Pub Date : 2024-02-02DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1292961
Kealeboga Aiseng
Bereavement is something that we experience in one way or another. It involves many steps from one culture to the other. Many scholars have documented the role of social media tools in bereavement processes. In this study, I look at the challenges and opportunities offered by Facebook during bereavement, especially in a community that is still traditional and has yet to fully comprehend the importance of social media, particularly in matters considered sacred. The study used interviews with residents from Taung to collect data. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the collected data from the interviews. The study findings indicate some challenges associated with bereavement on Facebook: emotional shock, lack of sensitivity, misinformation, and cultural dilution. There are also opportunities: fast news sharing, ongoing emotional support, and sharing of memories. The study argues that the findings should expand our understanding and knowledge of bereavement in some African cultures and use social media tools to complement and not destroy African beliefs and practices.
{"title":"Challenges and opportunities of Facebook during bereavement: experiences from Taung in South Africa","authors":"Kealeboga Aiseng","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2024.1292961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1292961","url":null,"abstract":"Bereavement is something that we experience in one way or another. It involves many steps from one culture to the other. Many scholars have documented the role of social media tools in bereavement processes. In this study, I look at the challenges and opportunities offered by Facebook during bereavement, especially in a community that is still traditional and has yet to fully comprehend the importance of social media, particularly in matters considered sacred. The study used interviews with residents from Taung to collect data. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the collected data from the interviews. The study findings indicate some challenges associated with bereavement on Facebook: emotional shock, lack of sensitivity, misinformation, and cultural dilution. There are also opportunities: fast news sharing, ongoing emotional support, and sharing of memories. The study argues that the findings should expand our understanding and knowledge of bereavement in some African cultures and use social media tools to complement and not destroy African beliefs and practices.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139869576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1363941
Ricardo Domínguez-García, Ana Velasco-Molpeceres, Concha Pérez-Curiel
Disinformation is one of the main challenges faced by modern democratic societies, becoming a crucial focus of study in political communication. Terms such as lie, falsehood, hoax, disinformation, or post-truth have become part of the daily language of the media, featured in numerous scientific studies, and entered political discourse. With the aim of delving into and determining the characteristic features of Spanish politicians' discourse on disinformation, a methodology of quantitative and qualitative content analysis is applied to a total of 1,115 interventions by members of the Congress of Deputies during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. This period is chosen due to its high levels of disinformation and polarization. The results indicate that the issue of disinformation is a minor topic on the Spanish political agenda. Furthermore, metrics confirm a much higher use of terms such as lie, false, and hoax, to the detriment of other words like disinformation or post-truth. An impact of the pandemic on the main themes related to this phenomenon is also detected, with health and the economy being the primary frames identified. From an interpretative perspective, this is attributed to the tendency of Spanish politicians to use this issue as just one element within a polarizing and confrontational rhetoric, generally eschewing proactive debates on the measures needed to address disinformation.
{"title":"Disinformation in the Spanish public debate: an analysis of political speeches in the Congress of Deputies","authors":"Ricardo Domínguez-García, Ana Velasco-Molpeceres, Concha Pérez-Curiel","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2024.1363941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1363941","url":null,"abstract":"Disinformation is one of the main challenges faced by modern democratic societies, becoming a crucial focus of study in political communication. Terms such as lie, falsehood, hoax, disinformation, or post-truth have become part of the daily language of the media, featured in numerous scientific studies, and entered political discourse. With the aim of delving into and determining the characteristic features of Spanish politicians' discourse on disinformation, a methodology of quantitative and qualitative content analysis is applied to a total of 1,115 interventions by members of the Congress of Deputies during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. This period is chosen due to its high levels of disinformation and polarization. The results indicate that the issue of disinformation is a minor topic on the Spanish political agenda. Furthermore, metrics confirm a much higher use of terms such as lie, false, and hoax, to the detriment of other words like disinformation or post-truth. An impact of the pandemic on the main themes related to this phenomenon is also detected, with health and the economy being the primary frames identified. From an interpretative perspective, this is attributed to the tendency of Spanish politicians to use this issue as just one element within a polarizing and confrontational rhetoric, generally eschewing proactive debates on the measures needed to address disinformation.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139830813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1363941
Ricardo Domínguez-García, Ana Velasco-Molpeceres, Concha Pérez-Curiel
Disinformation is one of the main challenges faced by modern democratic societies, becoming a crucial focus of study in political communication. Terms such as lie, falsehood, hoax, disinformation, or post-truth have become part of the daily language of the media, featured in numerous scientific studies, and entered political discourse. With the aim of delving into and determining the characteristic features of Spanish politicians' discourse on disinformation, a methodology of quantitative and qualitative content analysis is applied to a total of 1,115 interventions by members of the Congress of Deputies during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. This period is chosen due to its high levels of disinformation and polarization. The results indicate that the issue of disinformation is a minor topic on the Spanish political agenda. Furthermore, metrics confirm a much higher use of terms such as lie, false, and hoax, to the detriment of other words like disinformation or post-truth. An impact of the pandemic on the main themes related to this phenomenon is also detected, with health and the economy being the primary frames identified. From an interpretative perspective, this is attributed to the tendency of Spanish politicians to use this issue as just one element within a polarizing and confrontational rhetoric, generally eschewing proactive debates on the measures needed to address disinformation.
{"title":"Disinformation in the Spanish public debate: an analysis of political speeches in the Congress of Deputies","authors":"Ricardo Domínguez-García, Ana Velasco-Molpeceres, Concha Pérez-Curiel","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2024.1363941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1363941","url":null,"abstract":"Disinformation is one of the main challenges faced by modern democratic societies, becoming a crucial focus of study in political communication. Terms such as lie, falsehood, hoax, disinformation, or post-truth have become part of the daily language of the media, featured in numerous scientific studies, and entered political discourse. With the aim of delving into and determining the characteristic features of Spanish politicians' discourse on disinformation, a methodology of quantitative and qualitative content analysis is applied to a total of 1,115 interventions by members of the Congress of Deputies during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. This period is chosen due to its high levels of disinformation and polarization. The results indicate that the issue of disinformation is a minor topic on the Spanish political agenda. Furthermore, metrics confirm a much higher use of terms such as lie, false, and hoax, to the detriment of other words like disinformation or post-truth. An impact of the pandemic on the main themes related to this phenomenon is also detected, with health and the economy being the primary frames identified. From an interpretative perspective, this is attributed to the tendency of Spanish politicians to use this issue as just one element within a polarizing and confrontational rhetoric, generally eschewing proactive debates on the measures needed to address disinformation.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139890589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1259046
Sanguk Lee, Myung Sik Cho, Tai-Quan Peng
Racial unrest has long been a salient social issue in the United States. Time and space provide essential contexts for the emergence and evolution of racial unrest. However, the relationships between these contextual factors and public responses to racial unrest remain insufficiently explored. This study seeks to fill that gap, blending geocoded, time-stamped racial unrest tweet data with census information. It aims to explore how temporal elements and geographical characteristics of metropolitan areas contribute to the emergence of negative sentiment reactions to racial unrest on social media platforms. The racially charged unrest that transpired in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 serves as our case study. We select 33 metropolitan regions across the U.S. for our analysis. Our findings indicate that temporal processes, encompassing circadian rhythms, weekday-weekend variations, and temporal decay, correlate with expressions of anxiety and anger, albeit not sadness. Furthermore, our analysis reveals geographical characteristics—notably income inequality and segregation, combined with the number of Black victims—to be associated with manifestations of anxiety.
{"title":"Understanding sentiment toward racial unrest through temporal and geographic lenses: a multilevel-analysis across metropolitan areas in the United States","authors":"Sanguk Lee, Myung Sik Cho, Tai-Quan Peng","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2024.1259046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1259046","url":null,"abstract":"Racial unrest has long been a salient social issue in the United States. Time and space provide essential contexts for the emergence and evolution of racial unrest. However, the relationships between these contextual factors and public responses to racial unrest remain insufficiently explored. This study seeks to fill that gap, blending geocoded, time-stamped racial unrest tweet data with census information. It aims to explore how temporal elements and geographical characteristics of metropolitan areas contribute to the emergence of negative sentiment reactions to racial unrest on social media platforms. The racially charged unrest that transpired in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 serves as our case study. We select 33 metropolitan regions across the U.S. for our analysis. Our findings indicate that temporal processes, encompassing circadian rhythms, weekday-weekend variations, and temporal decay, correlate with expressions of anxiety and anger, albeit not sadness. Furthermore, our analysis reveals geographical characteristics—notably income inequality and segregation, combined with the number of Black victims—to be associated with manifestations of anxiety.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139826983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1259046
Sanguk Lee, Myung Sik Cho, Tai-Quan Peng
Racial unrest has long been a salient social issue in the United States. Time and space provide essential contexts for the emergence and evolution of racial unrest. However, the relationships between these contextual factors and public responses to racial unrest remain insufficiently explored. This study seeks to fill that gap, blending geocoded, time-stamped racial unrest tweet data with census information. It aims to explore how temporal elements and geographical characteristics of metropolitan areas contribute to the emergence of negative sentiment reactions to racial unrest on social media platforms. The racially charged unrest that transpired in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 serves as our case study. We select 33 metropolitan regions across the U.S. for our analysis. Our findings indicate that temporal processes, encompassing circadian rhythms, weekday-weekend variations, and temporal decay, correlate with expressions of anxiety and anger, albeit not sadness. Furthermore, our analysis reveals geographical characteristics—notably income inequality and segregation, combined with the number of Black victims—to be associated with manifestations of anxiety.
{"title":"Understanding sentiment toward racial unrest through temporal and geographic lenses: a multilevel-analysis across metropolitan areas in the United States","authors":"Sanguk Lee, Myung Sik Cho, Tai-Quan Peng","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2024.1259046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1259046","url":null,"abstract":"Racial unrest has long been a salient social issue in the United States. Time and space provide essential contexts for the emergence and evolution of racial unrest. However, the relationships between these contextual factors and public responses to racial unrest remain insufficiently explored. This study seeks to fill that gap, blending geocoded, time-stamped racial unrest tweet data with census information. It aims to explore how temporal elements and geographical characteristics of metropolitan areas contribute to the emergence of negative sentiment reactions to racial unrest on social media platforms. The racially charged unrest that transpired in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 serves as our case study. We select 33 metropolitan regions across the U.S. for our analysis. Our findings indicate that temporal processes, encompassing circadian rhythms, weekday-weekend variations, and temporal decay, correlate with expressions of anxiety and anger, albeit not sadness. Furthermore, our analysis reveals geographical characteristics—notably income inequality and segregation, combined with the number of Black victims—to be associated with manifestations of anxiety.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139886638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-11DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1332643
Parise Carmichael-Murphy
This essay argues that Black feminist artists in the digital music industry embrace cyborg politics to disrupt celebrity conventions in ways that draw attention to the complexity of identity and oppression. I draw attention to Black feminism as a movement for challenging intersecting oppressions, particularly for Black women, as well as a drive to celebrate Black women's contributions to the music industry. Donna Haraway's conceptualization of the “cyborg” can offer significant insight into how artists in the digital music industry transcend boundaries of identity to renegotiate the ideas of celebrity and fame. The cyborg is a fluid being that embraces the interconnectedness and interplay between technology and the body. By embracing cyborg politics, those who occupy space in the music industry and online can resist the commodification of their bodies to machinery alone and retain their humanity in the celebrity machine.
{"title":"I'd rather be a cyborg than a celebrity: Black feminism in the digital music industry","authors":"Parise Carmichael-Murphy","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2023.1332643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1332643","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues that Black feminist artists in the digital music industry embrace cyborg politics to disrupt celebrity conventions in ways that draw attention to the complexity of identity and oppression. I draw attention to Black feminism as a movement for challenging intersecting oppressions, particularly for Black women, as well as a drive to celebrate Black women's contributions to the music industry. Donna Haraway's conceptualization of the “cyborg” can offer significant insight into how artists in the digital music industry transcend boundaries of identity to renegotiate the ideas of celebrity and fame. The cyborg is a fluid being that embraces the interconnectedness and interplay between technology and the body. By embracing cyborg politics, those who occupy space in the music industry and online can resist the commodification of their bodies to machinery alone and retain their humanity in the celebrity machine.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139438486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-11DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1288196
Johannes Dellert
Semantic maps are used in lexical typology to summarize cross-linguistic implicational universals of co-expression between meanings in a domain. They are defined as networks which, using as few links as possible, connect the meanings so that every isolectic set (i.e., set of meanings that can be expressed by the same word in some language) forms a connected component. Due to the close connection between synchronic polysemies and semantic change, semantic maps are often interpreted diachronically as encoding potential pathways of semantic extension. While semantic maps are traditionally generated by hand, there have been attempts to automate this complex and non-deterministic process. I explore the problem from a new algorithmic angle by casting it in the framework of causal discovery, a field which explores the possibility of automatically inferring causal structures from observational data. I show that a standard causal inference algorithm can be used to reduce cross-linguistic polysemy data into minimal network structures which explain the observed polysemies. If the algorithm makes its link deletion decisions on the basis of the connected component criterion, the skeleton of the resulting causal structure is a synchronic semantic map. The arrows which are added to some links in the second stage can be interpreted as expressing the main tendencies of semantic extension. Much of the existing literature on semantic maps implicitly assumes that the data from the languages under analysis is correct and complete, whereas in reality, semantic map research is riddled by data quality and sparseness problems. To quantify the uncertainty inherent in the inferred diachronic semantic maps, I rely on bootstrapping on the language level to model the uncertainty caused by the given language sample, as well as on random link processing orders to explore the space of possible semantic maps for a given input. The maps inferred from the samples are then summarized into a consensus network where every link and arrow receives a confidence value. In experiments on cross-linguistic polysemy data of varying shapes, the resulting confidence values are found to mostly agree with previously published results, though challenges in directionality inference remain.
{"title":"Causal inference of diachronic semantic maps from cross-linguistic synchronic polysemy data","authors":"Johannes Dellert","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2023.1288196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1288196","url":null,"abstract":"Semantic maps are used in lexical typology to summarize cross-linguistic implicational universals of co-expression between meanings in a domain. They are defined as networks which, using as few links as possible, connect the meanings so that every isolectic set (i.e., set of meanings that can be expressed by the same word in some language) forms a connected component. Due to the close connection between synchronic polysemies and semantic change, semantic maps are often interpreted diachronically as encoding potential pathways of semantic extension. While semantic maps are traditionally generated by hand, there have been attempts to automate this complex and non-deterministic process. I explore the problem from a new algorithmic angle by casting it in the framework of causal discovery, a field which explores the possibility of automatically inferring causal structures from observational data. I show that a standard causal inference algorithm can be used to reduce cross-linguistic polysemy data into minimal network structures which explain the observed polysemies. If the algorithm makes its link deletion decisions on the basis of the connected component criterion, the skeleton of the resulting causal structure is a synchronic semantic map. The arrows which are added to some links in the second stage can be interpreted as expressing the main tendencies of semantic extension. Much of the existing literature on semantic maps implicitly assumes that the data from the languages under analysis is correct and complete, whereas in reality, semantic map research is riddled by data quality and sparseness problems. To quantify the uncertainty inherent in the inferred diachronic semantic maps, I rely on bootstrapping on the language level to model the uncertainty caused by the given language sample, as well as on random link processing orders to explore the space of possible semantic maps for a given input. The maps inferred from the samples are then summarized into a consensus network where every link and arrow receives a confidence value. In experiments on cross-linguistic polysemy data of varying shapes, the resulting confidence values are found to mostly agree with previously published results, though challenges in directionality inference remain.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139438386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-09DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1345124
Karolina Jawad, Anna Xambó Sedó
Feminist Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) integrates gender, diversity, equity, and social justice into technology research and design, fostering a more inclusive and socially aware technology landscape. This article explores the design semantics of ten Do-it-Yourself (DIY) musical instruments created by women builders. Design semantics refers to the associations conveyed by designed objects so as to identity, emotions, performance or the environment and their sensory qualities such as shape, size, touch or vision. Together these associations and qualities can establish design narratives that influence the way meaning is ascribed. We conduct an analysis of these instruments to answer the question of how fabulations of design semantics, through the lens of feminist HCI principles, can reshape our understanding of gender bias in object design within the realm of DIY musical instruments constructed by women builders. Our investigation uncovers a feminist narrative taking shape as we found out that DIY instruments design contributes to the fabulation of alternative futures that challenge prevalent current gender expectations associated with commercial music hardware. DIY instruments provide a platform for questioning established gender norms, enabling the development of technologies that embrace diverse perspectives and maintain a technical identity.
{"title":"Feminist HCI and narratives of design semantics in DIY music hardware","authors":"Karolina Jawad, Anna Xambó Sedó","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2023.1345124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1345124","url":null,"abstract":"Feminist Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) integrates gender, diversity, equity, and social justice into technology research and design, fostering a more inclusive and socially aware technology landscape. This article explores the design semantics of ten Do-it-Yourself (DIY) musical instruments created by women builders. Design semantics refers to the associations conveyed by designed objects so as to identity, emotions, performance or the environment and their sensory qualities such as shape, size, touch or vision. Together these associations and qualities can establish design narratives that influence the way meaning is ascribed. We conduct an analysis of these instruments to answer the question of how fabulations of design semantics, through the lens of feminist HCI principles, can reshape our understanding of gender bias in object design within the realm of DIY musical instruments constructed by women builders. Our investigation uncovers a feminist narrative taking shape as we found out that DIY instruments design contributes to the fabulation of alternative futures that challenge prevalent current gender expectations associated with commercial music hardware. DIY instruments provide a platform for questioning established gender norms, enabling the development of technologies that embrace diverse perspectives and maintain a technical identity.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139442065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-08DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1306104
Irina Dallo, Laura N. Schnegg, Michèle Marti, Donat Fulda, Athanasios N. Papadopoulos, Philippe Roth, L. Danciu, Nadja Valenzuela, Simon R. Wenk, P. Bergamo, F. Haslinger, D. Fäh, P. Kästli, Stefan Wiemer
With seismic risk assessments becoming more available and reliable over the last years, the need to communicate seismic risk emerged. Seismic risk allows people to understand what impacts earthquakes can have and how they could affect their lives. In Switzerland, a nation-wide seismic risk model (ERM-CH23) was published in 2023 demanding sophisticated communication products to inform about its results. Since only limited research has been conducted on how to best communicate earthquake risk information to societies including the general public, key elements of the outreach activities were tested before the model release. To this end, we, an interdisciplinary group, conducted a nationwide survey in Switzerland in December 2022 to test different earthquake risk map designs by varying the color scale and the legend type. We analyzed the effects of the map and legend design on people's correct interpretation of the risk information, perceived usefulness, risk perception, and motivation to take action. Our survey revealed that (i) a legend with the combination of qualitative and quantitative labels leads to more accurate interpretations of the information presented on the map and is preferred by the public; (ii) the color scale determines how people perceive the spatial risk; and (iii) personal factors influence people's interpretation skills, risk perception, and intention to take action. Our study thus provides insights and recommendations on how to best design user-centered earthquake risk maps as a key outreach product to ensure their effective use by the public, consequently enhancing society's resilience to earthquakes in the long term.
{"title":"Designing understandable, action-oriented, and well-perceived earthquake risk maps—The Swiss case study","authors":"Irina Dallo, Laura N. Schnegg, Michèle Marti, Donat Fulda, Athanasios N. Papadopoulos, Philippe Roth, L. Danciu, Nadja Valenzuela, Simon R. Wenk, P. Bergamo, F. Haslinger, D. Fäh, P. Kästli, Stefan Wiemer","doi":"10.3389/fcomm.2023.1306104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1306104","url":null,"abstract":"With seismic risk assessments becoming more available and reliable over the last years, the need to communicate seismic risk emerged. Seismic risk allows people to understand what impacts earthquakes can have and how they could affect their lives. In Switzerland, a nation-wide seismic risk model (ERM-CH23) was published in 2023 demanding sophisticated communication products to inform about its results. Since only limited research has been conducted on how to best communicate earthquake risk information to societies including the general public, key elements of the outreach activities were tested before the model release. To this end, we, an interdisciplinary group, conducted a nationwide survey in Switzerland in December 2022 to test different earthquake risk map designs by varying the color scale and the legend type. We analyzed the effects of the map and legend design on people's correct interpretation of the risk information, perceived usefulness, risk perception, and motivation to take action. Our survey revealed that (i) a legend with the combination of qualitative and quantitative labels leads to more accurate interpretations of the information presented on the map and is preferred by the public; (ii) the color scale determines how people perceive the spatial risk; and (iii) personal factors influence people's interpretation skills, risk perception, and intention to take action. Our study thus provides insights and recommendations on how to best design user-centered earthquake risk maps as a key outreach product to ensure their effective use by the public, consequently enhancing society's resilience to earthquakes in the long term.","PeriodicalId":31739,"journal":{"name":"Frontiers in Communication","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139445104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-08DOI: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1322498
Florian Meier, Mikkel Fugl Eskjær
Climate change is a dynamic and rapidly evolving media agenda. First associated with scientific notions of the greenhouse effect, it was later presented as global warming before reaching the current and broader picture of climate change. Over its development, climate change reporting has touched on a broad range of topics reflecting shifting scientific understandings, political interventions, and public anxieties, all of which condition the public's view and actions on climate change. To better understand which issues the Danish public has been exposed to, this study uses topic modeling to analyse 32 years of climate change communication in Denmark (1990–2021, n = 63,743). It identifies 85 topics grouped into 14 themes dealing with climate change in Danish national media outlets. Topics differ in prevalence and longitudinal stability while reflecting outlet bias in political leaning and communicative modalities. The most pronounced differences in climate change reporting are between public service media and traditional newspapers. This indicates that media users relying mainly on online news from public service providers, without additional access to print media, will receive information on climate change that is more topical and less politicized, more thematic and less structural, more about high-level politics than everyday interventions and more concerned with consequences than solutions.
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