, situaciones que suelen enfrentar los habitantes de la Villa 21-24, Barracas, Buenos Aires, continuaron. Las escuelas se cerraron y la instrucción presencial se suspendió, en ese contexto los grupos comunitarios trabajaron para alcanzar los suministros adecuados de alimentos. …

Self-Medication Practices In Medical Students During The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Analysis, Farah Yasmin, Muhammad Sohaib Asghar, Unaiza Naeem, Hala Najeeb, Hamza Nauman, Muhammad Nadeem Ahsan, Abdullah Khan Khattak

Medical College Documents

Background and objectives: During the pandemic, the growing influence of social media, accessibility of over-the-counter medications, and fear of contracting the virus may have led to self-medication practices among the general public. Medical students are prone to such practices due to relevant background knowledge, and access to drugs. This study was carried out to determine and analyze the prevalence of self-medication practices among medical students in Pakistan.
Materials and methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted online in which the participants were asked about the general demographics, their self-medication practices and the reasons to use. All participants were currently enrolled …

Turning From Fear To Hope, Brooke Zimny, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

I had a front-row seat to Ouachita’s approach to pandemic planning as a member of several administrative groups on campus. I remember feeling fear, anxiety and discouragement starting in March 2020 at the challenge ahead of and all around us. Perseverance, optimism and grit were displayed in abundance, but still a strange cloud hung over the year for me, knowing how it compared to typical years not only on campus but also personally. We were adapting as well as we could, but everything was different about how we were experiencing the world.

One of my roles this academic year was …

Hope By Way Of Lament, Doug Nykolaishen

Press Releases

“Back to normal.” Since the middle of last March, those words have felt like an impossible dream. As illness disrupted life for many and restrictions disrupted life for all, we longed for things to just be the way they used to be.

Now the widespread distribution of effective vaccines has encouraged many to hope that life may indeed be on its way back to something much closer to what we previously knew. Our natural desire is to get on with what’s good as quickly as we can. But in our haste to get to “a better world,” it’s worthwhile noticing …

Leading And Learning In A Pandemic Year--And Beyond, Anna Roussel

Press Releases

Navigating college always has its unique challenges, but doing so in the midst of a global pandemic is a feat that seemed nearly impossible a year ago. When we left campus suddenly in March of 2020, the uncertainty surrounding my college career was enough to literally move me to tears. I had spent my entire life hearing family members and friends tell stories of their time at Ouachita and longing for the day I was on campus, and I did not want to come to terms with my time being cut short. However, in the middle of the chaos, I …

Ouachita Launches Graduate Dietetic Internship During Pandemic, Rachel Gaddis, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

To say you started anything new in 2020 would, well, raise eyebrows – especially launching something as involved and hands-on as an academic program including clinical healthcare. But that’s exactly what Ouachita did during the 2020-2021 academic year, launching its first graduate programs in more than 20 years. The new programs are producing quick fruit, with seven students earning Ouachita’s first-ever post-baccalaureate certificate for dietetic internships in May 2021. (The first cohort of applied behavior analysis master’s degree students will graduate in August 2021.)

“Ten years ago, the placement rate for nutrition & dietetics students in a post-graduate internship was …

Does Precise Case Disclosure Limit Precautionary Behavior? Evidence From Covid-19 In Singapore, Aljoscha Janssen, Matthew H. Shapiro

Research Collection School Of Economics

Limiting the spread of contagious diseases can involve both government-managed and voluntary efforts. Governments have a number of policy options beyond direct intervention that can shape individuals’ responses to a pandemic and its associated costs. During its first wave of COVID-19 cases, Singapore was among a few countries that attempted to adjust behavior through the announcement of detailed case information. Singapore's Ministry of Health maintained and shared precise, daily information detailing local travel behavior and residences of COVID-19 cases. We use this policy along with device-level cellphone data to quantify how local and national COVID-19 case announcements trigger differential behavioral …

Public Health Agencies Outreach Through Instagram During Covid-19 Pandemic: Crisis And Emergency Risk Communication Perspective, Aqdas Malik, Laeeq M. Khan, Anabel Quan-Haase

FIMS Publications

Background: Governmental and non-governmental institutions increasingly use social media as a strategic tool for public outreach. Global spread, promptness, and dialogic potentials make these platforms ideal for public health monitoring and emergency communication in crises such as COVID-19.

Objective: Drawing on the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework, we sought to examine how leading health organizations use Instagram for communicating and engaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We manually retrieved Instagram posts together with relevant metadata of four health organizations (WHO, CDC, IFRC, and NHS) shared between January 1, 2020, and April 30, 2020. Two coders manually coded the analytical …

The Reset: Connecting Internal Crisis Communication Strategy With Post-Pandemic Remote Worker Populations Through An Employee Engagement Framework, Erin Leigh Black

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In the post-pandemic workforce, unprecedented events are the new normal. Although the remote worker revolution has been rumored for decades, in early 2020, the idea became an instant reality when global governments closed their borders, instituted lockdown, and ordered citizens to shelter-in-place (Weideman & Hofmeyr, 2020). Given the global shift in work, organizations have an immediate need to communicate with the crisis-ladened, post-pandemic, remote workforce; however, there is a sizable gap in research between internal crisis communication and the post-pandemic remote worker population. Through a phenomenologically based, interpretive analysis of current strategic and crisis communication research and frameworks, this project …

Disease And Disaster: Navigating Food Insecurity In A Community Affected By Crises During Covid-19, Andrew S. Pyle, Michelle Eichinger, Barry A. Garst, Catherine Mobley, Sarah F. Griffin, Leslie H. Hossfeld, Mike Mcgirr, Helen R. Saunders

Publications

This exploratory study examines how a community experiencing food insecurity while navigating multiple crises can be a model to inform resources, processes, and systems supporting communities facing similar circumstances. Data for this study were collected from residents of a community in Oconee County, a rural county in the northwest corner of South Carolina experiencing pervasive food insecurity. The community was severely impacted by the onset of COVID-19 and further devastated by a tornado in mid-April. The area of the county that sustained the greatest damage from the tornado was the Utica Mill Hill community, home to the county’s most vulnerable …

Us Political Leadership And Crisis Communication During Covid-19, Daryl V. Watkins, Aaron D. Clevenger

Publications

The research explored the role of political leadership in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The researchers conducted a political discourse analysis on 239 transcripts from the press briefings of President Trump and seven U. S. governors to determine the extent to which the research subjects used effective crisis leadership and communication. These results suggest that President Trump and Governors DeSantis, DeWine, Ducey, and Ivey are particularly vulnerable to political fallout for their handling of COVID-19 because stakeholders might view them as inattentive to the crisis and ineffective in their policy responses. Governors Cuomo, Newsom, and Whitmer may be in …

Texting To Maintain Relationships During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Madeline Jupina

Undergraduate Research

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many college students saw shifts in their relationships. As a result, many turned to texting to maintain these relationships even in a stressful time. Sixty-nine participants responded to a survey about texting family members, friends, and romantic partners during the coronavirus pandemic. They responded to survey items based on the five relational maintenance strategies created by Stafford & Canary (1991). College students used texting somewhat more than before the pandemic to maintain relationships across every relationship type. Depending on the type of relationship, different relational maintenance strategies were emphasized. Although this study examines texted relational …

Progress In A Pandemic (Closing Thoughts), Ben Sells

Press Releases

In the midst of a pandemic, Ouachita’s progress makes us an encouraging outlier in higher education. While total university enrollment in the country continues to decrease, Ouachita increases – our highest in 20 years. We’re also graduating students at our highest level in history plus a placement rate of 97%.

We’re preparing students to serve in additional ways, including in health professions that are all the more important in today’s world. Our new Bachelor of Science in Nursing program seeks to meet the national shortage, and our M.S. degree in applied behavior analysis – the first option of its kind …

Navigating Unprecedented Times And Other Clichés (Editor's Notes From The Winter 2021 "Ouachita Circle"), Brooke Zimny, Office Of Communications & Marketing

Press Releases

Due to the pandemic ... canceled until further notice … we will navigate these uncertain times ... with resilience, optimism and creativity.

These and other phrases became all too familiar in 2020. As a communicator writing on behalf of Ouachita, they have become even more top of mind for me this year. As we chose the theme for this issue of the Ouachita Circle, no words seemed sufficient. Even words that were accurate and appropriate had lost their meaning, becoming clichés in our collective consciousness. And now, in 2021, which brings its own challenges, we are weary of the pandemic, …

Recovering From A Tornado During A Pandemic, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Most will remember 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic, but for Laini Bergthold, a junior communication major from Chattanooga, Tennessee, the year brought a different kind of trauma in the form of a tornado that destroyed her family’s home.

What Does A Pandemic Sound Like? The Emergence Of Covid Verbal Art, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

In times of social upheaval, people create and engage with verbal art for entertainment and a feeling of connection. While millions of people were forced to stay home to reduce the spread of COVID‑19 from March to July 2020, verbal artists posted recorded performances online and viewers had more time than usual to watch and share them. COVID verbal art refers to songs, poems, and comedy skits that mention social and physical distancing, quarantine and isolation, hygiene and cleaning practices, everyday experiences during the pandemic, as well as social and political critiques of policies and practices that explicitly mention COVID‑19 …

Social Media Self-Regulation And The Rise Of Vaccine Misinformation, Ana Santos Rutschman

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay examines the main characteristics and shortcomings of mainstream social media responses to vaccine misinformation and disinformation. Parts I and II contextualize the recent expansion of vaccine information and disinformation in the online environment. Part III provides a survey and taxonomy of ongoing responses to vaccine misinformation adopted by mainstream social media. It further notes the limitations of current self-regulatory modes and illustrates these limitations by presenting a short case study on Facebook—the largest social media vehicle for vaccine-specific misinformation, currently estimated to harbor approximately half of the social media accounts linked to vaccine misinformation. Part IV examines potential …

Lessons From Our Living Rooms: Illuminating Lockdowns With Technology Domestication Insights, Sun Sun Lim, Yang Wang

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

With at least half of humanity under lockdown to arrest the spread of COVID-19 (Sandford, 2020), adults have been working from home and children engaging in home schooling for months on end. Competing for scarce resources such as digital devices, bandwidth, as well as physical and personal space, families have had to contend with rising tensions around the quality of digital engagement, children’s learning abilities, parent-child relationships and overall familial wellbeing. This fraught situation shone the spotlight on the household context of technology use but also enabled us to marshal academic insights to advance advocacy and public education. The pandemic …

Online Dating During A Pandemic, Evangely Esther Santiago Duclerc

Global Strategic Communications Student Work

Over 32 million Americans have used online dating applications in 2020 alone. This year has been one of many changes and challenges ever since the coronavirus made its way into the United States spreading to every state, killing millions of people. Due to the nature of the virus, states were forced to lockdown and residents had no choice but to social distance, quarantine, and abide by city curfews. Because this virus is relatively new, little research to no research has been conducted to examine the impact the pandemic has had on the online dating culture, specifically in South Florida. The …

Proving Our Maternal And Scholarly Worth: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Textual And Visual Storying Of Motherscholar Identity Work During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Elizabeth Spradley, Sarah S. Leblanc, Heather Olson-Beal, Lauren Burrow, Chrissy Cross

Faculty Publications

Pivoting to remote work as female academics and to schooling our children from home as mothers in March 2020 marked a dramatic shift in how we enact our MotherScholar identities. This collaborative autoethnographic study employs a modification of interactive interviewing and photovoice to produce verbal and visual text of COVID-19 MotherScholar identity work for analysis. Thematic analysis results in themes of maternal interruptions, professional interruptions, maternal recognition, and professional recognition. Of note, our MotherScholar interactivity functioned as identity work as we sought and granted legitimacy to one another’s’ COVID-19 MotherScholar identities. Of particular concern to us is how institutions of …

Solving The Work-From-Home Conundrum, Snehal Shah, Vineeta Dwivedi

Asian Management Insights

Organisations can implement long-term policies that would make working from home a win-win situation for both employers and employees. The prolonged lockdown across countries due to the Covid-19..

Ouachita's Fall 2020 Enrollment Grows Amid Pandemic, Highest Since 2000, Brooke Zimny, Ouachita News Bureau

Press Releases

Even amid the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ouachita Baptist University’s fall 2020 enrollment has grown to 1,704, a 4% increase from fall 2019 and the highest headcount the university has seen since 2000. Newly released data also reflect a strong academic profile for incoming Ouachita freshmen as well as standout retention and graduation rates.

“As a Christian university, we genuinely believe every good gift comes from the Lord,” said Dr. Ben Sells, Ouachita president. “We’re thankful for our students and for the support of their families. In the midst of a pandemic, our already incredibly committed faculty and staff …

Social Distancing: The New Professional Civility, Benjamin Hunt

Graduate Research

As a naturalistic paradigm dictated by dialectal practices, culture must be understood in relation to a time and place in order to make ethical sense of society. Similarly, culture cannot be appropriately measured and studied without a reference to prior historical and geographical contexts. Naturalism is a dialectic that manifests as a type of evolution within our society. This cultural phenomenon allows human beings to reflect on those constructs through empirical means in order to understand the world, and to best prepare a society for how to move forward. The actions of the United States Government in regard to social …

Covid-19 And Boredom: A Photoessay, Kylie Cooper

Social Space

For the second time in my life, I was riding a train alone. I looked around to see what my fellow passengers were up to. A woman wearing a lime green beanie was leaned over, asleep with her mouth open. Nearby, a man was flipping through the pages of a newspaper, pausing every now and then to take a sip of his drink. Why were they on the southbound train on a foggy Saturday morning at 7:30 am?

Crisis Communications: Facing Covid-19 Together Could Lead To Positive Psychological Growth, Lowri Dowthwaite

Social Space

Although news reports of hoarding, and panic-buying might make it hard to believe, research shows that natural disasters, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can actually bring out the best in people. Although times of significant threat or crisis can cause post-traumatic stress, research shows that so-called “adversarial growth” is just as common as a response. This is our capacity to not only overcome a crisis, but to actually grow stronger, wiser and more resilient.

“A Slow-Moving Disaster:” Early Coverage Of The Coronavirus Pandemic At Us Local Newspapers, Beth Knobel

Covid-19 Digital Research

The outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic provides an opportunity to investigate several aspects of the work of local newspapers in the United States, including their ability to create original reporting, gatekeeping, the influence of chain ownership, and the possible effect of political polarization on hard news coverage. This study examines the early coverage of COVID-19 in a selection of American local newspapers in 28 states—15 Republican-dominated (“red”) and 13 Democrat-dominated (“blue”) —during January and February 2020. The local papers produced a fraction of the coverage of large, national newspapers, as their lower resource levels and local focus limited their …