The use of YouTube in western European municipalities

Three Cities on YouTube

Local governments are enhancing their governance through various information communication technologies (ICTs). This article presents an exploratory case study of three municipalities within the United States, examining how each applies YouTube for communication. Using content analysis and selected statistical tests of mean difference, the authors analyzed the videos uploaded between January 2020 to August 2020. The three municipalities used YouTube to document policymaking, publicize programs and services, update critical information during times of crises, and, in some cases, create unique brand images. The average number of views per video were similar across the three YouTube channels. However, one of the municipalities received a statistically significant number of average likes per video, which spotlights its positive brand image. In conclusion, the authors suggest directions for future research and recommend practices for social media adaptation in government.

Studying topic engagement and synergy among candidates for 2020 US Elections

This article provides a comprehensive summary of how candidates running in the 2020 US Presidential Elections used Twitter to communicate with the public. More specifically, it aims to uncover elements linked to public engagement and internal cooperation (in terms of content and stance similarity among the candidates from the same political front, and with respect to the official Twitter accounts of their political parties). Our main subjects are the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates who contested for the 2020 US Elections from the two major political fronts—Republicans and Democrats. Their tweets were evaluated for social reach, content similarity and stance similarity on 22 topics. According to the findings, Joe Biden had the highest engagement and impact (user impact: 177.08k, normalized to 0.99), followed by Donald Trump (user impact: 164.19k, normalized to 0.92). The Democrats depicted a clearer understanding of their audience, portraying an essential link between public participation, internal cooperation and the electoral campaign. The results also demonstrate that specific topics (like US Elections, and Inauguration Ceremony) were more engaging than others (Trump Healthcare Plan, and The Supreme Court Appointments). This study adds to the existing work on using social media platforms for electoral campaigns and can be effectively utilized by contesting candidates.

Resilience of political leaders and healthcare organizations during COVID-19

This study assesses the online societal association of leaders and healthcare organizations from the top-10 COVID-19 resilient nations through public engagement, sentiment strength, and inclusivity and diversity strength. After analyzing 173,071 Tweets authored by the leaders and health organizations, our findings indicate that United Arab Emirate's Prime Minister had the highest online societal association (normalized online societal association: 1.000) followed by the leaders of Canada and Turkey (normalized online societal association: 0.068 and 0.033, respectively); and among the healthcare organizations, the Public Health Agency of Canada was the most impactful (normalized online societal association: 1.000) followed by the healthcare agencies of Turkey and Spain (normalized online societal association: 0.632 and 0.094 respectively). In comparison to healthcare organizations, the leaders displayed a strong awareness of individual factors and generalized their Tweets to a broader audience. The findings also suggest that users prefer accessing social media platforms for information during health emergencies and that leaders and healthcare institutions should realize the potential to use them effectively.

Social Media User Behavior and Emotions during Crisis Events

The wide availability of smart mobile devices and Web 2.0 services has allowed people to easily access news, spread information, and express their opinions and emotions using various social media platforms. However, because of the ease of joining these sites, people also use them to spread rumors and vent their emotions, with the social platforms often playing a facilitation role. This paper collected more than 190,000 messages published on the Chinese Sina-Weibo platform to examine social media user behaviors and emotions during an emergency, with a particular research focus on the “Dr. Li Wenliang” reports associated with the COVID-19 epidemic in China. The verified accounts were found to have the strongest interactions with users, and the sentiment analysis revealed that the news from government agencies had a positive user effect and the national media and trusted experts were more favored by users in an emergency. This research provides a new perspective on trust and the use of social media platforms in crises, and therefore offers some guidance to government agencies.

Teaching Mindfulness to Mitigate Burnout in a Pandemic

BACKGROUND

Posttraumatic stress syndrome has been on the rise across all nursing specialties. When dealing with high-stress situations in the workplace, it has become clear that health care providers require tools to maintain a healthy environment.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this article is to describe an initiative to provide baccalaureate nursing students with mindfulness techniques to manage their internal reactions to day-to-day events during a pandemic.

METHODS

This is an innovative classroom initiative reviewing nursing student engagement on a discussion board related to mindfulness reflection questions before and after implementing an 8-week mindfulness program conducted from August to October 2020 in a first-year undergraduate nursing program in Texas.

RESULTS

A total of 124 student nurses participated in a mindfulness program. The majority of these were women (83.9%), aged 19-50 years, single (78.2%), and Hispanic or Latino (84.7%). Discussion board engagement increased from n = 1,001 posts over 16-week premindfulness program implementation to n = 4,191 over the first 10 weeks of the program implementation.

CONCLUSION

Nursing implications include providing an atmosphere in which nurses can practice mindfulness skills, such as being in touch with their thoughts and bodies, which will help them transition into the position of trauma nurse. As nurse educators, it is our responsibility to assist in developing tools that students and patients may use to deal with their anxiety and foster an environment that promotes learning, understanding, and compassion.

Measuring citizens' engagement during emergencies: Psychometric validation of the Public Health Engagement Scale for Emergency Settings (PHEs-E)

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of citizens' behaviors in the containment of the virus. Individuals might change their intention to adhere to public health prescriptions depending on various personal characteristics, including their own emotional status, which has been recognized to be a crucial psychological factor in orienting people's adherence to public health recommendation during emergency settings. In particular, it is crucial to support citizens' alliance with authorities and feeling of trust: public engagement is a concept that refers to the general involvement of citizens into public affairs which is generally considered an effective approach to enhance citizens' understanding of their crucial role in public affairs. However, so far there is no agreement on the metrics and indexes that should be used to measures public engagement during a health crisis. The aim of this paper is to validate a psychometric scale (PHEs-E), which intends to measure the readiness of individuals to adhere to the prescribed behavioral change to contain the emergency. Data were collected throughout the pandemic in Italy: in particular, five independent samples were recruited starting from March 2020 to March 2021. Results showed that the proposed measure has good psychometric characteristics. A general linear model was computed to assess the differences of public engagement across the different data points and among citizens with different sociodemographic characteristics. Correlations with other psychological constructs (i.e. Anxiety, Depression and Self-Efficacy) were also tested, showing that more engaged citizens have a lower level of anxiety and depression, and a higher self-efficacy. This study's findings indicate that individuals' characteristics may differentiate citizens' motivation to engage in public health behavioral recommendation to prevent the COVID-19 contagion. However the scale could be useful to perform a psychological monitoring of psychological readiness to engage in public health strategies to face critical events and settings.

Understanding government discourses on social media: Lessons from the use of YouTube at local level1

Local Governments around the world have taken advantage of social media during the past ten years to improve transparency and to provide public services. Challenges related to information management and citizen participation have emerged, namely at the local level where the diffusion of social media has been slower compared to initiatives launched at the national level. This paper analyzes how the use of social media can reflect a change in the discursive exchanges established between local governments in Canada and Mexico and citizens. To achieve this goal, the use of YouTube by the municipalities of Quebec and Morelia was examined by using digital methods and content analysis. The author proposes the emergence of new conditions between government and users, which are changing the discourse, identity, and communication purposes of the municipalities. However, the development of more dialogic communication processes supported by social media is still a promise, at least on YouTube.

Promoting Public Engagement during the COVID-19 Crisis: How Effective Is the Wuhan Local Government's Information Release?

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.

Unpacking the black box: How to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis

During times of public crises, governments must act swiftly to communicate crisis information effectively and efficiently to members of the public; failure to do so will inevitably lead citizens to become fearful, uncertain and anxious in the prevailing conditions. This pioneering study systematically investigates how Chinese central government agencies used social media to promote citizen engagement during the COVID-19 crisis. Using data scraped from ‘Healthy China’, an official Sina Weibo account of the National Health Commission of China, we examine how citizen engagement relates to a series of theoretically relevant factors, including media richness, dialogic loop, content type and emotional valence. Results show that media richness negatively predicts citizen engagement through government social media, but dialogic loop facilitates engagement. Information relating to the latest news about the crisis and the government's handling of the event positively affects citizen engagement through government social media. Importantly, all relationships were contingent upon the emotional valence of each Weibo post.

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This study investigates how to promote citizen engagement through government social media during the COVID-19 crisis.

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Media richness negatively predicts citizen engagement, but dialogic loop facilitates engagement.

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Information relating to the latest news and the government's handling positively affects citizen engagement.

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All relationships were contingent upon the emotional valence of each Weibo post.