Timeliness of information disclosure during the low transmission period of COVID-19: resident-level observational study in China

Inter-relationships among individual views of COVID-19 control measures across multi-cultural contexts

Individual-level georeferenced data have been widely used in COVID-19 control measures around the world. Recent research observed that there is a trade-off relationship between people's privacy concerns and their acceptance of these control measures. However, whether this trade-off relationship exists across different cultural contexts is still unaddressed. Using data we collected via an international survey (n = 4260) and network analysis, our study found a substantial trade-off inter-relationship among people's privacy concerns, perceived social benefits, and acceptance across different control measures and study areas. People's privacy concerns in culturally tight societies (e.g., Japan) have the smallest negative impacts on their acceptance of pandemic control measures. The results also identify people's key views of specific control measures that can influence their views of other control measures. The impacts of these key views are heightened among participants with a conservative political view, high levels of perceived social tightness, and vertical individualism. Our results indicate that cultural factors are a key mechanism that mediate people's privacy concerns and their acceptance of pandemic control measures. These close inter-relationships lead to a double-edged sword effect: the increased positive impacts of people's acceptance and perceived social benefits also lead to increased negative impacts of privacy concerns in different combinations of control strategies. The findings highlight the importance of cultural factors as key determinants that affect people's acceptance or rejection of specific pandemic control measures.

How public confidence was established during the COVID-19 pandemic by Chinese media: A corpus-based discursive news value analysis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese media played a significant role in dispelling the public panic, establishing the public confidence and stabilizing the society during the COVID-19 pandemic. This corpus-based discourse study explored the discursive construction of news values by Chinese media to reveal how the COVID-19 pandemic was packaged and sold to the public to establish confidence in the news reporting. Adopting corpus linguistic method and the Discursive news values analysis (DNVA) framework, this study examines news values through key words, news quotations, and images in the Chinese domestic mainstream media (http://www.people.com.cn/) during two different phases of the pandemic. The results show that during the first pandemic phase (2019.12.27-2020.4.28) when there had been no treatment protocol or understanding of the medical ramifications, Chinese media dominantly constructed political Eliteness through multimodal resources to portray a people-oriented government, a transparent notification mechanism and an immediate response capability to crises, and to give the public psychological support and to cultivate positive attitudes toward the government's policy. This news reporting way exposes the universal trust of Chinese society in the political authorities. During the second phase (2020.4.29-2020.8.31) when the cognition about the COVID-19 virus had been greatly improved and more medical treatment and prevention methods had been developed, the political Eliteness was replaced by medical Eliteness which was more vital to people's safety during the health crisis. We propose actionable recommendations for scholars to use this in-depth DNVA framework to examine the social trend of thoughts during major public health crisis.

Attitudes toward COVID-19 Pandemic among Fully Vaccinated Individuals: Evidence from Greece Two Years after the Pandemic

Background

Considering the major effects of COVID-19 pandemic on health, social, economic, and political dimensions of all countries, positive attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic are essential to control the pandemic. In our study, we investigated attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic among fully COVID-19 vaccinated individuals two years after the pandemic and we identified predictors of attitudes.

Materials and Methods

We conducted an on-line cross-sectional study with 815 fully COVID-19 vaccinated individuals in Greece during May 2022. A self-administered and valid questionnaire was disseminated through social media platforms. We measured socio-demographic variables and COVID-19-related variables as potential predictors of attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic. The outcome variable was attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic (compliance with hygiene measures, trust in COVID-19 vaccination, fear of COVID-19, and information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination).

Results

We found a very high level of compliance with hygiene measures, a high level of trust and information about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination, and a moderate level of fear of COVID-19. Also, we identified that females, participants with a higher educational level, those with a chronic disease, those with a better self-perceived physical health, and those without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis adhered more in hygiene measures. Trust in COVID-19 vaccination was higher among females, older participants, those with a higher educational level, those with a better self-perceived physical health, and those without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis. Moreover, females, older participants, those with a higher educational level, those with a chronic disease, those with a better self-perceived physical health, those that received a flu vaccine in previous season, and those without a previous COVID-19 diagnosis experienced more fear of COVID-19. Finally, level of information regarding COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination was higher for participants with a higher educational level, those without a chronic disease, those with a better self-perceived physical health, and those that received a flu vaccine in previous season.

Conclusions

Understanding predictors of attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic among fully vaccinated individuals is crucial for developing appropriate public health campaigns in the future. Vaccination should be accompanied by positive attitudes in order to decrease the frequency of negative outcomes of COVID-19, such as hospitalization, complications and mortality.