COVID-19 Study on Scientific Articles in Health Communication: A Science Mapping Analysis in Web of Science

Newspaper Coverage of Hospitals During a Prolonged Health Crisis: Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study

BACKGROUND

It is important for health organizations to communicate with the public through newspapers during health crises. Although hospitals were a main source of information for the public during the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about how this information was presented to the public through (web-based) newspaper articles.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to examine newspaper reporting on the situation in hospitals during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands and to assess the degree to which the reporting in newspapers aligned with what occurred in practice.

METHODS

We used a mixed methods longitudinal design to compare internal data from all hospitals (n=5) located in one of the most heavily affected regions of the Netherlands with the information reported by a newspaper covering the same region. The internal data comprised 763 pages of crisis meeting documents and 635 minutes of video communications. A total of 14,401 newspaper articles were retrieved from the LexisNexis Academic (RELX Group) database, of which 194 (1.3%) articles were included for data analysis. For qualitative analysis, we used content and thematic analyses. For quantitative analysis, we used chi-square tests.

RESULTS

The content of the internal data was categorized into 12 themes: COVID-19 capacity; regular care capacity; regional, national, and international collaboration; human resources; well-being; public support; material resources; innovation; policies and protocols; finance; preparedness; and ethics. Compared with the internal documents, the newspaper articles focused significantly more on the themes COVID-19 capacity (P<.001), regular care capacity (P<.001), and public support (P<.001) during the first year of the pandemic, whereas they focused significantly less on the themes material resources (P=.004) and policies and protocols (P<.001). Differences in attention toward themes were mainly observed between the first and second waves of the pandemic and at the end of the third wave. For some themes, the attention in the newspaper articles preceded the attention given to these themes in the internal documents. Reporting was done through various forms, including diary articles written from the perspective of the hospital staff. No indication of the presence of misinformation was found in the newspaper articles.

CONCLUSIONS

Throughout the first year of the pandemic, newspaper articles provided coverage on the situation of hospitals and experiences of staff. The focus on themes within newspaper articles compared with internal hospital data differed significantly for 5 (42%) of the 12 identified themes. The discrepancies between newspapers and hospitals in their focus on themes could be attributed to their gatekeeping roles. Both parties should be aware of their gatekeeping role and how this may affect information distribution. During health crises, newspapers can be a credible source of information for the public. The information can also be valuable for hospitals themselves, as it allows them to anticipate internal and external developments.

Mapping the output of the global literature on the links between gut microbiota and COVID-19

BACKGROUND

The term "human microbiota" refers to populations of microorganisms that live harmoniously in co-existence with humans. They contribute significantly to the host's immunological response when confronted with a respiratory viral infection. However, little is known about the relationship between the human microbiome and COVID-19. Therefore, our objective is to perform a bibliometric analysis to explore the overall structure and hotspots of research activity on the links between microbiota and COVID-19 at the global level.

METHODS

The research literature on the microbiota and COVID-19 published between 2020 and 2022 was obtained from the Scopus database. Bibliometric analysis and network visualization were performed with VOSviewer.

RESULTS

Of the 701 publications selected, the USA contributed the most (n = 157, 22.40%), followed by China (n = 118, 16.83%) and Italy (n = 82, 11.70%). Hotspots in this field were "COVID-19 is associated with an altered upper respiratory tract microbiome," "the effect of antibiotics on the gut microbiome," as well as "patient nutrition and probiotic therapy in COVID-19."

CONCLUSIONS

The links between microbiota and COVID-19 remain an urgent concern at present, and the use of probiotics or/and antibiotics during the pandemic needs to be further improved. This landscape analysis of the links between the microbiota and COVID-19 will provide a basis for future research.

A bibliometric analysis of linguistic research on COVID-19

Research on COVID-19 has drawn the attention of scholars around the world since the outbreak of the pandemic. Several literature reviews of research topics and themes based on scientometric indicators or bibliometric analyses have already been conducted. However, topics and themes in linguistic-specific research on COVID-19 remain under-studied. With the help of the CiteSpace software, the present study reviewed linguistic research published in SSCI and A&HCI journals to address the identified gap in the literature. The overall performance of the documents was described and document co-citations, keyword co-occurrence, and keyword clusters were visualized via CiteSpace. The main topic areas identified in the reviewed studies ranged from the influences of COVID-19 on language education, and speech-language pathology to crisis communication. The results of the study indicate not only that COVID-19-related linguistic research is topically limited but also that insufficient attention has been accorded by linguistic researchers to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, and Corpus-based discourse analysis in exploring pandemic discourses and texts.

Bibliometric Analysis of International Scientific Production on the Management of Happiness and Well-Being in Organizations

The interest of the scientific community and, consequently, the scientific production of topics on happiness and well-being at work, or the management of happiness in organizations, has been increasing over the years. The main objective of this bibliometric analysis is to determine the evolution of the concepts referred to in published scientific works. Bibliometric methods and techniques are used to analyze the themes and the most relevant trends, the number of papers and their citations, and the main institutions, and to highlight areas where the most research has been done on these issues. In addition to the review of the scientific literature, 312 studies are analyzed and net-mapped. The most outstanding results are the increase in the number of papers and citations during the health pandemic caused by COVID-19; the importance given to the transversality of well-being programs in corporations; and the greater frequency of research on the benefits of promoting the improvement of quality of life for work performance and its social impact.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the residential real estate market on the example of Szczecin, Poland

The aim of this article is to assess the impact of the socio-economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the residential property market. Research in this area has been conducted all over the world. The conclusions of these studies are inconclusive. In different countries and different cities, the changes in the property markets observed from 2020 onwards differ. These differences concern both prices and the number of transactions. In this situation, it is important to conduct research in as many markets as possible. Summaries of such research will allow certain patterns to be identified, which will provide a global perspective on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the property market. The paper describes the short-term changes that have occurred in the formation of residential property prices and the number of transactions concluded. Separate analyses were conducted for property sales and rental transactions. The research was carried out on the data of over 5000 transactions in one of the biggest Polish cities - Szczecin. The city is divided administratively into four districts, which was also taken into account in the study. This made it possible to assess whether, just as the impact of the pandemic varied between cities and countries, it also varied at district level within one city. Confirming the diversity of impact will allow conclusions to be drawn as to whether the pandemic affects each market equally or whether different property markets are affected differently by restrictions and changes in the decisions of property market participants.