Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impact Of Loneliness Post-Pandemic And Immersed In The Upcoming Political Election, Regina M. Luttrell Ph.D., Gwen Pratt, Abigail Kludt, Amy Barone, Kwadwo Osei-Poku, Lihan Wang

Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab

The Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab emerged with a partnership between Real Chemistry and the Public Relations department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication and serves as a multidisciplinary research center focusing on analytics, artificial intelligence, digital and emerging media for a number of organizations regarding communications.

Healthcare professionals and organizations are interested in identifying how mental health impacts different U.S. generational groups after the COVID-19 pandemic and the intersectionality of U.S. Politics. Our team focused on two generational cohorts – Generation X (1965-1980) and Generation Z (1997-2012) – as an entry point into navigating the impact of …

Examining Connectivity And Mental Health Amongst Generation Z And Millennials, Regina M. Luttrell Ph.D., Alexandra Hosilyk, Nyah Jones, Grace Kos-Dondlinger, Runchu Lang, Katerina Miller

Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab

The Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab tasked our research team to develop findings based on two generational cohorts and mental health. Our team decided to research Millennials and Generation Z in relation to their mental health and connectivity habits. In addition to these general topics, we analyzed how remote work, the COVID-19 pandemic and U.S. political turmoil have played a role in the mental health status of these two generational cohorts.

The Millennial generational cohort is defined as individuals born from 1981 to 1996. The Generation Z generational cohort is defined as individuals born from 1997 to 2012. In order …

The Study Of Baby Boomers And Generation Z’S Attitudes Towards Generational Mental Health Dynamics, Regina M. Luttrell Ph.D., Hunter Harpin, Emma Grace Reville, Yunxiang Yu, Abagail Sweeney

Real Chemistry Emerging Insights Lab

The purpose of this research is to compare and contrast how different historical events have impacted Generation Z members’ and the Baby Boomers’ attitudes towards mental health and how those attitudes have guided members of these generations to feel about medical experts and the technology that they use to deliver their services in the post-COVID era. Studying these topics allows our group to make recommendations as to how medical experts should go about interacting with members of the Generation Z and Baby Boomer generations respectively, based on how historical events have influenced their attitudes towards mental health topics, their perceived …

Feeling Inspired And Nostalgic: Associations Between Media Context-Induced Positive Emotions And Behavioral Change Among Vaccine-Hesitant Individuals In The Late Stages Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hue Trong Duong, Mor Yachin, Zachary Massey

Communication Faculty Publications

Campaigns to promote the COVID-19 vaccination messages to vaccine-hesitant consumers in the late stages of the pandemic are often met with resistance. This study explores a way to leverage positive emotions induced from entertainment media consumption to promote vaccination messages to this audience group. An online experiment was conducted with vaccine-hesitant consumers (N = 409). Participants viewed personally relevant entertainment music videos or mundane videos and vaccinated messages embedded in user-generated comments. Data revealed that feelings of inspiration and nostalgia induced from entertainment media consumption increased vaccination intentions via increased risk perceptions and reduced anti-vaccination attitudes. Social marketers should consider …

Outbreak Communication: Exploring The Relationships Between Health Information Seeking Behaviors, Vested Interests, And Covid-19 Knowledge In U.S. Midwest Populations, Alicia Mason, Josh Compton, Elizabeth Spencer, Kaitlin Barnett

Faculty Submissions

On February 15, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director, General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated at a Munich Security Conference, “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic,” (Zarocostas, 2020, p. 676). The term ‘infodemic’ refers to the onslaught of both accurate and inaccurate health information surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of an ‘infodemic’ was quickly integrated into mass media, popular culture (i.e., documentaries, podcasts), and eventually scholarly literature. In response to COVID-19, health communication scholars have centered on understanding specific messaging strategies such as the use of fear appeals (Stolow et al., 2020), nature of advertising …

Comparative Analysis Of Covid-19 Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention Videos On Facebook: Insights From Nigeria And Benin Republic, Jimme Matyek, Sheba Umbule Tayo-Garbson, Philomena Effiong Umoren Phd, Benmun Paul, Emeka Williams Etumnu

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Facebook has been adopted by public health organisations for health promotion, psychoeducation and behaviour change campaigns. Studies have underscored the potential advantages of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in decelerating the transmission of COVID-19 and mitigating its severe health consequences. However, these studies did not content analyse these NPI messages especially on Facebook. This study sought to investigate the phenomenon of NPI COVID-19 videos on Facebook that were viewed by Nigerians and Beninese. This study used quantitative content analysis as the research design and analysed 56 Nigerian videos and 36 Beninese videos totalling 92 on Facebook with an inter-rater reliability of 96%. …

News Frames For Covid-19 – A Comparison Of Australian (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) And Vietnamese (Tuoi Tre Online) Online News Services In Two Key Weeks In 2020, Viet T. Le, Lelia Green

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This article investigates the differences and similarities between the news frames used by online mainstream media in Vietnam and Australia when reporting COVID-19 in the early waves of the pandemic. The project uses constant comparative analysis to interrogate data gathered from two online news sources: ABC Online (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) in Australia, and Tuoi Tre Online in Vietnam. The article concludes that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation coverage focuses more on social, political and economic factors than is the case with Tuoi Tre Online, which foregrounds civic responsibility in response to the COVID-19 epidemic. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation highlights how COVID-19 …

A Case Study On How Hbcus Use Social Media To Reduce Uncertainty Of Covid-19, Kelsey Anne-Gabrielle Armstrong

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This case study aims to understand how HBCUs use social media to deliver crisis communication messages to students about COVID-19 and how the HBCU culture impacts student perspectives. The theory guiding this study is uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1974), as it explains the communication strategies used to reduce uncertainty during a crisis. Data collection was conducted using semi-structured interviews and content analysis. Data analysis strategies included deductive and inductive coding and directed content analysis. The study results provide insight into how the HBCU culture impacts the perspective of an HBCUs response to COVID-19 and overall crisis communication messaging …

Museums, Covid-19 And The Pivot To Social Media, Jamie Larkin, Andrea Ballatore, Ekaterina Mityrova

CCI Articles and Research

This paper examines social media activity by UK museums during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a general perception that as museums closed their doors for extended periods, their digital presence increased to maintain connections with their audiences. However, much of the research conducted in this area is based on small-scale studies and examples of best practice from large, well-resourced museums. By contrast, this study utilizes a comprehensive database of over 3300 active UK museums to understand the use of Facebook and Twitter across the sector. Specifically, the paper examines the frequency with which museums posted to these digital platforms as …

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 …

How Covid-19 Changed Healthcare Education, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

It’s been years since something shocked health care like COVID-19. As a result, pharmacy educators, including those in the Cedarville University School of Pharmacy, have adjusted their education structure to better prepare students for the forever-changed work environment that awaits them.

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 …

Framing Dr. Fauci: The Portrayal Of Dr. Anthony Fauci By Fox News And Cnn In The Early Covid-19 Lockdown, Lilian Froese Raihl

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

COVID-19 caused the severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that emerged in December 2019 (Center for Disease Control, 2022). When COVID-19 became prevalent in early 2020 in the United States, the media played a large role in communication about the pandemic, whether it was transmitting updates about the spread of the virus, posting alerts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), or sharing medical research on COVID-19 (Grasso, 2021). As the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci became a leading figure in informing the public about the virus. He was featured …

Dear Pandemic: A Topic Modeling Analysis Of Covid-19 Information Needs Among Readers Of An Online Science Communication Campaign., Aleksandra M Golos, Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Rachael Piltch-Loeb, Lindsey J Leininger, Amanda M Simanek, Aparna Kumar, Sandra S Albrecht, Jennifer Beam Dowd, Malia Jones, Alison M Buttenheim

College of Nursing Faculty Papers & Presentations

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by an "infodemic"-an overwhelming excess of accurate, inaccurate, and uncertain information. The social media-based science communication campaign Dear Pandemic was established to address the COVID-19 infodemic, in part by soliciting submissions from readers to an online question box. Our study characterized the information needs of Dear Pandemic's readers by identifying themes and longitudinal trends among question box submissions.

METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of questions submitted from August 24, 2020, to August 24, 2021. We used Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling to identify 25 topics among the submissions, then used thematic analysis to …

“Community Members Have More Impact On Their Neighbors Than Celebrities”: Leveraging Community Partnerships To Build Covid-19 Vaccine Confidence, Maria Tjilos Mph, Autumn L. Tamlyn, Elizabeth J. Ragan Mph, Sabrina A. Assoumou Md, Mph, Katherine Gergen Barnett Md, Petrina Martin Mba, Rebecca Perkins Md, Msc, Benjamin P. Linas Md, Mph, Mari-Lynn Drainoni Phd, Med

Medical Student Research Symposium

Vaccines are a strong public health tool to protect against severe disease, hospitalization, and death from COVID-19. Still, inequities in COVID-19 vaccination rates and health outcomes continue to exist among Black and Latino populations. Boston Medical Center (BMC) has played a significant role in vaccinating medically underserved populations, and organized a series of community-engaged conversations to better understand community concerns regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. We accessed and analyzed nine publicly available recordings of the community-engaged conversations which were held between Mar 2021-Sep 2021 (n=8-122 attendees). We employed a Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research-driven codebook to code our data and utilized …

A Narrative Review Of Screen Time And Wellbeing Among Adolescents Before And During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Implications For The Future, Verity Yu Qing Lua, Terence B. K. Chua, Michael Y. H. Chia

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of many. In particular, during the height of the pandemic, many experienced lockdowns, which in turn increased screen time drastically. While the pandemic has been declared an endemic and most activities have been reinstated, there appears to still be elevated screen time among adolescents due to poor habits formed during the pandemic lockdowns. This paper explores the factors by which screen time affects well-being among adolescents and how the pandemic may have influenced some of these factors. For example, beyond having greater screen time, many adolescents have also reduced their physical activities and …

The Effects Of Ses, Social Support, And Resilience On Older Adults’ Well-Being During Covid-19: Evidence From Singapore, Mindy Eiko Tadai, Paulin Tay Straughan, Grace Cheong, Rachel Ngu Wen Yi, Yan Er Tan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The COVID-19 pandemic has rendered visible many socioeconomic inequalities and the lengthy period of dis- ruption to everyday life had disproportionate effects on the most vulnerable groups in Singapore and across the world. Utilizing data from the Singapore Life Panel ® (SLP) collected in September 2021, this study examined a sample of 6667 older adults to assess the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on well-being, and the mechanisms through which social support and resilience may mediate its influence. Overall, our results suggest significant direct and indirect effects of SES on well-being and provide evidence for the pivotal role that social …

Speaking To The Head And The Heart: Prioritizing Empathetic Communication In The Post-Covid Workplace, Kevin T. Caffrey

Administrative and Professional Faculty Research

As of August 2022, COVID-19 continues to affect our daily lives in physical, psychological, and financial ways. Many vulnerable individuals are struggling to adapt to returning to work and as a result, employee morale is at risk. In times of crises, empathy is needed in the workplace to support one another, but many leaders and employees may not have a firm grasp of the concept. This article seeks to define empathetic communication and explore the need for prioritizing empathy amid the current post-COVID-19 workplace. Through a literature review of empathy, psychological safety in the workplace, and crisis leadership, the author …

Treating A Viral Culture: Using Cultural Competency And Social Informatics To Design Contextualized Information Literacy Efforts For Specific Social Information Cultures, Rachel N. Simons, Aaron J. Elkins, Shengnan Yang (Ed.), Xiaohua Zhu (Ed.), Pnina Fichman (Ed.)

STEMPS Faculty Publications

This chapter proposes a novel theoretical framework, Social Information Cultural Competency (SICC), that may be used for designing contextualized information literacy efforts. The SICC approach leverages the frameworks of social informatics, cultural competency, and psychosocial understandings of information behavior to encourage information professionals to develop more nuanced understandings of specific social information cultures. After defining this approach, the chapter then applies the SICC framework to a case study considering information literacy interventions addressing a social information culture engaged in sharing COVID-19 misinformation through social media. As part of this case study, the chapter discusses three current information literacy approaches to …

Lessons Learned From Interdisciplinary Efforts To Combat Covid-19 Misinformation: Development Of Agile Integrative Methods From Behavioral Science, Data Science, And Implementation Science, Sahiti Myneni, Paula Cuccaro, Sarah Montgomery, Vivek Pakanati, Jinni Tang, Tavleen Singh, Olivia Dominguez, Trevor Cohen, Belinda Reininger, Lara S Savas, Maria E Fernandez

Journal Articles

BACKGROUND: Despite increasing awareness about and advances in addressing social media misinformation, the free flow of false COVID-19 information has continued, affecting individuals' preventive behaviors, including masking, testing, and vaccine uptake.

OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we describe our multidisciplinary efforts with a specific focus on methods to (1) gather community needs, (2) develop interventions, and (3) conduct large-scale agile and rapid community assessments to examine and combat COVID-19 misinformation.

METHODS: We used the Intervention Mapping framework to perform community needs assessment and develop theory-informed interventions. To supplement these rapid and responsive efforts through large-scale online social listening, we developed a …

Roles Played By Nigerian Youtube Micro-Celebrities During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Aje-Ori Agbese

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nigerian social media micro-celebrities were prominent players in the dissemination of information. This study examines the roles that one group of Nigerian micro-celebrities, YouTube video bloggers (vloggers)—also known as “YouTubers”—played during the pandemic. The research analysed the contents of COVID-19-themed videos that 15 popular Nigerian YouTubers posted on their channels between 29 February and 5 August 2020. The study was guided by the two-step flow of communication theory, in terms of which information first flows from mass media to opinion leaders, who then, in the second step, share the information with their audiences. The …

Censorship, Pandemic, And The Field Of Power: The Death And Revival Of A Chinese War Epic, Zhaoxi Liu

Communication Faculty Research

This case study examines the dramatic change of fortune of the Chinese war epic “The Eight Hundred”. The movie was censored in 2019 during China’s celebration of the country’s 70th anniversary but became the market-saving hero in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production, this study argues that the movie’s changing fate is essentially the change of its political, symbolic and economic capitals, under different field conditions. The subfield of commercial films in China is subject to the control of political and economic forces in the field …

When The Influencer Says Jump! How Influencer Signaling Affects Engagement With Covid-19 Misinformation, Ben Wasike

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

With signaling theory, credibility, and social media engagement (SME) as guiding frameworks, this study used an experiment to examine how social media influencers (SMIs) affect how people engage with COVID-19 misinformation. SMI-promoted information elicited more SME, credibility, and purchase likelihood than non-SMI promoted information. The most effective message was a post promoted by an SMI that contained detailed information about an authentic product. However, data indicated nuance regarding the effect of SMIs. The authenticity of the information as well as the amount of detail in the post played a role. Additionally, mediated effects analysis showed that the impact of SME …

Evaluating College Students’ Health Literacy And Its Effects On Their Perceptions Of Information Concerning Mask-Wearing In The Covid-19 Pandemic Ve Information Concerning Mask-Wearing In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hannah S. Ketchum

Honors Program Projects

Background: Mask-wearing was a controversial and polarizing phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beliefs concerning mask-wearing differed depending on sources of information concerning the pandemic, levels of health literacy, political leaning, demographics, or other factors. This project attempted to connect college students’ level of health literacy to their understanding of and adherence to mask-wearing in the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a gap in research connecting health literacy to understanding information concerning pandemics and an even bigger lack of studies conducted that relate college students’ health literacy to their perception of illnesses or pandemics. It is important to understand the impact of …

Framing Of Covid-19 In Newspapers: A Perspective From The Us-Mexico Border, Rifat Afrin, Ahasan Harun, Gayle Prybutok, Victor Prybutok

Information Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

The degree to which the media report a health emergency affects the seriousness with which the people respond to combat the health crisis. Engagement from local newspapers in the US has received scant scrutiny, even though there is a sizable body of scholarship on the analysis of COVID-19 news. We fill this void by focusing on the Rio Grande Valley area of the US-Mexico border. To understand the differences, we compared such local news coverage with the coverage of a national news outlet. After collecting the relevant news articles, we used sentiment analysis, rapid automatic keyword extraction (RAKE), and co-occurrence …

Twilytics: A Social Perception Analysis Of Public Transit Systems During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Egbe-Etu Etu, Imokhai Tenebe, Ankur Parma, Likhitha Yelamanchili, Dang Minh Nhu Nguyen, Louis Tran, Ihor Markevych

Mineta Transportation Institute

In the United States, public transit ridership in 2020 declined by 79% compared to 2019 levels. With lockdowns implemented during the early days of the pandemic, direct human-to-human interactions migrated to virtual platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit). Social media platforms have aided researchers in answering numerous questions about current societal dilemmas, including COVID-19. This study investigates the public’s perception of transit systems via a social media analysis given the emergence of vaccines and other COVID-19 preventive measures. Findings revealed themes of fear and confusion concerning the use of public transportation during the pandemic. The public had doubts regarding the …

Understanding The Impact Of Emotional Support On Mental Health Resilience Of The Community In The Social Media In Covid-19 Pandemic, Xuan Hu, Yanqing Song, Ruilin Zhu, Shuang He, Bowen Zhou, Xuelian Li, Han Bao, Shan Shen, Bingsheng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Background: Emotional support in social media can act as a buffer against the negative impact of affective disorders. However, empirical evidence relating to emotional support in social media and how it influences the wider public remains scanty. The objective of this study is therefore to conduct a prototype investigation into the translation mechanism of emotional support in social media, providing empirical evidence for practitioners to use to tackle mental health issues for the wider public. Methods: A regression model is proposed to examine the relationship between perceived and received emotional support. Received emotional support is set as the dependent variable …

Communicative Strategies For Building Public Confidence In Data Governance: Analyzing Singapore's Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Initiatives, Gordon Kuo Siong Tan, Sun Sun Lim

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Effective social data governance rests on a bedrock of social support. Without securing trust from the populace whose information is being collected, analyzed, and deployed, policies on which such data are based will be undermined by a lack of public confidence. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization and datafication by governments for the purposes of contact tracing and epidemiological investigation. However, concerns about surveillance and data privacy have stunted the adoption of such contact-tracing initiatives. This commentary analyzes Singapore's contact-tracing initiative to uncover the reasons for public resistance and efforts by the state to address them. The government's contact-tracing program …

Cedar Care Pharmacy Offers New Covid-19 Antivirals, Mark D. Weinstein

News Releases

Cedar Care Village Pharmacy, the teaching pharmacy for the Cedarville University School of Pharmacy, is now offering two antiviral medications that can help decrease the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization.

Vaccine Hesitancy And Biden's Rhetoric, Samuel J.M. Bell

Masters Theses

Within the setting and context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study uses Ernest Bormann’s Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) framework to analyze fantasy themes which emerged from the rhetoric of the American President, Joe Biden, regarding vaccinations. The main question of this study is why President Biden’s rhetorical vision either chained out and was accepted among the American public resulting in increased vaccination or failed to chain out resulting in Americans refusing to become vaccinated. To answer this question, a selection of artifacts consisting of examples of President Biden’s rhetoric are gathered, and using those artifacts, SCT fantasy themes are developed. …