Search Results (51)

This study examines the media coverage of illegal immigration in Spain during the first year of the war in Ukraine, focusing on the four most-read online newspapers: El Español, Okdiario, La Razón, and eldiario.es. The research aims to understand how ideological differences influence source selection and framing of immigration issues. Using Source Credibility Theory as a framework, the study analyzes the frequency of coverage and types of sources used by each outlet. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining quantitative analysis of source frequencies with qualitative examination of content. The results reveal significant disparities in coverage and source usage among the newspapers. Conservative outlets like Okdiario relied heavily on official sources (51.5%), while the progressive eldiario.es gave more weight to civil society sources (38.2%). El Español and Okdiario published more articles on illegal immigration compared to La Razón and eldiario.es. Notably, La Razón, also conservative, used hidden sources more frequently (17%) than other outlets. The findings highlight how ideological leanings shape journalistic practices in covering sensitive topics like immigration. Conservative media’s focus on institutional narratives contrasts with progressive outlets’ emphasis on human stories, potentially influencing public perception and discourse on immigration issues. This study contributes to understanding the role of media in shaping societal attitudes towards immigration and underscores the importance of diverse perspectives in news coverage. Full article

The aim of this paper is to clarify the difference between soft and hard news and to explore consumer preferences so that newspapers can adapt their artificial intelligence (AI) tools accordingly. The work focuses on the analysis of the results from a focus group discussion held on 26 March 2024, on the reading habits among readers of the news website Večernji.hr. The analysis shows that readers are not fully aware of their reading habits, often overestimating their interest in hard news while underestimating their interest in miscellaneous entertaining content in the media commonly referred to as soft news. In order to verify their statements, a content analysis of the 50 most-read articles on that news website from 25 to 29 March 2024 was conducted, also from the perspective of hard and soft news, so that this data can be compared with the results of the focus group discussion. The analysis of article readership confirmed and further emphasized the readers’ interest in the miscellanea. These findings have been contextualized within previous experiences of using artificial intelligence in the media, which show that AI tools are highly suitable for informative genres based on service data—typically classified as hard news, and are also compatible with some types of soft news. The great interest of readers in soft news suggests that significant effort should be put in its production and that it should not be considered an unimportant supplement to hard news. Artificial intelligence tools are less suitable for creating miscellanea, but they can be helpful in analyzing trends and detecting events. In these areas collaboration between humans and machines is essential, as only a journalist can accurately understand the human dimension and social context, which is the necessary framework for producing soft news. Full article

This paper explores how sound design in the Harry Potter film series shapes the symbolic significance of written words within the magical world. Sound mediates between language and meaning; while characters gain knowledge by reading and seeing, viewers are guided emotionally and thematically by how these written texts are framed through sound. For example, Harry’s magical identity is signalled to viewers through the score long before he fully understands himself—first through music when he speaks to a snake, then more explicitly when he receives his letter from Hogwarts. Throughout the series, characters engage with a wide array of written media—textbooks, letters, newspapers, diaries, maps, and inscriptions—that gradually shift in narrative function, from static props to dynamic, multi-sensory agents of transformation. Using a close analysis of selected scenes to examine layers of utterances, diegetic sounds, underscore, and sound design, this study draws on metaphor theory and adaptation theory to examine how sound design gives writing a metaphorical voice, sometimes framing it as character, landscape, or moral authority. As the series progresses, becoming more autonomous from the literary source, written words take on greater symbolic significance, and sound increasingly determines which texts are granted narrative power, whose voices are trusted, and how viewers interpret truth and agency across media. Ultimately, written words in the films are animated through sound into agents of growth, memory, resistance, and transformation. Thus, the audio-visual treatment of written magic reveals not just what is written, but what matters. Full article

Three languages of service in the Hunter Valley show the emotional impact of new labour systems on valuing and self-valuing in work. The newspaper advertisements present a self-image of the servant as a negotiator for wages and conditions, and servants read these advertisements and formed attitudes from them. Their language suggests they were significant players in the modernising of work. Wealthy employers sought the cheapest labour possible, and the new lower middle-class townsman added notions of respectability that servants adopted themselves. In conflict with this, the letters of a squatter family represent the servant as an object of humour, as sly, untrustworthy, and dangerously sexualised. This abject status derived from notions of servants as less than human, as stock, from slavery. In response, servants replied that they knew their work and emphasised a labour market perspective. Full article

When composer Jonathan Dove first read Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, he immediately saw its operatic potential. In a newspaper interview, he is quoted as saying that the novel ‘haunted me for years’. He was particularly affected by Fanny Price and her predicament. When the opportunity came to write the opera, Dove worked with librettist Alasdair Middleton to create an operatic work that builds on and reinterprets Austen’s novel. It is a chamber opera, originally scored for piano duet, and although Dove later made an arrangement for a chamber ensemble, he retained the piano, identifying it as a sound world with which Austen was intimately familiar. In this paper, I track the transition from the printed page via the score and the libretto to the opera, and analyse the means by which Dove and Middleton create this popular adaptation, including telescoping the plot, using and adapting Austen’s own language, incorporating music inspired by eighteenth-century glees, and using characters as a chorus, with music that enhances the impact and translates the powerful emotions on Austen’s page into raw and urgent feelings. Full article

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate visual outcomes and patient satisfaction after bilateral implantation of a new hydrophobic acrylic intraocular lens called Clareon (Alcon) using the mini-monovision technique. Methods: A single-center, prospective, nonrandomized study was conducted in Tandil (Buenos Aires, Argentina), including patients scheduled for cataract surgery. To achieve mini-monovision, the spherical equivalent was calculated between −0.25 and +0.25 D for the dominant eye, and between −0.75 and −1.00 D for the non-dominant eye. The main outcomes were uncorrected distance visual acuity (UDVA) and uncorrected intermediate visual acuity (UIVA) evaluated at 66 cm. A secondary outcome, patient satisfaction, was assessed using the CatQuest-9SF questionnaire. Results: The mean binocular UDVA was 0.01 ± 0.05 logMAR three months after surgery, while the mean binocular UIVA was 0.20 ± 0.06 logMAR. The postoperative mean spherical equivalent in the dominant eye was −0.27 ± 0.12, and in the non-dominant eye was −0.87 ± 0.25. Before surgery, the CatQuest-9SF questionnaire revealed that 83.33% of patients were dissatisfied with their vision during daily activities. Over 50% reported significant difficulties with reading newspapers, sewing, and reading TV subtitles. Additionally, 66.6% struggled with recognizing faces, 50% with seeing product prices, and 50% with walking on uneven ground. Post-surgery, most patients experienced improved vision for daily tasks, with no reports of high dissatisfaction or significant difficulties. Patients were quite satisfied with their vision for hobbies and TV subtitles, and very satisfied (90%) with seeing supermarket prices. Conclusions: patients implanted with a new enhanced monofocal IOL using the mini-monovision technique showed improved distance and intermediate visual acuity, reduced need for glasses, and expressed a high degree of satisfaction. Full article

Many women justify intimate partner violence (IPV), resulting in adverse health outcomes. This study investigates the relationship between household ownership of information and communication technologies (ICTs), along with the frequency of listening to the radio and watching television with women’s attitudes towards IPV in Bangladesh. The cross-sectional study analyzed a weighted sample of 20,032 women and used a multivariable logistic regression analysis to determine the association between predictor variables and outcome variables. The results showed that 19.47% of women justified wife beating for at least one reason. We found that household ownership of computers (AOR = 0.73 [95% CI = 0.57, 0.95]), women in households with three ICTs (AOR = 0.67 [95% CI = 0.47, 0.96]), and women who watched television at least once a week (AOR = 0.85 [95% CI = 0.74, 0.97]) were associated with decreased odds of justifying wife beating for at least one reason after adjustment for the frequency of reading newspaper or magazine, age, wealth, education, religion, and type of place of residence. The study suggests that not all ICTs affect women’s attitudes toward IPV equally. Computers and television were more influential than other ICTs. This finding suggests that awareness-building and educational programs targeted towards women via computer and television may deliver better outcomes about gender norms. Full article

It is an irony of history that since texts transcend the intentions and purposes of their authors, their meaning and significance are often contested anew as they enter new historical contexts; even historical texts are thus subject to reading and criticism over time. This article discusses the posthumous fate of Henry Stubbe’s own text on Islamic history, The Rise and Progress of Mahometanism—seen by some to represent a Copernican revolution in the study of Islam. The fate of this work is a clear example of the critical contingencies and fluctuating fortunes experienced by a corpus of texts. The continuing existence of a text as an object open to reconfiguration and re-evaluation is termed its after-history (Nachgeschichte) or afterlife (Nachleben). This notion of the afterlife of an object as a period of critical appreciation and political appropriation aptly defines the fate and fame of The Rise and Progress of Mahometanism. The present study seeks to explore the narrative surrounding a publication authored by Stubbe in the 17th century and finally published by Hafiz Mahmud Khan Shairani, with the critical support of Ottoman intellectual Halil Halid Bey, nearly two centuries later. Its objective is to investigate how the life and contributions of a figure whose work has transcended generations was resurrected within the political backdrop of the 20th century, as evidenced in the columns of Ottoman newspapers. Full article

The Nigerian media have, over the years, moved back and forth via all manners of experience of leadership, from military to democratic, until they finally settled into the present democratic governance. Experience from previous regimes exposed them to the vagaries of power and how to cope with them. These traditional news media, newspapers/magazines, radio, and television, were then the major and authentic news sources for Nigerians. The coming of the internet with its social media handles threw the journalists of these media into confusion as the citizens have taken the reigns of news/information peddling from under them, turning them into agents of confirmation and authenticity of information. Ironically, these traditional media, television, radio, and print, have adjusted to online media streaming, thus liberating themselves from the vagaries of temporal and spatial limitedness. Deploying a survey method (opinion poll, OPL) and relying on a purposive sampling technique, the authors purposively selected WhatsApp group platforms (WGP) as the most suitable of the new/social media with access to all manners of news sources. These were used to interrogate how online media/information/news streaming has taken the audience away from traditional media by being on the ‘spot’ at all hours with their avalanche of “Breaking News”. The findings revealed that audiences currently resort to traditional media to confirm the authenticity of news and information carried online in a sort-of-when-in-doubt-watch-the television manner or listen to radio or read the newspapers/magazines. It concludes that online news streaming has become the coveted bride of present-day information and news seekers, albeit an unreliable one. Full article

Poor eating habits have been correlated with an increased probability of developing chronic health problems, including weight gain. In particular, dietary choices during the first years of life can have a lasting impact on dietary preferences and habits. Parents strongly influence the child’s relationship with food which will be maintained for the rest of their life; in particular, a greater sense of maternal self-efficacy is correlated with healthier eating habits and the child being less overweight. To date, there are few studies investigating the relationship between parental eating habits, self-efficacy in promoting healthy behaviors and the use of social media (SM). The general purpose of our study is to investigate the eating habits of families, food awareness and choices and the use of SM to search for pediatric nutrition content. The habits were collected through a questionnaire administered online on the most popular SM platforms. Data show that parents take care of their children’s food choices (96.1%) and rarely comply with their requests (77.9%). More than half read product labels (56.1%) and the origin (43.9%) before purchasing. Overall, 44.1% are influenced by TV and newspapers regarding their purchases, while 39.4% are influenced by the opinions of their friends and relatives. Food style correlates positively with the influence of TV and newspapers (r = 0.238) and the influence of friends and relatives (r = 0.231). Overall, 77.1% aim to follow a healthy diet, even if fish (24.5%) and vegetables (36.3%) are difficult to include in the child’s diet. Instagram (50.2%) and Facebook (36.3%) are the SM platforms most used to search for information on pediatric nutrition. Health professionals’ (60.3%) and institutions’ (24.9%) profiles are the most followed for reading articles and blogs (59.4%), but without direct interactions (78.9%). Only 20% are satisfied with the content found. Parental self-efficacy in promoting a healthy diet for their children correlates positively and moderately with encouragement to follow a healthy diet (r = 0.340) and control over the amount of snacks and sweets consumed (r = 0.302). The data demonstrate parents’ interest in using SM to search for information on pediatric nutrition but indicates that few (33.3%) are satisfied with what they find online. Therefore, future educational interventions need to be refined to help parents to better influence children’s eating habits. Full article

Newspapers are avenues of the media that can influence public perceptions. Newspapers are especially important to engender support for wildlife protection because they reach populations who do not necessarily encounter wildlife frequently. Our research examined how newspaper media depict wildlife-related information in Uganda, a country which hosts high biodiversity. A content analysis was performed in two widely read daily newspapers, namely, the New Vision (n = 258) and Daily Monitor (n = 267), for news articles published in selected years between 2010 and 2019. The findings show a balance between positive and negative articles published in this period. New Vision had 51.5% of its articles on wildlife negatively framed while Daily Monitor had 50% of its articles positively framed. The articles that focused on the positive benefits from wildlife were the longest with 803 ± 525 words. One of the themes that featured prominently was the impact of developments on wildlife such as successful conservation practices, management interventions to save wildlife, and NGO conservation support to wildlife protection and population growth. Overall, newspaper articles addressed efforts that called for wildlife survival, but conflict still featured prominently. Measures to sensitize journalists, such as media engagement, wildlife tours, and integration with scientists, are needed to better implement conservation media. We also suggest that the media focus on the intrinsic benefits of biodiversity conservation, and that scientists be better integrated into wildlife news stories. Full article

Today, most newspapers utilize social media to disseminate news. On the one hand, this results in an overload of related articles for social media users. On the other hand, since social media tends to form echo chambers around their users, different opinions and information may be hidden. Enabling users to access different information (possibly outside of their echo chambers, without the burden of reading entire articles, often containing redundant information) may be a step forward in allowing them to form their own opinions. To address this challenge, we propose a system that integrates Transformer neural models and text summarization models along with decision rules. Given a reference article already read by the user, our system first collects articles related to the same topic from a configurable number of different sources. Then, it identifies and summarizes the information that differs from the reference article and outputs the summary to the user. The core of the system is the sentence classification algorithm, which classifies sentences in the collected articles into three classes based on similarity with the reference article: sentences classified as dissimilar are summarized by using a pre-trained abstractive summarization model. We evaluated the proposed system in two steps. First, we assessed its effectiveness in identifying content differences between the reference article and the related articles by using human judgments obtained through crowdsourcing as ground truth. We obtained an average F1 score of 0.772 against average F1 scores of 0.797 and 0.676 achieved by two state-of-the-art approaches based, respectively, on model tuning and prompt tuning, which require an appropriate tuning phase and, therefore, greater computational effort. Second, we asked a sample of people to evaluate how well the summary generated by the system represents the information that is not present in the article read by the user. The results are extremely encouraging. Finally, we present a use case. Full article

A comprehensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS among men and women in Africa is reportedly low. To the best of our knowledge, no studies using any definition of comprehensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS have been conducted in Angola. To address this gap, we aimed to describe the comprehensive knowledge held by individuals aged between 15 and 49 years regarding HIV and AIDS and some associated factors, using the most recent Angolan demographic and health survey (DHS). Using an observational, cross-sectional design, we analyzed data collected from 19,785 individuals aged between 15 and 49 years for the 2016 DHS in Angola. We conducted a logistic regression analysis of descriptive and complex samples to examine the data and to unravel possible factors associated with having a comprehensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS. Almost half of the respondents (47.7%) had a general comprehensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS. Individuals who watched television (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 2.40; 95% CI: 2.11, 2.72) or read newspapers and magazines (aOR: 1.99; 95% CI: 1.72, 2.30) more than once a week had higher odds of having a comprehensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS compared to those who did not. Similarly, having completed primary education and above (aOR: 1.83; 95% CI: 1.67, 2.00) or living in urban areas (aOR: 1.51; 95% CI: 1.34, 1.71) increased the likelihood of individuals having a comprehensive knowledge of HIV and AIDS compared to their counterparts. These results reflect inequalities that require further attention at either a research or a political level. Nevertheless, we consider that these results can assist decision-makers in advocating for continuous investment in HIV health literacy and in adapting global solutions to local Angolan contexts. Full article

Historical documents such as newspapers, invoices, contract papers are often difficult to read due to degraded text quality. These documents may be damaged or degraded due to a variety of factors such as aging, distortion, stamps, watermarks, ink stains, and so on. Text image enhancement is essential for several document recognition and analysis tasks. In this era of technology, it is important to enhance these degraded text documents for proper use. To address these issues, a new bi-cubic interpolation of Lifting Wavelet Transform (LWT) and Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) is proposed to enhance image resolution. Then a generative adversarial network (GAN) is used to extract the spectral and spatial features in historical text images. The proposed method consists of two parts. In the first part, the transformation method is used to de-noise and de-blur the images, and to increase the resolution effects, whereas in the second part, the GAN architecture is used to fuse the original and the resulting image obtained from part one in order to improve the spectral and spatial features of a historical text image. Experiment results show that the proposed model outperforms the current deep learning methods. Full article

Appropriate drug information is vital for the correct use of drugs in pharmaceutical practice. Providing patients with educational advice on prescribed medication and on proper medication administration has become an essential part of the pharmaceutical care process. The objectives of this study were to identify patients’ knowledge of prescribed medications, their desire for more information, and the sources of medication information in a population from Qassim, Saudi Arabia, using a cross-sectional descriptive study. Our target population consisted of adult patients with chronic illnesses receiving drugs at outpatient pharmacies. Nineteen pharmacies were selected based on convenience. After collecting their prescriptions, patients were asked to take part in the study by interviewers as they were leaving the pharmacies. The questionnaire used was pretested on 18 patients and then modified accordingly. questions investigated participants’ knowledge of drug information, their wish for more information, and their sources of drug information, other than clinicians. Descriptive analysis was used to describe patients’ physical details. The effect of sex, education, diagnosis, number of drugs, and age on knowledge of the purpose of drugs and the need for additional information were tested using Chi-square test. A total of 270 patients were interviewed, of whom 29.7% reported not knowing the purpose of at least one of their medications, and only reading a portion of the PILs. Of the patients sampled, 56.7% said they read the side effects section of the PIL, 43.3% reported reading the uses, while 27% read the contraindications. The drug -interactions section was the least read, with only 18.9% reporting reading it. A total of 57% of the patients reported that they needed more information about their medications. Highly educated patients reported using the PIL, social media, family and friends, TV, and newspapers as sources of drug information at significantly higher rates than patients with lower levels of education. Healthcare professionals should assess patient comprehension and the need for additional drug information, especially among patients with low levels of education. Additionally, healthcare professionals should consider other information sources used by their patients. Full article