Breaking the News: First Impressions Matter on Online News

A growing number of people are changing the way they consume news, replacing the traditional physical newspapers and magazines by their virtual online versions or/and weblogs. The interactivity and immediacy present in online news are changing the way news are being produced and exposed by media corporations. News websites have to create effective strategies to catch people's attention and attract their clicks. In this paper we investigate possible strategies used by online news corporations in the design of their news headlines. We analyze the content of 69,907 headlines produced by four major global media corporations during a minimum of eight consecutive months in 2014. In order to discover strategies that could be used to attract clicks, we extracted features from the text of the news headlines related to the sentiment polarity of the headline. We discovered that the sentiment of the headline is strongly related to the popularity of the news and also with the dynamics of the posted comments on that particular news.Comment: The paper appears in ICWSM 201

COVID-19 publications: Database coverage, citations, readers, tweets, news, Facebook walls, Reddit posts

© 2020 The Authors. Published by MIT Press. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00066The COVID-19 pandemic requires a fast response from researchers to help address biological, medical and public health issues to minimize its impact. In this rapidly evolving context, scholars, professionals and the public may need to quickly identify important new studies. In response, this paper assesses the coverage of scholarly databases and impact indicators during 21 March to 18 April 2020. The rapidly increasing volume of research, is particularly accessible through Dimensions, and less through Scopus, the Web of Science, and PubMed. Google Scholar’s results included many false matches. A few COVID-19 papers from the 21,395 in Dimensions were already highly cited, with substantial news and social media attention. For this topic, in contrast to previous studies, there seems to be a high degree of convergence between articles shared in the social web and citation counts, at least in the short term. In particular, articles that are extensively tweeted on the day first indexed are likely to be highly read and relatively highly cited three weeks later. Researchers needing wide scope literature searches (rather than health focused PubMed or medRxiv searches) should start with Dimensions (or Google Scholar) and can use tweet and Mendeley reader counts as indicators of likely importance

COVID-19 and the effect of its infodemic on people’s wellbeing

In this research, it was used to look at social media behaviour during the pandemic and how it might have affected well-being. The WHO-5 Well-Being Index (WHO-5) score was used to do this. COVID-19-related material was sought for and disseminated through social media by those who participated in the study. This research shows how social media might affect people's well-being during this epidemic and other crisis in the future. 73 percent of the 993 participants were women, 91 percent were university graduates, and 50 percent worked in diverse occupations, with 20 percent working in health care. Participants said they got COVID-19-related news mostly via social media and messaging apps, with WhatsApp being the most popular. After authentication, the majority of participants said they shared information. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, this research offers insight into the usage of Social Media and its influence on well-being. During catastrophes and disasters, social media behaviours may have an influence on public safety. There is also a need for global and local health authorities to better prepare for future challenges by developing policies and actions that address these difficulties. Social media activities may directly affect one's mental health, but more research is required before conclusions can be drawn

Chasing Success: A Cultivated Reality

George Gerbner’s cultivation theory claims that people who consume heavy amounts of media are more likely to be influenced by those messages to believe the media reality as opposed to actual reality. Using cultivation theory as the basis for study, I performed a cultivation analysis examining the intersection of mass media and perceptions of success among college-aged young adults living in the United States. The analysis focused on three main points: (1) How mass media perceives and subsequently demonstrates success. (2) The impact of mass media on young adults living in America. (3) What reality of success is cultivated by these young adults. The top five most-watched music videos from the past five years were analyzed for perceptions of success. Seventy-nine students from Bryant University were surveyed. A message analysis of the music videos revealed that wealth as well as conformity to certain standards of physical perfection and gender-specific behaviors were key elements of success. This study found that college-aged young adults who are heavier consumers of music videos tended to share the perceptions of success as perpetuated by the media over those who are light viewers. However, there were certain elements of success where the intersection of college-aged young adults’ perceptions of success and media were more nuanced and complicated

Revisão crítica: Uma abordagem aos estudos sobre o uso dos media sociais durante a pandemia Covid-19

Since the coronavirus disease (covid-19) was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization in January 2020, it has led to the loss of millions of human lives and a global economic recession. Recently, there has been a recognized need for effective health communication via social media to deliver accurate information and promote pertinent behavioral change. Thus, this study provides a systematic review to explore what has been done, what conflicts exist, and what knowledge gap remains in terms of social media use during the covid-19 wave, indicating relevant communication strategies. This research is based on 76 relevant papers taken from searches on the Web of Science and Google Scholar. The analysis revealed that much of the literature confirms the positive effect of social media on information propagation and promotion of precautions in the control of covid-19. The spreading of rumors, especially about government performance, in social media is clearly of increasing concern. Currently, heated debate continues about the association between exposure to social media and public mental health. Another fiercely debated question is whether rumors are shared more widely than fact-checking information. Up to date, far too little attention has been paid to information disparities and vulnerable groups on social media.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Opinion amplification causes extreme polarization in social networks

Extreme polarization of opinions fuels many of the problems facing our societies today, from issues on human rights to the environment. Social media provides the vehicle for these opinions and enables the spread of ideas faster than ever before. Previous computational models have suggested that significant external events can induce extreme polarization. We introduce the Social Opinion Amplification Model (SOAM) to investigate an alternative hypothesis: that opinion amplification can result in extreme polarization. SOAM models effects such as sensationalism, hype, or “fake news” as people express amplified versions of their actual opinions, motivated by the desire to gain a greater following. We show for the first time that this simple idea results in extreme polarization, especially when the degree of amplification is small. We further show that such extreme polarization can be prevented by two methods: preventing individuals from amplifying more than five times, or through consistent dissemination of balanced opinions to the population. It is natural to try and have the loudest voice in a crowd when we seek attention; this work suggests that instead of shouting to be heard and generating an uproar, it is better for all if we speak with moderation

Irrational beliefs about COVID-19: A scoping review

Since the emergence of the recent Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) and its spread as a pandemic, there has been a parallel spread of false and misleading information, known as an infodemic. The COVID-19 infodemic has induced distrust in scientific communities, governments, institutions and the population, and a confidence crisis that has led to harmful health behaviours, also impacting on mental health. The aim of this study is to provide a scoping review of the scientific literature about COVID-19-related misinformation and conspiracy theories, focusing on the construction of a conceptual framework which is useful for the interpretation of the conspiracy theory phenomenon surrounding COVID-19, and its consequences. Particular socio-environmental conditions (i.e., low educational level, younger age), psychological processes and attitudes (such as low levels of epistemic trust, the avoidance of uncertainty, extraversion, collective narcissism, and a conspiracy-prone mindset), and contextual factors (e.g., high levels of self-perceived risk and anxiety) seem to underpin the adherence to beliefs that are not solely the domain of paranoids and extremists but a widespread phenomenon that has caused important health, social and political consequences