Search Results (10)

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Pakistan is a barrier to optimal vaccine uptake and has been situated within a context of hesitancy towards other vaccines. A mixed-methods study was conducted during the initial COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in 2021 in four union councils in Peshawar, consisting of a cross-sectional survey, eight focus group discussions (FGDs) with community members and eight in-depth interviews with healthcare workers (HCWs) to assess perceptions toward vaccines. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Of 400 survey participants, 57.3% were vaccine acceptant and 42.8% vaccine hesitant. Just over half (56.8%) perceived COVID-19 vaccines to be safe. Most (88%) reported trust in HCWs to provide accurate vaccine information. FGDs revealed that women received less information about the vaccine compared to men and cultural restrictions were barriers even for those willing to be vaccinated. Correlates of vaccine acceptance included male sex (aOR 2.25; 95% CI 1.29–3.91), age 50 years or greater (aOR 1.74; 95% CI 1.19–6.31), social network support (e.g., vaccine acceptance among an individual’s social network) in receiving COVID-19 vaccines (aOR 2.38; 95% CI 1.45–3.89), community concern about COVID-19 spread (aOR 2.84; 95% CI 1.73–4.66), and trust in HCWs to provide vaccine information (aOR 3.47; 95% CI 1.62–7.42). Future vaccine promotion should prioritize engaging community leaders, sharing transparent information, combatting misinformation and rumors, and implementing household-based interventions especially targeting the importance of vaccination among women and young people to increase uptake. Full article

This study investigates Spanish-language public discourse on YouTube following the unprecedented Iberian Peninsula blackout of 28 April 2025. Leveraging comments extracted via the YouTube Data API and analyzed with the OpenAI GPT-4o-mini model, it systematically examined 76,398 comments from 360 of the most relevant videos posted on the day of the event. The analysis explored emotional responses, sentiment trends, misinformation prevalence, civic engagement, and attributions of blame within the immediate aftermath of the blackout. The results reveal a discourse dominated by negativity and anger, with 43% of comments classified as angry and an overall negative sentiment trend. Misinformation was pervasive, present in 46% of comments, with most falsehoods going unchallenged. The majority of users attributed the blackout to government or political failures rather than technical causes, reflecting a profound distrust in institutions. Notably, while one in five comments included a call to action, only a minority offered constructive solutions, focusing mainly on infrastructure and energy reform. These findings highlight the crucial role of multilingual, real-time crisis communication and the unique information needs of Spanish-speaking populations during emergencies. By illuminating how rumors, emotions, and calls for accountability manifest in digital spaces, this study contributes to the literature on crisis informatics, digital resilience, and inclusive sustainability policy. Full article

In the digital era, social media proliferation accelerates rumor dissemination. During public health emergencies, such misinformation intensifies social harm. Studying the influencing factors of online rumor refutation behavior thus becomes crucial. This study uses the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) theory as an analysis framework, based on the perspective of information sources and integrating group norms as a moderating factor, to explore the psychological processes affecting Chinese university students’ online rumor refuting in public health emergencies. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, a questionnaire survey was conducted on 1017 respondents, and the collected data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling research method. The results indicate that both online and offline information seeking positively influence university students’ fear of contracting the COVID-19 virus. University students’ fear positively influences their engagement in online rumor refuting. Notably, fear mediates the link between online and offline information seeking and online rumor refuting. Additionally, group norms help strengthen the connection between university students’ fear and their involvement in online refuting rumors. These results provide theoretical explanations and practical guidance for university students to refute rumors online. Full article

Natural disasters linked to contexts of unpredictability and surprise generate a climate of uncertainty in the population, resulting in an exponential increase in disinformation. These are crisis situations that cause the management of public and governmental institutions to be questioned, diminish citizens’ trust in the media, and reinforce anonymity in social networks. New digital algorithms create a scenario plagued by fake news and levels of viralization of rumors never before contemplated. Our objective is to analyze the verification capacity of fact-checking agencies at X at times of information disorder, such as the Turkey–Syria earthquakes in 2023. We apply a mixed methodology of comparative content analysis to government, news agency, and IFCN accounts, generating a general sample (n = 46,747) that is then subjected to thematic categorization to create a specific sample (n = 564). The results indicate a low commitment to fact-checking on the part of official bodies and news agencies, as opposed to fact-checking agencies’ accurate handling of the facts. The lack of debate and engagement generated by digital audiences in the face of the discursive intentionality of disinformation is significant. Full article

Vaccine hesitancy (VH) is the seventh among the WHO’s top 10 threats to global public health, which has continued to perpetuate the transmission of vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs) in Africa. Consequently, this paper systematically reviewed COVID-19 vaccine acceptance rates (VARs)—including the vaccine uptake and vaccination intention—in Africa from 2020 to 2022, compared the rates within the five African regions and determined the context-specific causes of VH in Africa. Generally, COVID-19 VARs ranged from 21.0% to 97.9% and 8.2% to 92.0% with mean rates of 59.8 ± 3.8% and 58.0 ± 2.4% in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Southern and eastern African regions had the top two VARs of 83.5 ± 6.3% and 68.9 ± 6.6% in 2021, and 64.2 ± 4.6% and 61.2 ± 5.1% in 2022, respectively. Based on population types, healthcare workers had a marginal increase in their mean COVID-19 VARs from 55.5 ± 5.6% in 2021 to 60.8 ± 5.3% in 2022. In other populations, the mean VARs decreased from 62.7 ± 5.2% in 2021 to 54.5 ± 4% in 2022. As of 25 October 2022, Africa lags behind the world with only 24% full COVID-19 vaccinations compared to 84%, 79% and 63% reported, respectively, in the Australian continent, upper-middle-income countries and globally. Apart from the problems of confidence, complacency, convenience, communications and context, the context-specific factors driving COVID-19 VH in Africa are global COVID-19 vaccine inequality, lack of vaccine production/maintenance facilities, insecurity, high illiteracy level, endemic corruption, mistrust in some political leaders, the spreading of unconfirmed anti-vaccination rumors and political instability. With an overall mean COVID-19 acceptance rate of 58%, VH still subsists in Africa. The low VARs in Africa have detrimental global public health implications, as it could facilitate the emergence of immune invading SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, which may spread globally. Consequently, there is a need to confront these challenges frontally and engage traditional and religious leaders in the fight against VH in Africa, to restore public trust in the safety and efficacy of vaccines generally. As the availability of COVID-19 vaccines improves, the vaccination of pets and zoo-animals from which reverse zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 have been reported is recommended, to limit the evolution and spread of new variants of concern and avert possible SARS-CoV-2 epizootic or panzootic diseases in susceptible animal species. Full article

During major public health emergencies, a series of coupling problems of rumors getting out of control and public psychological imbalance always emerge in social media, which bring great interference for crisis disposal. From the perspective of social psychological stress, it is important to depict the interactive infection law among distinct types of rumor engagers (i.e., advocates, supporters, and amplifiers) under different social psychological stress states, and explore the effectiveness of rumor intervention strategies (i.e., hindering and persuasion) from multiple dimensions, to scientifically predict the situation of public opinion field and guide the public to restore psychological stability. Therefore, this paper constructs an interactive infection model of multiple rumor engagers under different intervention situations based on a unique user-aggregated dataset collected from a Chinese leading online microblogging platform (“Sina Weibo”) during the COVID-19 in 2020. The simulation result shows that (1) in the period of social psychological alarm reaction, the strong level of hindering intervention on the rumor engagers leads to more serious negative consequences; (2) in the period of social psychological resistance, the persuasion and hindering strategies can both produce good outcomes, which can effectively reduce the overall scale of rumor supporters and amplifiers and shorten their survival time in social media; (3) in the period of social psychological exhaustion, rumor intervention strategies are not able to have a significant impact; (4) the greater the intensity of intervention, the more obvious the outcome. Experimental findings provide a solid research basis for enhancing social psychological stress outcomes and offer decision-making references to formulate the rumor combating scheme. Full article

Government social media is widely used for providing updates to and engaging with the public in the COVID-19 pandemic. While Facebook is one of the popular social media used by governments, there is only a scant of research on this platform. This paper aims to understand how government social media should be used and how its engagement changes in prodromal, acute and chronic stages of the pandemic. We collected 1664 posts and 10,805 comments from the Facebook pages of the Macao government from 1 January to 31 October 2020. Using word frequency and content analysis, the results suggest that the engagement was relatively low at the beginning and then surged in the acute stage, with a decreasing trend in the chronic stage. Information about public health measures maintained their engagement in all stages, whereas the engagement of other information was dropping over time. Government social media can be used for increasing vigilance and awareness in the prodromal stage; disseminating information and increasing transparency in the acute stage; and focusing on mental health support and recovery policies in the chronic stage. Additionally, it can be a tool for controlling rumors, providing regular updates and fostering community cohesion in public health crises. Full article

During times of public crises (such as COVID-19), governments must act swiftly to release crisis information effectively and efficiently to the public. This paper provides a general overview of the way that the Wuhan local government use Weibo as a channel to engage with their citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the media richness, dialogic loop, and a series of theoretically relevant factors, such as content type, text length, and information source, we try to examine how citizen engage with their local government. By analyzing the data mining samples from Wuhan Release, the official Sina Weibo account of Wuhan’s local government, results show that, despite the unstable situation COVID-19 over the crisis, there exist three stages of a crisis on the whole. Combining the behavior of the government and the public, duration from 31 December 2019 to 19 January 2020 could be seen as the development period, then the outbreak period (30 January 2020 to 28 February 2020), and a grace period (29 February 2020 to19 April 2020). Public attention to different types of information changes over time, but curbing rumors has always been a priority. Media richness features partially influent citizen engagement. Text length is significantly positively associated with citizen engagement through government social media. However, posts containing information sources have a negative impact on citizen engagement. Full article

Background: Studies have shown that Guinea is a natural reservoir for many serious infectious diseases: cholera, Lassa, Ebola, measles. The analysis that underlies the emergence and spread of infectious diseases are dominated by a certain ecosystem, favorable customs, the fragility of the health system resilience: warning, surveillance, adequate response or lack of research and biosafety. The objective is to analyze the links between disease and community commitment for action. Methodology qualitative, participatory and focused on the triangulation of the literature review, in-depth interviews with target and comments. Results: In Guinea, a strategy “Active Monitoring belt around Heal Ebola” (SA-Ceint) was implemented to ensure enhanced oversight and assurance á their medical and psychosocial needs. Monitoring is implemented by “National Safety Agency” in collaboration with various partners. Community-based monitoring is required to prevent new outbreaks of Ebola in the country and bring them to life and health events. The Ebola outbreak (2013–2016) reveals that in a context of vulnerability, mistrust and rumors, the management deserves a preparation. Thus, the incentive mechanisms at the community commitment of the response including surveillance have enabled side. Lessons learned have pushed the country to engage in a process of implementation of ERARE, separates, the platform “One Health” and institutionalization of community health strategies preservation of human health, animal health and protection of the environment. Conclusion: Without communication that improves knowledge and helps in solving health and biosecurity issues, it is illusory to imagine that the prevention and response programs against infectious diseases will be successful long term. Community involvement is critical to the prevention, detection, monitoring, response. Full article

In the internet age, a considerable amount of information about risk events and objects is shared in cyberspace. Since online and offline spaces are not discrete, there is a cross-effect in which perceptual or attitudinal factors in cyberspace influence offline actions, while offline attitudes affect online actions. However, few studies have examined this cross-effect. In the present study, the intention to engage in online or offline behaviors opposing nuclear energy was the dependent variable. The independent variables included risk perception factors (i.e., perceived risk, perceived benefit, trust, knowledge, and stigma) in the risk perception paradigm, and cyber factors (i.e., self-efficacy in cyberspace, involvement on the internet, trust in cyberspace, conformity to online opinion, and belief in online rumors) in the cyberpsychology paradigm. Our findings offer evidence for the cross-effect of online or offline predictors on online/offline behaviors opposing nuclear energy. All the variables in the cyberspace paradigm influenced offline opposition, while those in the risk perception paradigm affected online opposition. Moreover, the five online-related risk perception variables played a significant role in moderating the relationships of predictors in the risk perception paradigm with offline opposition. Full article