Thematically analysing social network content during disasters through the lens of the disaster management lifecycle

Social Networks such as Twitter are often used for disseminating and collecting information during natural disasters. The potential for its use in Disaster Management has been acknowledged. However, more nuanced understanding of the communications that take place on social networks are required to more effectively integrate this information into the processes within disaster management. The type and value of information shared should be assessed, determining the benefits and issues, with credibility and reliability as known concerns. Mapping the tweets in relation to the modelled stages of a disaster can be a useful evaluation for determining the benefits/drawbacks of using data from social networks, such as Twitter, in disaster management.A thematic analysis of tweets' content, language and tone during the UK Storms and Floods 2013/14 was conducted. Manual scripting was used to determine the official sequence of events, and classify the stages of the disaster into the phases of the Disaster Management Lifecycle, to produce a timeline. Twenty-five topics discussed on Twitter emerged, and three key types of tweets, based on the language and tone, were identified. The timeline represents the events of the disaster, according to the Met Office reports, classed into B. Faulkner's Disaster Management Lifecycle framework. Context is provided when observing the analysed tweets against the timeline. This illustrates a potential basis and benefit for mapping tweets into the Disaster Management Lifecycle phases. Comparing the number of tweets submitted in each month with the timeline, suggests users tweet more as an event heightens and persists. Furthermore, users generally express greater emotion and urgency in their tweets.This paper concludes that the thematic analysis of content on social networks, such as Twitter, can be useful in gaining additional perspectives for disaster management. It demonstrates that mapping tweets into the phases of a Disaster Management Lifecycle model can have benefits in the recovery phase, not just in the response phase, to potentially improve future policies and activities

Motivational Strategies for Improving Healthy Eating Habits: A Thematic Analysis of a MyPlate Twitter Campaign

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 strategies on social media platforms to advocate people to change their healthy eating behavior. A major limitation of this research is that it used data from only one campaign and one hashtag. Accordingly, I suggested conducting future research using persuasive contents from more than one campaign and hashtag to find the more refined outcome

Strategies Healthcare Managers Use to Reduce Employee Turnover

Healthcare managers who are unaware of the various strategies that exist for reducing turnover could adversely affect patient care, organizational morale and performance, and the achievement of organizational goals. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies healthcare supervisors used to reduce employee turnover. The participants comprised 3 senior healthcare managers located in central Texas responsible for hiring, firing, training, supervising, and successfully using strategies to reduce employee turnover. Herzberg\u27s motivation-hygiene theory provided the conceptual framework. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of company documents. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in 5 emergent themes: peer-to-peer feedback, valuing employees, rewards and incentives, opportunities for growth, and training programs. The results of this study might contribute to social change by enhancing healthcare managers\u27 understanding of the strategies that can be used to reduce employee turnover and improve existing conditions among patients, their families, staff, communities, and organizations

Strategies Healthcare Managers Use to Reduce Employee Turnover

Healthcare managers who are unaware of the various strategies that exist for reducing turnover could adversely affect patient care, organizational morale and performance, and the achievement of organizational goals. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies healthcare supervisors used to reduce employee turnover. The participants comprised 3 senior healthcare managers located in central Texas responsible for hiring, firing, training, supervising, and successfully using strategies to reduce employee turnover. Herzberg\u27s motivation-hygiene theory provided the conceptual framework. Data were collected from semistructured interviews and a review of company documents. Thematic analysis of the data resulted in 5 emergent themes: peer-to-peer feedback, valuing employees, rewards and incentives, opportunities for growth, and training programs. The results of this study might contribute to social change by enhancing healthcare managers\u27 understanding of the strategies that can be used to reduce employee turnover and improve existing conditions among patients, their families, staff, communities, and organizations

Contentious politics and social media : a study of the networked publics in the Ayotzinapa twitter protests #PaseDeLista1al43

This study analyzed the networked public that was emergent on Twitter based on analysis of the use of the hashtag #PaseDelista1al43 to protest the disappearance of 43 students in Mexico in 2014. As social media have expanded, practitioners of contentious politics have utilized these media for manifesting their claims and organizing. These #PaseDeLista1al43 Twitter protests are explored as a form of performing contentious politics. To address this phenomenon, this project took a mixed methods approach, combining social network analysis and thematic and content analysis of Twitter data and interviews. A total of 3,616 tweets from five different moments in the first two years of the #PaseDeLista1al43 Twitter protests were collected to examine their content, who their authors are, as well as the relationship between the people in the networked public. Additionally, interviews (N = 14) with participants of the #PaseDeLista1al43 Twitter protests were conducted to delve into protesters' perspectives on the demonstration. Results help elucidate how Twitter can be used to practice contentious politics and thus constitutes another resource in the repertoire for performing contentious politics. Additionally, this study aligns with other research that has identified Twitter as a place for the formation and expression of counterpublics that seek to challenge hegemonic narratives. Moreover, the analyses in this study strengthen our understanding of processes of networked gatekeeping and networked framing that occur within a networked public on Twitter. Unlike traditional processes of gatekeeping and framing, networked processes are supported by a symbiotic relationship between elite and non-elite Twitter users. Moreover, frames prevalent in the protest not only concerned facts about the case but also denoted efforts of the protesters to position themselves in the story of the Ayotzinapa case.Includes bibliographical reference

Strategies Healthcare Leaders Use to Reduce Employee Burnout

Healthcare workers are at an increased risk of being affected by burnout, which leads to decreased productivity, decreased job engagement, and increased organizational turnover. Employee burnout is a problem for healthcare leaders as burnout leads to decreased productivity and increased organizational turnover. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study, guided by the job-demand resource theory, was to explore strategies healthcare leaders use to reduce employee burnout. Interviews were conducted with four healthcare leaders in the United States with at least 3 years of management experience who implemented strategies to reduce employee burnout at their organizations; a review of organizational documents augmented data collection. Thematic analysis resulted in four key themes: identify burnout in employees, implement a mentorship program, understand the state of your employee’s well-being, and enhance the workplace environment. A key recommendation for healthcare leaders is identifying employee burnout using the Maslach Burnout Inventory and provide the necessary resources to support the employee. The implications for positive social change include the potential for healthcare leader’s to reduce employee burnout, leading to reduced turnover in healthcare organizations and creating stability in the healthcare field

Trends in European Climate Change Perception: Where the Effects of Climate Change go unnoticed

Climate change threatens global impacts in a variety of domains that must be limited by adaptation and mitigation measures. The successful implementation of such policies can strongly benefit from the general public’s cooperation motivated by their own risk perceptions. Public participation can be promoted by tailoring policies to the populations they affect, which in turn results in the need for a deeper understanding of how different communities interact with the issue of climate change. Social media platforms such as the microblogging service Twitter have opened unprecedented opportunities for research on public perception in recent years, offering a continuous stream of user-generated data. Simultaneously, they represent a crucial discursive space in which members of the public develop and discuss their opinions and concerns about climate change. Subsequently, this thesis gains insight into the characteristics of public reactions to individual climate change effects and processes by investing corresponding corpora of tweets spanning a decade. For seven western European countries, the spatial, temporal, and thematic reaction patterns are determined with a further assessment of the drivers behind each finding. Tweets are collected, classified, georeferenced, and clustered using a selection of Geographic Information Retrieval as well as Natural Language Processing methods before being analysed regarding thematic trends in their content, spatial distributions and influences of environmental factors, as well temporal distributions and impacts of real-world events. The findings illustrate diverse climate change perceptions that vary across spatial, temporal, and thematic dimensions. Communities tend to focus more on issues relevant to their local or national environment, leading populations to develop a certain degree of specialisation for these aspects of climate change. This typically coincides with a substantially more domestic discourse on the subject and a decrease in interest for corresponding international events. In a similar sense, the tangibility of an event drives the magnitude of reactions. However, while more tangible events are more frequently recognised and discussed, less tangible events tend to be more frequently attributed to climate change as the public shifts their focus from immediate impacts on the personal scale to impacts on the global scale. Additionally, traditional news media are shown to retain a high level of control over science communication and the climate change discourse on Twitter, likely influencing the public’s perspective on global warming. Individual real-world events such as major climate conferences and scientific releases only occasionally elicit strong public reactions when they are topically related to an event type, whereas global protests can lead to significant discussion across various event types. Inversely, global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduce public concern about climate change processes

"Thematically Analysing Social Network Content During Disasters Through the Lens of the Disaster Management Lifecycle" & "Investigating Similarity Between Privacy Policies of Social Networking Sites as a Precursor for Standardization"

Abstract 1: Social Networks such as Twitter are often used for disseminating and collecting information during natural disasters. The potential for its use in Disaster Management has been acknowledged. However, more nuanced understanding of the communications that take place on social networks are required to more effectively integrate this information into the processes within disaster management. The type and value of information shared should be assessed, determining the benefits and issues, with credibility and reliability as known concerns. Mapping the tweets in relation to the modelled stages of a disaster can be a useful evaluation for determining the benefits/drawbacks of using data from social networks, such as Twitter, in disaster management.A thematic analysis of tweets’ content, language and tone during the UK Storms and Floods 2013/14 was conducted. Manual scripting was used to determine the official sequence of events, and classify the stages of the disaster into the phases of the Disaster Management Lifecycle, to produce a timeline. Twenty- five topics discussed on Twitter emerged, and three key types of tweets, based on the language and tone, were identified. The timeline represents the events of the disaster, according to the Met Office reports, classed into B. Faulkner’s Disaster Management Lifecycle framework. Context is provided when observing the analysed tweets against the timeline. This illustrates a potential basis and benefit for mapping tweets into the Disaster Management Lifecycle phases. Comparing the number of tweets submitted in each month with the timeline, suggests users tweet more as an event heightens and persists. Furthermore, users generally express greater emotion and urgency in their tweets.This paper concludes that the thematic analysis of content on social networks, such as Twitter, can be useful in gaining additional perspectives for disaster management. It demonstrates that mapping tweets into the phases of a Disaster Management Lifecycle model can have benefits in the recovery phase, not just in the response phase, to potentially improve future policies and activities. Abstract2: The current execution of privacy policies, as a mode of communicating information to users, is unsatisfactory. Social networking sites (SNS) exemplify this issue, attracting growing concerns regarding their use of personal data and its effect on user privacy. This demonstrates the need for more informative policies. However, SNS lack the incentives required to improve policies, which is exacerbated by the difficulties of creating a policy that is both concise and compliant. Standardization addresses many of these issues, providing benefits for users and SNS, although it is only possible if policies share attributes which can be standardized. This investigation used thematic analysis and cross- document structure theory, to assess the similarity of attributes between the privacy policies (as available in August 2014), of the six most frequently visited SNS globally. Using the Jaccard similarity coefficient, two types of attribute were measured; the clauses used by SNS and the coverage of forty recommendations made by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. Analysis showed that whilst similarity in the clauses used was low, similarity in the recommendations covered was high, indicating that SNS use different clauses, but to convey similar information. The analysis also showed that low similarity in the clauses was largely due to differences in semantics, elaboration and functionality between SNS. Therefore, this paper proposes that the policies of SNS already share attributes, indicating the feasibility of standardization and five recommendations are made to begin facilitating this, based on the findings of the investigation