In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., "If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others") or potential gains (e.g., "If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others")? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges

COVID-19 pandemic on YouTube platform and on CNN and Fox News TV stations

Pandemia COVID-19 we wczesnych miesiącach 2020 roku była popularnym tematem w mediach. Co za tym idzie, rozprzestrzeniana również była dezinformacja na temat różnych aspektów koronawirusa.Celem pracy jest przeanalizowanie oraz porównanie treści dodawanych na platformę YouTube przez wiodące stacje telewizyjne w Stanach Zjednoczonych - CNN i Fox News. Ma ona za zadanie porównanie przedstawienia pandemii w materiałach dodawanych przez obie stacje w okresie od marca do grudnia 2020 roku. Dodatkowo przebadana została częstotliwość występowania materiałów, których celem było nakierowanie widza na to, jak ma się zachowywać w trakcie pandemii COVID-19. Badana została również częstotliwość występowania materiałów, w których występowała polemika z analizami medycznymi i zaleceniami ekspertów na temat COVID-19.Praca kolejno przedstawiała podstawowe zagadnienia związane z komunikacją medialną oraz dziennikarstwem, po czym przeszła do przedstawienia podmiotów badawczych w postaci CNN i Fox News. Następnie przedstawiony został tok badań i wnioski z nich wynikające.The COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 was a popular topic in the media. As a result, misinformation about various aspects of the coronavirus was also spread.The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare the content added to the YouTube platform by the leading TV stations in the United States - CNN and Fox News. It is intended to compare the portrayal of the pandemic in materials released by both stations between March and December 2020. In addition, the frequency of materials aimed at directing viewers on how to behave during the COVID-19 pandemic was examined. Frequency of materials that featured polemics with medical analyses and expert recommendations on COVID-19 was also examined.The paper sequentially presented the basic issues of media communication and journalism, before moving on to introduce the research subjects in the form of CNN and Fox News. The course of the research and its conclusions were then presented

Automated Generation of Indifference Surfaces for the Formation of Negotiation Offer's Scoring System in the Negotiation Support System NegoManage

In this paper we discuss the mechanism for building the negotiation offers' scoring system by means of the automatically generated indifference surfaces. We introduce the classic approach based on trade-off analysis first , that derives from multiple attribute value theory and present its application for the simplest case of two- and three-criteria decision problem. Then we analyze its generalization for the cases with more than three decision criteria, which involves also the interaction with decision maker. Finally we present the models software implementation that is applied in the negotiation support system called NegoManage

Reference Points-Based Methods in Supporting the Evaluation of Negotiation Offers

Scoring the negotiation template and building a scoring system for negotiation offers is a starting point for analysis of negotiation. It is usually done by means of a classical additive scoring model. Recent research confirms, however, that TOPSIS may be a good alternative to SAW-based models, since it significantly facilitates the processes of template definition and elicitation of negotiator's preferences. Fundamental ideas of the TOPSIS, VIKOR and BIPOLAR methods have been analysed and attempts were made to hybridize some of their notions to propose an alternative method for evaluating negotiation offers. (original abstract

Using an Analytic Hierarchy Process to Develop a Scoring System for a Set of Continuous Feasible Alternatives in Negotiation

The use of an Analytic Hierarchy Approach (AHP) for scoring offers in continuous negotiation problems has been studied. AHP has already proven its usefulness in constructing a ranking of alternatives in discrete decision making problems. In negotiations, however, some issues may have a quantitative character and be defined by feasible ranges, which results in uncountably large sets of feasible offers. This is a problem to which AHP cannot be applied in its original form. Therefore we propose an approach to building a scoring system that operates within AHP and a predefined discrete subset of feasible alternatives, then a method for determining global scores for all the feasible alternatives is proposed. When this subset has been built, the notion of border alternatives is applied. Assuming that these border alternatives have been ranked, single-issue utility functions are constructed using linear interpolation over the set of selected border alternatives. Single-issue utility functions are then aggregated using issue weights in order to form the final utility function. The issue weights are also determined using AHP. Such an approach means that a relatively small number of comparisons are required for a negotiator in AHP process to build a comprehensive scoring system, which makes the process of eliciting the negotiator's preferences simple and rapid. (original abstract

Edge computing in IoT-enabled honeybee monitoring for the detection of Varroa destructor

Among many important functions, bees play a key role in food production. Unfortunately, worldwide bee populations have been decreasing since 2007. One reason for the decrease of adult worker bees is varroosis, a parasitic disease caused by the Varroa destructor (V. destructor) mite. Varroosis can be quickly eliminated from beehives once detected. However, this requires them to be monitored continuously during periods of bee activity to ensure that V. destructor mites are detected before they spread and infest the entire beehive. To this end, the use of Internet of things (IoT) devices can significantly increase detection speed. Comprehensive solutions are required that can cover entire apiaries and prevent the disease from spreading between hives and apiaries. In this paper, we present a solution for global monitoring of apiaries and the detection of V. destructor mites in beehives. Our solution captures and processes video streams from camera-based IoT devices, analyzes those streams using edge computing, and constructs a global collection of cases within the cloud. We have designed an IoT device that monitors bees and detects V. destructor infestation via video stream analysis on a GPU-accelerated Nvidia Jetson Nano. Experimental results show that the detection process can be run in real time while maintaining similar efficacy to alternative approaches

In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., "If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others") or potential gains (e.g., "If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others")? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions