Search Results (8,423)

Animals feature regularly on children’s television, exposing children to implicit and explicit messages about the natural world. Although animal representation and anthropomorphism have been examined across children’s media, film, literature, and popular culture, less is known about how animals are portrayed in preschool television, particularly in relation to biological and ecological accuracy. This study examined animal representations in programs aired on ABC Kids, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s free-to-air children’s television channel, using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. A total of 947 episodes from 92 programs were analyzed, with a subset of 265 episodes (43 h and 45 min) from 39 programs examined in greater detail. Animals were prominently featured, appearing on screen for 88% (171 h and 40 min) of total programming time, with programs featuring animals as central characters accounting for 41% (81 h). Nearly all central animal characters exhibited anthropomorphic traits, such as walking, talking, dressing, or behaving like humans. Inaccuracies in species depiction were common, including portrayals of animals in human-like social structures, unrealistic environments, and mixed predator–prey groupings, alongside a hierarchy based on roles and relationships. These findings indicate that realistic portrayals of animals and the natural world were uncommon. The study highlights the need for greater consideration of how animal characters are represented in preschool television, and how imaginative animal portrayals might be balanced with biologically and ecologically grounded depictions. Further research should examine how such portrayals influence children’s understanding of animals and their connection with nature. Full article

Junior high school students represent a high-risk population for social anxiety, and reducing their levels of social anxiety is particularly crucial for their growth and psychological well-being. This study aims to examine the impact of perceived stress on social anxiety among junior high school students and its mediating mechanisms. The research involved 682 junior high school students (345 females; Mage = 14.46, SDage = 0.50), using the Perceived Stress Scale, Adolescent Social Anxiety Scale, Adolescent Avoidance and Convergence Questionnaire, and Problematic Social Media Use Assessment Questionnaire. The results indicate that perceived stress not only directly and positively predicts social anxiety in junior high school students but also may indirectly be associated with social anxiety through the mediating effect of psychological inflexibility. Further mediation analysis revealed that psychological inflexibility and problematic social media use (PSMU) exerted a chain mediating effect between perceived stress and social anxiety. Specifically, perceived stress triggered psychological inflexibility, which in turn promoted PSMU, thereby ultimately may exacerbate social anxiety among junior high students. This study offers a novel theoretical perspective on understanding the formation of social anxiety in junior high students and provides empirical evidence for schools and families to implement targeted mental health interventions. Full article

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection poses a persistent global public health challenge, with substantial associated morbidity, mortality, and healthcare utilization. Although Saudi Arabia has maintained a national HBV vaccination program for decades, population-level data on hepatitis B infection knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) remain scarce and regionally limited. This study aimed to comprehensively assess KAP toward hepatitis B infection prevention among the general adult population across all regions of Saudi Arabia and to identify independent sociodemographic predictors of each domain to inform targeted healthcare interventions. Methods: This nationwide cross-sectional study used a convenience sampling approach and a validated, self-administered questionnaire disseminated via online social media platforms across all regions of Saudi Arabia between August 2024 and February 2025. KAP was assessed using an instrument adapted from Haq et al. (Cronbach’s α = 0.70). Good knowledge was defined as a score ≥11/20 (≥55%), positive attitude as ≥5/7 (≥71.4%), and good practice as ≥6/8 (≥75%). Multivariable linear regression was used to identify independent predictors, adjusting for sociodemographic covariates. Results: A total of 1278 participants were included (mean age 30.3 ± 12.4 years; 60.9% female). Overall, 54.2% demonstrated good knowledge, 68.5% demonstrated positive attitudes, and only 16.2% exhibited good preventive practices. Screening (14.6%) and vaccination uptake (26.5%) were markedly low. Educational program participation was the strongest modifiable predictor across all three domains: knowledge (β = +1.89, 95% CI: 1.20–2.58, p < 0.001), attitude (β = +0.47, 95% CI: 0.25–0.69, p < 0.001), and practice (β = +1.43, 95% CI: 1.09–1.77, p < 0.001). Healthcare sector employment was independently associated with higher KAP scores across all domains. Income demonstrated a positive dose–response relationship with knowledge and practice outcomes. Polygyny was associated with lower scores across all three domains. Conclusions: Despite moderate knowledge and generally favorable attitudes, preventive practices remain critically deficient, revealing a persistent knowledge–practice gap. Integrated, behavior-oriented interventions targeting modifiable determinants, particularly health education, income disparities, and stigma, are urgently needed to support progress toward national and global HBV elimination targets. Full article

This narrative review examines the prevalence and potential key causes of eating disorder risk among medical students across countries and training environments. Medical students frequently demonstrate a higher prevalence of eating disorder risk compared to the general population. Rates vary by instrument, geography, stage of training, and sample composition. Recurrent correlates include female gender, body image dissatisfaction, perfectionism, stress, anxiety, depression, lack of physical activity and problematic social media use. The review also highlights important methodological limitations in the literature, including predominantly cross-sectional design, heterogeneous screening tools, inconsistent reporting of all variables, limited longitudinal follow-up, and sparse inclusion of gender-diverse populations. Overall, the evidence supports eating disorder risk as an important medical student wellness issue while also showing that no single factor fully explains the observed burden. The findings support systemic changes in universities to help prevent eating disorders, including better student health education, confidential services and prioritizing student wellness. Longitudinal research is urgently needed to clarify modifiable risk factors as they relate to chronic stress in medical school and inform targeted prevention strategies. Full article

Background: Physicians play a central role in end-of-life decision-making, yet their attitudes toward euthanasia remain complex and context-dependent. This study aimed to examine physicians’ attitudes toward euthanasia in Türkiye, focusing on ethical heterogeneity and decision-making patterns associated with support for its legal permissibility. Methods: A cross-sectional, web-based survey was conducted among 250 actively practicing physicians recruited via convenience sampling through physician-oriented social media platforms between November and December 2024. The primary outcome, support for the legal permissibility of euthanasia (Yes/No/Undecided), was analyzed using multinomial logistic regression. Additional analyses included item-wise ordinal logistic regression, latent class analysis, exploratory factor analysis based on a polychoric correlation matrix, and Firth penalized logistic regression. Results: Agreement with the standard definition of euthanasia was 94.4%. Support for legal permissibility was 44.0%, opposition was 35.2%, and 20.8% were undecided. Physicians who would not personally consider euthanasia had lower relative risk ratios for supporting legalization (RRR = 0.02, 95% CI: 0.01–0.06), and those who were undecided also had lower relative risk ratios (RRR = 0.19, 95% CI: 0.06–0.57). Agreement with euthanasia was 53.2% for terminal conditions and 18.4% for general scenarios. Latent class analysis identified three classes with proportions of 52.4%, 20.3%, and 27.4%. Exploratory factor analysis yielded two factors with eigenvalues of 4.58 and 1.47. In Firth penalized logistic regression, the odds ratio for not personally considering euthanasia was 0.034 (95% CI: 0.011–0.104). Conclusions: In this sample of physicians in Türkiye, attitudes toward euthanasia were heterogeneous and multidimensional. A substantial undecided group and context-dependent differences across clinical scenarios were observed. Full article

Depression screening from social media has increasingly benefited from transformer-based architectures; however, integrating symptom-level analysis with clinically grounded diagnostic screening remains challenging. This study proposes a unified two-phase framework for social media-based depression detection aligned with DSM-5 criteria. In Phase 1, transformer-based learning strategies—Single, Voting, Stacking, Bagging, and Boosting—are employed to perform symptom-level multi-class classification of depressive symptoms. In Phase 2, the predicted symptoms are aggregated over a 14-day observation window to enable DSM-5-oriented binary depression screening. To ensure a robust and consistent evaluation, eight preprocessing configurations (D1–D8) are incorporated into the framework. Experimental results demonstrate that Bagging achieves the highest performance in symptom-level classification (F1 = 0.9394), while Voting and Boosting yield superior performance in DSM-5-oriented screening (F1-Yes = 0.7273). The findings reveal that different learning mechanisms play distinct roles across diagnostic levels, with variance-reduction strategies enhancing symptom differentiation and consensus-based approaches improving recall in clinical screening. This study provides a structured and clinically aligned framework for social media-based depression detection, offering practical insights for developing robust and scalable mental health screening systems. Full article

Kazakhstan has one of the highest suicide rates globally, yet little is known about how suicide-related content is structured and expressed on VKontakte, the country’s widely used social network. This study aimed to qualitatively analyze VKontakte communities associated with suicide, depression, and self-harm, with a focus on naming conventions, thematic characteristics, and potential indicators relevant for digital prevention strategies. A qualitative content analysis was conducted on 50 public VKontakte communities selected from a larger dataset of 2353 communities collected between December 2021 and March 2025. Communities were included if suicide- or self-harm-related references appeared in their names, descriptions, posts, or visual elements and if they had at least one subscriber with a probable connection to Kazakhstan. Textual and visual content was examined manually at the community level. Six naming typologies were identified: explicitly suicidal, self-harm-focused, depressive, ironic, supportive, and non-related. Community content ranged from direct expressions of suicidal ideation to aestheticized or romanticized representations of pain and death. Some communities contained material that encouraged or normalized self-harm with minimal moderation, while others combined supportive interactions with potentially harmful content. Overall, VKontakte communities linked to users from Kazakhstan represent a heterogeneous digital environment in which supportive and risk-related elements may coexist. These findings highlight challenges for automated detection and suggest that patterns of engagement with specific community types may serve as descriptive indicators for future ethically guided research. Full article

In contemporary society, dominated by visual communication and the intensive use of social media, educating learners to interpret images critically has become an essential task for all educational contexts. New generations live immersed in digital environments where images, often decontextualized or manipulated, contribute to shaping identities, relationships, and perceptions of reality. Within this scenario, image education should be understood not merely as technical literacy but as a critical and formative practice aimed at developing awareness, autonomous judgement, and analytical competence. The present contribution proposes a pedagogical reflection on the urgent need to integrate structured pathways of visual media literacy within school curricula, with particular attention to the role of schools as educational bastions in preventing phenomena such as the erosion of critical thinking or the diffusion of distorted and unrealistic visual models. This work situates itself within the interdisciplinary debate on Visual Education, highlighting the need to train teachers and educators capable of guiding children and adolescents in decoding visual messages and developing reflective thinking. Full article

Social media platforms have become central sites of identity construction, where visibility and legitimacy are shaped through algorithmic systems, aesthetic conventions, and platform economies. This paper approaches online personas through the lens of illusionary selves, understood here as online personas experienced as authentic while being shaped by sociotechnical processes, examining how they are produced through sociotechnical processes entangling design practices, generative artificial intelligence(AI), and cultural expectations. We present an AI-mediated critical design inquiry into how generative systems translate and normalize visual patterns of online self-imaging. Using a pix2pix-based model trained on 630 internet celebrity selfies, facial images are abstracted into dot-based representations and aggregated across selfie angles, foregrounding repetition and normalization. An interactive design installation links bodily orientation and numerical parameters to generative output in real time, introducing perceptual friction in self-imaging. A total of 30 participants engaged with the system in situated contexts, and their experiences were documented through observation, video recording, and a 5-point Likert questionnaire across three dimensions: perceptual friction, awareness of algorithmic mediation, and reflective responses to self-presentation. Results indicate high levels of perceptual friction (mean [M] = 4.21), strong awareness of algorithmic mediation (M = 4.29), and consistent reflective unease (M = 4.07). Through situated use, the system renders algorithmic mediation tangible and positions AI as an implicated actor in identity construction. This work contributes a conceptual framing of AI-mediated critical design, showing how generative and interactive systems operate as epistemic devices interrogating online persona construction. Full article

Intergenerational educational mobility constitutes a cornerstone of sustainable social development—particularly in China’s ethnic minority regions, where socioeconomic development lags behind the national average. Digital inclusive finance—with its broad geographic reach and low entry barriers—offers a promising lever for breaking the cycle of low intergenerational mobility in these regions. This study systematically examines how the development of digital inclusive finance in China affects intergenerational educational mobility in ethnic minority regions and identifies the underlying mechanisms, thereby addressing SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). Using six waves of longitudinal data (2012–2022) from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), we examine the impact of digital inclusive finance on intergenerational educational mobility. To mitigate endogeneity, we construct an instrumental variable based on historical telecom infrastructure and employ two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimation. The findings indicate that digital inclusive finance significantly enhances intergenerational educational mobility in ethnic minority regions. Further mechanism analysis indicates that the effect operates primarily through increased household net income and, more tentatively, through improved access to education-related information—proxied here by traditional media usage. Accordingly, we recommend upgrading digital infrastructure in ethnic minority regions, improving residents’ digital literacy, and aligning digital inclusive finance with education subsidies and employment guidance. This helps households convert financial access into sustained investments in offspring’s education—boosting intergenerational educational mobility and advancing social sustainability. Full article

Traditional agenda-setting theory, which is centered on legacy news outlets, now operates in a fragmented ecosystem shaped by platforms, algorithms, and networked intermediaries. Existing agenda-setting models only partially integrate algorithmic gatekeeping and audience agency, thus limiting their capacity to explain contemporary patterns of issue salience. This study revisits classic, second-level, and network agenda-setting research. It synthesizes recent work on big data, social media, and AI-driven curation to propose an agenda-setting ecosystem conceptual model for hybrid liberal-democratic media systems that links macro-level institutions and infrastructure, meso-level networked intermediaries, and micro-level cognitive and behavioral processes. Two analytical concepts have been advanced: flash agendas, defined as rapid and short-lived spikes in public attention, and agenda leadership, defined as the capacity of specific actors to trigger, steer, and sustain such spikes across platforms. This article outlines the methodological and ethical challenges of studying these dynamics, including data access, measurement validity, and transparency of algorithmic systems. It identifies directions for empirical research and policy, with particular attention to cross-platform diffusion and feedback loops. The framework aims to support more robust theory building and measurement in hybrid, algorithmically mediated media environments. Full article

In Arab societies, cultural norms, family expectations, and social visibility constraints shape how young people encounter and respond to gender-related content in online environments, yet these dynamics remain insufficiently understood. Building on prior survey research and co-design workshops that explored participatory approaches to digital intervention design, this study investigates how Arab youth in Qatar perceive and respond to issues of gender equality and social inclusion in social media contexts.The Qatari context is particularly significant due to its rapid digital transformation combined with strong cultural, religious, and regulatory influences shaping youth online expression. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two participants aged 18 to 24 residing in Qatar. The interviews explored social media activity, experiences of social inclusion, views on gender equality, and perceived challenges alongside culturally appropriate solutions. Interview transcripts were verified and analyzed using thematic analysis. The analysis revealed three interrelated thematic domains: determinants of attitudes rooted in cultural norms, values, and beliefs; attitudes toward gender equality and social inclusion ranging from supportive to resistant; and behavioral outcomes reflected in passive or active engagement as well as prosocial and antisocial digital behaviors. This study provides the first in-depth qualitative account of Arab youth’s perceptions of gender equality and social inclusion in digital spaces and offers culturally grounded insights to inform the design of inclusive and context-sensitive digital interventions. Full article

Sentiment analysis has broad applications in social media networks due to the high volume of user activity on diverse topics such as political debates. Transformer-based neural networks are among the technologies that achieve significant results in text classification. This study evaluates twelve pre-trained transformer-based models through fine-tuning for sentiment classification of Spanish-language political texts from the social media network X. Some of these models were originally created in Spanish, while others are multilingual models that include Spanish. The twelve models were trained to specialize in sentiment classification on political topics, using the same training and testing parameters, in order to compare them under equal conditions during fine-tuning. Good results were obtained with the precision, recall, and F1-score metrics mainly in multilingual models but also in some models originally created in Spanish. The study includes the detailed results of the evaluation in training and testing for the three metrics employed. Full article

Research on social media-based health communication has largely focused on non-credentialed influencers or single platforms, leaving limited empirical insight into how credentialed health professionals negotiate professional and personal identity across platform environments. Addressing this research gap, the present exploratory pilot study examines how health opinion leaders (HOLs)—credentialed health professionals active on social media—express professional and personal identities across Instagram and TikTok, and how these expressions vary by gender. Using a quantitative, multiple-case design, the study analyzes 1237 posts and Stories from four Instagram accounts and two TikTok accounts belonging to Norwegian HOLs. Drawing on theories of platform affordances and identity performativity, the analysis traces content-level patterns in how expertise, authenticity, and engagement are staged within specific platform environments. Rather than offering generalizable platform effects, this study identifies contrasting tendencies within a small set of cases: Instagram content more frequently blends professional and personal narratives—especially among female HOLs—while TikTok content is oriented toward more streamlined, expert-focused presentation. Engagement dynamics further differ across platforms, suggesting that visibility and interaction are shaped by distinct platform logics. This study contributes theoretically by demonstrating that professional identity expression in health communication is platform-conditioned and gendered, extending dramaturgical perspectives to contemporary platform infrastructures. More broadly, this study demonstrates how data-based analysis of digital trace content can illuminate shifting boundaries of expertise and identity within digital societies. Finally, given the emergence of HOLs as a socio-professional phenomenon, these findings serve as a stepping stone for larger-scale research and raise practical concerns about trust, professional boundaries, and the adequacy of existing guidelines in increasingly hybrid professional–personal online practices. Full article

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) has become a salient emotion in consumer markets shaped by social media, scarcity appeals, and social display. Yet limited research has examined FoMO as a consumption-specific emotion associated with consumer dispositions, situational cues, and post-purchase intentions. Drawing on Social Comparison Theory, Self-Determination Theory, and the Stimulus–Organism–Response (S-O-R) framework, this study examines the relationships among Materialism, Envy, Scarcity, FoMO, Impulsive Buying (IB), and Repurchase Intention (RI). Survey data from 518 Chinese consumers with prior Pop Mart purchasing experience were analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results show that Materialism, Envy, and Scarcity were positively associated with FoMO, with Scarcity showing the strongest relationship. FoMO was positively associated with IB, and IB was positively associated with RI. The results also supported three serial mediation paths, indicating that FoMO and IB served as sequential mediators between Materialism, Envy, Scarcity, and RI. This study extends FoMO research to cultural and creative product consumption and provides insight into how consumption-related emotions are associated with sustained purchase tendencies. Full article