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For a puppeteer specializing in the rare and beautiful Japanese otome bunraku, the story might have ended at COVID if it were not for a series of unexpected turns. First, there was a surprise primary school lockdown job making films of reading-books to beam into pupils' homes; then, the sudden COVID precautionary ejection from the school building carrying an inadequate stock of books to continue the filming from home; then, the unexpected and possibly 'barmy' personal decision to write any extra books needed when the school stock ran out. Over weeks, my books, mainly drawings, were mounting up and intriguingly the filmed performances offered something extra, they became the stories and the images to mount on uchiwa rigid fans for me to play with. I rediscovered my 'performance body' in a 'theatre of paper' – small, private Japanese pēpāshiatā or 'paper-theatre'. My body and brain woke up. The move from a Japanese-type puppetry pre-COVID (otome bunraku) to another kind during and post-COVID was happening. Lockdown was now promisingly creative. Directly out of the pain and suffering of COVID, and enforced restraint, a little known theatre practice was offering restitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report provides an overview of the organization and content of the International Conference on Music Education Technology 2023 (ICMdT2023), a hybrid event hosted towards the end of the global lockdown in early 2023. Under the theme 'Unfold the Future of Music Education through Technology', the Conference attracted 640 academics, researchers, practitioners and professionals from different regions, all of whom participated online or in person to exchange and share their experiences and research projects on various aspects of music education through the use of technology. It included 36 workshops and paper presentations, with topics ranging from digital pedagogies for teaching and learning music online to the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and interdisciplinary approaches for music education. Challenges faced by the organizing committee are outlined, coupled with some recommendations for those wishing to host similar events that can improve knowledge exchange and encourage delegates' networking experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digitization of health promotion and communication has become a major discourse in healthcare. This paper synthesizes my understanding of the role of health literacy, promotion, education and communication in ensuring effective digitization of healthcare and presents four key findings from a mental health promotion project. First, the pandemic has shown us more than ever how fragile we all are – health-seeking behaviour will increasingly take centre stage over the next decade. Second, why do people refuse to wear masks even though it increases the risk of mortality? Why are individuals not motivated to exercise despite downloading free health apps? Why do people keep eating unhealthy food even when they can afford healthier options? Why? The numbers cannot tell the whole story. Similarly, the proliferation of digital health technology cannot convince people to modify their behaviours nor promote meaningful use of e/m-health apps. Third, deliberate digital health promotion and communication is needed to leverage opportunities in health technology. Fourth, the world needs researchers and experts who understand the broader determinants of health attitudes and are knowledgeable in synthesizing valid health information across various technological platforms, in support of health system needs. I address the implications of my findings and discuss future directions for policy and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are only a few pieces of research that show how online news covers the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on different sections of society, including marginalized groups such as women and people with disabilities (PwD). During the COVID-19 pandemic, when marginalized people struggle for their livelihoods, inclusive journalism plays an important role. This research investigates the practice of inclusive journalism through the framing of women and PwD in some Indonesian online news media from March to June 2020. This research employed the content analysis method to analyse and study several news portals covering COVID-19 issues in local Yogyakarta and the national context. Framing data of the two marginalized groups showed the Indonesian news portals have portrayed women and PwD during the early phase of the pandemic. The dominant frames applied include government policies and solidarity for both women and PwD in national news, and solidarity and resilience for women and PwD in local news. It was found that all of the news on marginalized groups had a positive tone. However, because of limited access to marginalized groups and their supporters, government sources became dominant actors in determining news frames. Therefore, inclusive journalism has not been fully achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lucy Dawes Durneen introduces the first of two Special Issues of Short Fiction in Theory and Practice dedicated to the theme of 'the health of the short story'. She considers the short story's formal affinity with instability, fractured spaces and the fragility of existence, along with its ability to heal. She also comments on the way in which metaphors drawn from health are often deployed in relation to anxieties about the status and the survival of the short story form. She reflects on the literary context of writing and publishing during the COVID-19 pandemic and introduces the reader to the contents of the journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first season of Ted Lasso (2020–23) was filmed in 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19, and released on Apple TV+ in August 2020, while much of the world was still in various stages of lockdown. The series has been praised by many critics and scholars for its focus on reconstructed masculinity, healing and kindness, set against the backdrop of British football. These themes have contributed to the perception that the show's success was due to it espousing uplifting and positive feelings that were needed escapism during this unprecedented global experience, which was greatly informed by apocalyptic discourse. This article thus examines Ted Lasso not as escapism or as utopianism, but as a regenerative apocalyptic narrative in which many of the traumas of the real world are confronted and transformed. Close-textual analysis focuses on the characters of Rebecca Welton and Ted Lasso's intersecting narratives of trauma and reconstruction to reframe an understanding of the apocalypse away from the global to the personal. I use this analysis to demonstrate how the series uses an apocalyptic framework to offer a path through trauma towards a culture of regeneration. Rather than providing an escape, I argue that the series offered audiences the tools to negotiate the complexities of a COVID-world. The article consequently shows how Ted Lasso represents an alternative apocalyptic narrative that undermines nihilism in favour of 'the Lasso way'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of political memes in recent years allows us to assume that they are a new tool of political communication and that social networks increase the possibilities for civil society to express opinions and intervene in the debate on matters of public interest. This article aims to examine the memes that have been disseminated on Twitter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa in the wake of the president's speeches to the nation to discover whether one can speak of a political rhetoric in memes and their argumentation. To this end, the research uses a qualitative-quantitative approach to classify the taxonomy of memes according to their content, combining the thematic classification of memes and the typology of images in digital discourse to discover the existence of the use of popular political rhetoric. The final sample comprises 351 memes, and the analysis shows that they used humour as a means of escape rather than as an effective way of sending political messages. Thus, the results reflect the existence of a resignification of popular culture that transcends memes as persuasive elements based on the inertia of popular rhetoric in contemporary political communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the aesthetics of European pop music in the aftermath of the 2019–23 COVID-19 pandemic. I will suggest that this created the perfect conditions for the proliferation of a new kind of pop. Euphoric in tone, post-pandemic pop has been orientated towards the dance floor, nostalgic for 1980s sounds and unconcerned with lyrical complexity. However, it is not without pathos. I will argue that the interpolation of 1980s synth-pop is a symbolic return to the AIDS crisis. I will suggest that musical codes aestheticize sadness in a way that is both familiar and distant. In this direction, film and television soundtracks are particularly potent. Russel T. Davies's It's a Sin (2021) screened at the height of the pandemic became a lens through which many understood COVID-19, with music a tool for processing loss, longing and tragedy. The proliferation of disco during this period repositioned the genre as a contemporary form. Focusing on the summer of 2023, however, I will contend that in the revival of Italo disco, we encounter futuristic sensibility, which perfectly fits the post-pandemic mood. A paradoxical gift from our 1980s ancestors, Italo could be the key to unlocking the paralysis of never-ending reminiscence. It is time to turn the lights on the disco and explore the contemporary resonance of a genre that has always existed in the shadows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community music-therapy (CMT) service evaluation in older adults' care home communities is an important process to enhance the quality of therapists' outputs and the development of client-centred approaches to meet the needs of residents and community. However, administrative limitations that could affect therapists' contact time with clients may lead to the underestimation of service evaluation within the system. This study aims to explore community music therapists' perceptions of the impact of their services in older adults' care home communities using a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews. The therapists were asked to reflect on specific aspects of their community music therapy service, potential cognitive-behavioural and physiological effects of therapy, best-practices for assessment in MT and challenges experienced in this particular setting. Participants highlighted the unique value of CMT in care home communities. They demonstrated the ability to detect and assess impacts of CMT using clinical analysis methods, which can improve care plans for the residents. However, certain limitations, such as reduced hours, inadequate funding and a lack of recognition of CMT's benefits by care home staff, were identified. Moreover, the analysis shed light on how COVID-19 impacted the CMT service in this context, emphasizing the need for adaptability and resilience in providing care. The implications of the results in an Italian community context are further analysed and discussed, stressing the importance of supporting CMT as a fundamental service in care home communities for older adults. By addressing the highlighted limitation and embracing the perspectives of community music therapists, care homes can optimize their services and enhance the well-being of their residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the experiential qualities of drawing from the world of Google Maps. It will consider the possibilities of drawing from digital geographies and the potential of virtual travel to offer newfound perspectives. Notions of regret, danger and magic are investigated to support the concept of the artist-cyberflâneur as the practice of observing, revealing and reclaiming parts of the internet space through artistic endeavours. Regret: How does drawing from the Google Map reality incite comparisons and feelings of longing? Danger: What are the rules of copyright and the restrictions of edited, curated online spaces? Magic: What can the artist's work from Google Maps reveal about our world as distanced observers, and what transportive qualities can Google Maps inspire? This article will bring in personal experience of drawing from virtual travel as a solo artist and drawing with others, reflecting on social drawing from Google Maps as part of artistic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How We Stopped and Listened to the Birds is an ongoing urban illustrated reportage that follows my artistic practice as research in Amsterdam during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on informal online interviews with inhabitants and specialists in urban studies. Through this illustrated reportage, I wondered how the illustrator-researcher could embody urban space through digital/online mediums and online interviewing. Transcription refers to creating a written record of spoken or musical expressions. However, it falls short when it comes to interpreting these online conversations in illustration. Besides transcribing, the process of creating the illustrated reportage dealt with imagining the entanglement of memories, stories and geographies provided in the participants' words and expressions in hopes of creating a sense of place in an affective storyworld. The transcribing of these online interviews in illustration reflects the interviewees' perspectives and experiences and, simultaneously, my interpretation and reconceptualization of space. Consequently, How We Stopped and Listened to the Birds becomes a privileged space for discussion where the urban illustrations can disrupt official narratives of urban space by containing simultaneous traces of reality and imagination and creating a unique affective atmosphere between both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reflection on the hurdles faced by arts and health organizations during England's COVID-19 lockdown in 2020–21 through the work of the arts team at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), Lime Arts. As the pandemic hit, Lime risked being shut down, their premises reallocated and staff redeployed. Convinced that, more than ever, frontline health professionals might benefit from creative workshops, Lime piloted a six-month innovative programme of online creative workshops for MFT staff. Lime then partnered with the Employee Health and Wellbeing Service to take the online workshops across the Trust, creating a new project called Create.Connect.Unwind. The pilot phase ended in May 2022 with a Creativity and Wellbeing Festival at Manchester Royal Infirmary. The authors reflect on this two-year project, considering in retrospect the team response, the participant response and the artwork created as well as the creative perspective behind the project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early stages of the global COVID-19 pandemic threw into relief the communication skills of governments and their leaders. Aotearoa New Zealand was known for its exceptional communication response and elimination of the virus in this initial phase. Much of the praise was attributed to the communication skills of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. However, this study focuses on the work of Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris, a science communication collaboration that aided public understanding in Aotearoa New Zealand and around the world. In March 2020, during the initial wave of COVID-19, microbiologist and science communicator Dr Siouxsie Wiles teamed up with cartoonist Toby Morris to help simplify her message and reach a wider audience. Work from their collaboration has been shared globally, translated into dozens of languages and used in press conferences by the prime minister of New Zealand. This case study uses a VUCA framework in a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with Morris and Wiles and the communications they produced. It asks what characteristics of this collaboration helped people navigate the global VUCA situation of COVID-19 and whether an appropriate counter-VUCA model exists for this communication context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the constructions of Africa in COVID-19-related stories that were produced by African news media. Dominant scholarship indicates that western media generally reproduce and perpetuate harmful stereotypes on Africa. Given that there is scant literature on how African media covers Africa, this article uses the COVID-19 pandemic as an entry point to explore the disease narratives on Africa. Drawing on Afrokology as decolonial perspective, this article examines the discourses and narratives on Africa that were produced by African news organizations. Data were drawn from ten news organizations from Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Egypt. A quantitative corpus analysis and a qualitative critical discourse analysis were used to analyse the COVID-19-related stories. Findings demonstrate that harmful disease stereotypes about Africa as a place of danger, darkness, tragedy and human rights abuses were reproduced by the African media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US White flight left historically and intentionally targeted marginalized groups in cityscapes in the impoverished dust of public transport. These racialized phenomena restructured urban environments and deadened surrounding landscapes, engendering deliberately barren space too far to traverse by no- and low-income feet. Now, in the present-COVID-19 envirusment, Midwest landscapes are an eyesore, which perpetually disable and dehumanize, further denying working folks from safe social distancing and PPE in areas already plagued with socio-historical and economic disenfranchisements. Meanwhile, redlined and/or gentrified affluent spaces remain composed of mostly Whites of a certain status. This project explored present-COVID-19 human implications of cars in a nation founded upon ecological devastations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the pluralities of vocal behaviours and vocal aesthetics in present-day musical theatre are understood and manoeuvred in the context of teaching musical theatre voice. Transcribed interviews with six elite voice teachers in the Broadway community are analysed and placed into a conceptual framework of the 'omnivorous voice' (based on sociologist Richard Peterson's writings on cultural omnivorousness and sociologist Antoine Hennion's writings on tastes); the article also engages with Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis. Four central themes are generated and discussed: (1) understanding omnivorous code-switching and shape-shifting as a fundamental potential of the voice, (2) manoeuvring vocal omnivorousness by carefully attending to sonic information, (3) searching for authenticity in an omnivorous vocal world and (4) expanding and diversifying vocal aesthetics beyond musical styles and genres. This article contributes to the fields of performing arts pedagogy and voice training in musical theatre, and aims to provide insights into how vocal technique and vocal aesthetics are influenced by, taught in, and created in dialogue with the communities and societies in which our voices exist. The last is especially explored in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Happiness index is an all-inclusive methodology to assess well-being and happiness aspects of human resilience and sustainability. Pandemic like COVID-19 has brought deep level changes to human lifestyle and social behaviours. The world has been reshaped and life has more than likely changed permanently. This has led to calls for mental health, yet there is a dire need to introspect the mental state of health and behavioural changes. Happiness index is calculated based on factors such as GDP, freedom to make choice, health life expectancy and social support. These factors are analysed using datasets from social media with machine learning algorithms to map human response to the pandemic. This research focuses on use of artificial intelligence on the impact of lockdowns due to COVID-19 on the global happiness index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to identify and analyse the impact of digital innovations to manage business operations during COVID-19 lockdown. Due to COVID-19, a nation-wide lockdown affected the Indian economy severely as both service and manufacturing organizations were closed for a long duration. Thus, to manage with these challenges and address the expectations of their employees, organizations identified various artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based digital innovations to continue their business operations during lockdown. The study used a systematic review of literature and document analysis to unravel such innovations that have been initiated and implemented in Indian organizations during COVID-19 lockdown. The study finds that digital innovations and strategies are useful for coping with unseen challenges and also can transform the organizations into smarter ones. The study proposes a conceptual framework on the basis of findings, which will be used for futuristic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world's supply chains are changing as both expected and unexpected environmental pandemics occur. Even though some may be expected, the full extent and ramifications a pandemic will have is an estimate at best. Thus, both flexibility and resiliency are becoming crucial to efficient supply chain systems. This study analyses the recent COVID-19 phenomenon and uses it to gauge reactions, best practices, resilience-based issues and operational performance metrics in order to assist with potential future pandemics. Education, as seen, plays a pivotal role in effectively offering options to combat uncertainty and fluid situations. Such dynamic environments have historically posed a serious problem to operations; however, with proper preparation and care taken options are available today that help marginalize harm of future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this conceptual article is to explore the drivers behind digital disruption that have taken the whole globe by storm as a result of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. Motivation of the researcher in constructing the article was to logically alert the present-day and future-world business leaders on how to respond to the digital disruptive forces attributed to deadly viral pandemics like COVID-19. The current article is based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) of secondary data sources, mainly peer-reviewed journal articles, the purpose being to draw conclusions and identify research gaps. It is based on a structural analysis methodology to frame the categories of the major analyses in combination with scientific rigour to a broad and complex problem. Research results proved that the primary forces driving digital disruption in pandemic ravages include technology dynamics, globalization and demographics. They evolve in successive waves. It is these waves that generate novel digital and technological disruptive megatrends. Implications to contemporary business leaders include bringing in present-day digital technologies, incubating survival plans of actions or strategies so as to fully operationalize businesses seamlessly. These may include, but not limited to, establishing technological innovation appetite meant to address, respond and navigate within the associated digital disruptive complexities. The study results underscore the necessity of understanding digital disruption and global businesses' viability under COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first study to conceptually examine the digital disruption and global businesses' viability under COVID-19 pandemic. The research contributes to literature and theoretical novel introspections into the depth and breadth of digital disruptive technologies and corporate strategy by an explication of how various corporate metamorphoses can lead to navigation and survival in such COVID-19 pandemic environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many schools around the globe to close their doors and relocate learning to virtual environments. Teachers were forced to transition the way they educated – from classroom to computer screen, from co-presence to distance, from hands on to hands off. High school teachers in New Brunswick turned to Microsoft Teams to help safely educate students from a distance. To investigate how Teams uniquely influenced the way teachers constructed, presented and shared knowledge, and how students responded to these approaches, I interviewed eight New Brunswick high school educators who taught in the Teams virtual environment during the 2020–21 school year, the first full school year of the pandemic. This article provides insight into some of the potential impositions and pedagogical constraints Teams placed on teaching practices; in what sense the software guided or limited teacher pedagogy and what challenges and opportunities teachers and students experienced; in what ways Teams might be reshaping ways of thinking, feeling, acting and knowing. As an approach to this investigation, Marshall and Eric McLuhan's Laws of Media (1988) are employed as an inquiry mechanism by which the generalizable rules, patterns and structures of Teams can be recognized and studied. Through these conversations, I observed the enhancement of anytime/anywhere learning; the obsolescence of the physical classroom; the retrieval of lectures; the reversal of connectedness to disconnectedness. The Laws of Media allow education reformers to gain insight into the effects of using Teams as an educational tool before cultural norms and practices become too entrenched in the system, affording education districts and departments time to understand them and make a judgement on if, how and when Teams will be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 outbreak made theatre and performance practitioners think to find alternate ways of performing for an audience. This article engages with the idea of site specificity in relationship with the living experiences of the residents' pre- and post-COVID outbreak. It also illuminates the alternatives which were designed to bring the audience in a physical space following lockdown guidelines. The article investigates the different aspects of site-specific theatre, and seeks to understand what role site, space and place play in thinking about dramaturgy for a performance. Using a practice-based research example, The Present of the Past (TPOP), which was devised during the lockdown in the United Kingdom, I examine the potential of unconventional theatre lights (ceiling bulbs, table lamps), sound and pre-existing objects to find scenographic solutions in devising a site-specific performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motherhood during the COVID-19 pandemic has brought forward a host of parenting challenges to the forefront and crystallized the already existing invisible workload and stress on mothers. With the usual support system in the form of schools, day-care, extra-curricular activities all vanishing overnight since March 2020, the process of mothering has been affected with higher physical and emotional labour and a greater responsibility for managing care of the children and household while playing a multitude of roles – mother, partner, guardian, friend, employee and employer – ensuring everyone is safe! Unfortunately, the pandemic has adversely affected professionally employed mothers around the world, often making them rethink their careers with the increase in overall workload and juggling the demands of work and childcare and household chores. This chapter is an endeavour using an autoethnographic method towards understanding the lived experiences of performing motherhood through the eyes of an Indian academic mother. As an academic mother, there have been challenges towards dedicatedly engaging with teaching online, learning, research and publishing, and productivity demands while actively mothering a young child and making sure the house runs like clockwork, all played out in the unfamiliar ground of pandemic survival. Even though there have been advances made in the current Indian sociocultural landscape, there are still tropes of patriarchy present within the system, which further exacerbates the mothering challenges. Using a social-constructionist lens, this personal account will present a slice of change within the traditional Indian family system through the lens of gender equality – equal parenting and shared responsibility within the household. Along with this, how building elements of self-compassion and mindfulness practices in the author's daily routine aided in skilfully manoeuvring the grips of COVID-19 fatigue will also be presented. I hope this personal narrative will extend support to fellow Indian academic mothers towards advocating for more structural changes both within themselves, while highlighting the need for self-care and grace as well as within their homes towards a more balanced and shared responsibility of performing motherhood through the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During COVID-19, private living spaces have become settings for activities usually taking place elsewhere. Work, education and leisure activities have moved in, while we have moved out and now frequently project our private interiors onto the screens of others when meeting online. We see ourselves reflected while reflecting each other, and we peek into the lives of strangers while staging our own for the world to see. If such virtual cross-extensions of public and private domains are not completely new, then they have been taken to a whole new level during the pandemic. The article explores such projected interiors extended between screens and walls and the implications these have for the thinking and making of a future living space. It asks how in response to the current environmental crisis the experience of the pandemic interior might help project new spaces radically different from the ones of pre-pandemic times. Two versions of a drawing made in the early 1920s by the Swiss German artist Paul Klee evoke the experience of spatial relationships familiar from the pandemic house. Creative writing of an inflected space detected in the drawings identifies an opening in the fabric of the interior potentially leading us into a future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The March 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States created an immediate need for news, information and interaction. Public health communication scholars recommended media strategies that emphasized accurate information about the virus and mitigation measures, providing access to experts, and using opinion leaders to relay recommendations to the public. Local radio is a critical medium during a crisis because it can inform the public while comforting listeners with reminders of community pride. This study analysed programming on four local talk radio stations in New Jersey, Minnesota and Rhode Island, documenting how the stations and their announcers served the public during those chaotic early days. Despite notable exceptions, these stations properly kept listeners informed about what their leaders were doing about the pandemic, while also calling upon local symbols and aspects of culture, comforting and reassuring listeners, and giving them a space to share their stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally daily news podcasts have exponentially grown in popularity. To build on the increased interest in this podcast format, this study examines three distinct programmes in this genre. The focus of our research specifically highlights the significant news events during the summer of 2020: the killing of George Floyd, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a set of genre conventions adapted and expanded from previous podcast and radio news scholarship, this research analyses the impact podcasting has on daily audio news production. Our findings indicate the podcast host's empathy and intimacy, coalesced into powerful, immersive deep dive discussions. Those kinds of conversations have strongly influenced and transformed daily news production, while still maintaining journalistic ethics and aesthetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on literature's potential for healing – both medical and sociopolitical – in times of severe crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Affect is an important literary tool to make people aware of social inequalities, in particular reading or writing short stories with the experience of a simultaneous real-life pandemic. Reading is an embodied act through which the reader enters into a dialogue with both the author and the text. Emotions emerge that are often more deeply stored in memory than the words as such, and that changes our perception of the world. This effect is also encapsulated in Siri Hustvedt's analysis of reading practices, Sara Ahmed's affect theory and Rita Felski's four ways of engaging with texts. I analyse John O'Hara's short story 'The Doctor's Son' (1935), situated in rural Pennsylvania at the time of the 1918 Influenza, and Victor LaValle's 'Recognition' (2020), resonating with the COVID-19 pandemic in an isolated apartment building in New York City. Both stories question the concept of pandemics as the great levellers by pointing out social injustice due to class and ethnic hierarchies. Taking Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death' (1842) and Poe's emphasis on the preconceived and single effect of fear and subsequent horror caused by the 'Red/Black Death', as a starting point, the article presents O'Hara's story as a manifestation of the medical, social and ethnic phenomena at work in 1918: social distancing, facial masks, closed public institutions, people's resistance to these measures and medical treatment along ethnic and class lines. LaValle's 'Recognition' allows readers a glimpse into the relationship between an unnamed African American woman, who is also the narrator, and Pilar, a Colombian American woman, who dies of the virus. As part of a contemporary Decameron project, 'Recognition' stresses the human need for community, communication and, thus mutual human recognition, giving the dead – whether rich or poor – a name and demanding to undo systemic social inequalities. In that sense, literature can heal the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social distancing reinforcement under COVID-19 seriously limited the opportunities of practising and performing for arts and music performers. While many activities can be transferred online with minimal effort, the latency obstacle in using live streaming audio software negatively affects the musicians and singers in performing or practising online. The researchers sought to integrate both asynchronous and synchronous solutions to mitigate the demand of rehearsal practices. This action research applied and examined the viability of both low audio latency technology and mobile learning applications with amateur choir members. The researchers and participants field-tested and improved the choir's online practice by using the JackTrip Audio Device (an audio low-latency device), Sight Singing Studio and Practice Bird (two mobile apps). Using current technology, we found that amateur choir singers have opportunities to keep learning and performing 'together' while staying healthy from virus threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has unravelled the significance of having robust communication structures about health and disease to dynamic societies. The need to construct a mutual understanding of health issues has become imperative, and achieving a universal understanding of the disease burden requires robust information-sharing processes which can easily surmount the barriers to communication. What is challenging, however, is to communicate in a way and in a language that the majority of the population understands. In Malawi, where the majority of the population (84 per cent) live in rural areas, and without access to information technologies, it becomes more challenging when devising messages that should reach such hard-to-reach populations. This therefore begs the question: how effective is the COVID-19 communication to the Malawi public domain? This article attempts to answer this question by discussing the language choice vis-à-vis the lingua-cultural needs of the masses in COVID-19 awareness, and the strategies and modes of communication in COVID-19 communication. In view of this, the article argues that the government communication strategies concerning COVID-19 were not entirely effective. The article notes that the use of English in most of the COVID-19 messages has excluded the majority and has perpetuated the attitude of perceiving COVID-19 as a disease for the rich people. The modes being used in communicating COVID-19 do not effectively reach the masses since the media penetration is minimal resulting in most Malawians getting second-hand information and developing myths and conspiracy theories. The article concludes that it is imperative for Malawi to devise a contextually appropriate framework for communicating complex health messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing popularity of walking pilgrimage has created new forms of interaction and exchange between pilgrims and residents along pilgrimage routes. As a result, religious hospitality along these pilgrimage routes is also under transformation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted along the Koyasan Choishi-michi pilgrimage route in Wakayama, Japan, this article examines how the meanings and experiences of osettai ('religious hospitality') change over time and space. Focusing specifically on the role tourism plays in the current transformation of religious hospitality, the article begins with a historical analysis of osettai and its meanings in pre-modern Japan. Next, we examine how osettai was interrupted due to the decline in walking pilgrims, but also sustained through the maintenance of indirectly related religious practices. The discussion then outlines the transforming meanings of osettai from a practice of giving offerings in return for spiritual reward, to a commodified economic service and finally to a form of cultural exchange. We conclude that placing religious faith as a central theme of analyses, not tourism, can offer new insights and deepen our understandings of how religious hospitality is both transformed and maintained through tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects upon my short visual recording Eyedrops: A Monoculogue (2021). It describes the thinking process of creative avoidance (both making something new, but recycling ideas and materials which already exist, both in the mind and close to hand); pleasure in making (the haptic joy of production); considerations of performance; being audience to one's own work when exhibited alongside other work responding to the same initial call; re-presenting the work in a workshop context. While it draws upon interdisciplinary theoretical writing to provide phenomenological and ekphrastic considerations of the work, moving between the three-point dynamic which links and divides viewing positions: the image (screen), subject (eye) and the object (puppet), it employs an immediacy of writing, which resists the usual considerations of academic scholarship in a move to free up thinking and to expose the emotional and experiential, questioning what it is to 'see'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coronavirus popularly known as COVID-19 is a pandemic that stormed the globe and rendered strong nations helpless and even the world powers, powerless. Initially, the Nigerian government was reluctant to put measures in place or lock its borders until a returnee was diagnosed after he had infected some people. This necessitated several measures including total lockdown, social distancing and improved personal hygiene to forestall its spread. Moreover, Nigerians believe that the state of the nation is even worse than this pandemic and, thus, have developed mastery, especially via satire in weathering any kind of storm. It is therefore, not surprising that the Facebook has become a veritable platform where Nigerians evoke humour while exposing human foibles in their linguistic disposition, with the intention to improve the society. This study, therefore, examined the satirical devices in the Facebook posts of Nigerians with the aim of teasing out the ideologies portrayed in relation to the existing social, economic and political attitude of the people towards the pandemic. Consequently, 22 Facebook posts were purposively selected for analysis, drawing input from Horatian's approach to satire and Fairclough's (1995) sociocultural approach to Critical Discourse Analysis. The analysis reveals various satirical elements deployed as a subtle and effective alternative to contest power abuse, social injustice and propagate change. The study also reveals the wittiness and absurdity of satire that makes it a ready tool to unbridle people's feelings; laden with different ideologies with the aim of relaxing tension and catalysing transformation in the society. Moreover, the import of weathering the storm becomes bare as an essential make-up of Nigerians; the tinge of humour intended in the posts relieves perceived tension and reminds the readers to take life easy, thus, making the study quite engaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humour as a communicative activity is meant to evoke laughter in people, hence, the amusement of an utterance is typically judged by its response from the audience. This study examines amusing tweets on the COVID-19 pandemic and traces the intertextual origin of discourse in some of the tweets. It primarily explores the core role of humour as a cultural tool for satire. The incongruity theory of humour was employed as a theoretical framework for the study as it helps to better understand the reason Nigerians' tweets are antithetical to prevailing circumstances in the country. This is a qualitative research design where a content analysis of 125 amusing tweets relating to the COVID-19 pandemic was sampled on Twitter. Search terms such as #May4, #3rdMainlandBridge, #KoroIsOurMan and #Obanikoro were employed to identify the pattern of humour in selected tweets as Nigerians' tweets at the period revolved more around each of the hashtags. Open messages sent via Twitter were assessed adopting purposive sampling technique. Particular characteristics such as location of users, timeline of the lockdown and its relaxation (25 March–30 June 2020) formed the parameters for the selection of the tweets. Though the coronavirus scourge has left thousands of people dead in its wake, Nigerians' tweets and memes during the lockdown did not in any way reflect gloom or sombreness. This will pique an average readers' interest as there is a violation of normative expectations. The results therefore reaffirm the age-long relevance of the incongruous in humour and the satirical role of intertextuality in discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic both as a tool for communicating COVID-19-related messages and as a platform for sharing lighter moments during the distressful time. My article focuses on these lighter moments in the form of internet memes. My interest is on internet memes shared by the cyber public in Malawi. I contend that besides the humour, the memes carry insightful commentary on and criticism of society's reaction to and handling of the pandemic. The memes poke fun at petrified and distressed Malawians, at some politicians who took advantage of the pandemic to further their own interests and how the outbreak widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Some sinophobic memes accused China of infecting the world with virus. My methodological and theoretical approaches are based on netnographic studies and theories of humour (nature and function) respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020, art teachers put remote teaching in Finnish comprehensive schools into operation in varying ways. One popular implementation was classical art memes, an assignment that art teachers shared through professional networks in social media. This phenomenon brought out the question: what kind of meanings did art history-related memes construct during the pandemic in Finland? The authors collected and analysed empirical data that consisted of a questionnaire for art teachers (N = 14), students' meme works (N = 45) sent to the authors by the teachers, and assignments that were given. The research approach was critical inquiry. The main components of the theoretical framework were meme theories and crisis pedagogy, with which the authors confronted the national curriculum. Although Finland has not been among the most afflicted countries by the pandemic, the sudden flip to remote teaching created anxiety and a sense of crisis among teachers, who tried to find a balance between their own workload, students' confusion with the new learning situation and the demands of the curriculum. The analysis concentrated on four themes: the COVID-19 crisis in meme manifestations, teaching art history, art education through making and art education as copying and repeating. The authors concluded that it is crucial to highlight the conceptualizing and contextualizing of art beside actual art-making. From this emerges an essential challenge for in-service training: critical knowledge production and discourse practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic has posed critical and unprecedented challenges to the well-being of people across the globe, threatening human health, social stability and economic prospects. The crisis has mobilized stakeholders from different departments to empower citizens and help them understand the situation, restore control, minimize risks and enhance resilience. As a result, all parties such as healthcare providers, policy-makers, public authorities and NGOs have been struggling to develop effective messaging and communication approaches in order to provide the public with information about what they can do and how they can help themselves. Communication is a vital arm when a crisis hits; it helps the audience perceive and respond to risk messages in a rational and critical way. This article examines the role of crisis communication (CC) amid coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Morocco. It aims at understanding citizens' different perceptions and opinions about the communication approach incorporated during the crisis. A survey questionnaire was conducted with a total sample of 250 participants. The questionnaire was used to investigate the extent to which communication has helped citizens understand the crisis situation and effectively respond to its challenges. The findings highlight that Moroccans hold positive attitudes towards the communication approach adopted during the COVID-19 emergency; they acknowledge the importance and efficiency of the communicated information in shaping public perception of risk and enhancing resilience, prevention and mitigation. Thus, this article proves the assumption that CC, using different platforms and resources, can play a life-saving role in increasing understanding and enhancing risk control and disease management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to unique restrictions on human sociability. In response, exceptional initiatives using a range of existing technologies and platforms have emerged to mitigate lockdown isolation. Basement Traxx, a kind of hybrid DJ set streamed from a Glasgow basement, was one of these initiatives. As the lockdown was extended, it became a virtual gathering space, with unexpectedly powerful impacts on its audience. This research seeks to define and describe this phenomenon. In this study, we find new permutations of engagement in space, in time and in presence. We find expressions of joy in the show's particular sociability. In the isolation of lockdown, here is an experience in which participants felt affirmed, validated and re-constituted as subjects and actors. In their response, we find an enthusiastic push-back in favour of communal musical spaces and against a political economy of music that has pressed relentlessly towards isolation, individuation and commodification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shares the outcomes of a participatory art-based inquiry conducted during stay-at-home orders due to COVID-19 and the impact on the mental health and well-being of college-age students (age 18–21) in the United States. Participants engaged in artmaking sessions alongside researchers to respond to prompts geared to help them process their experiences. Findings that emerged from the project suggest that art-based practices in a community setting may support students in navigating times of great uncertainty by offering participants a chance to express themselves and process complicated feelings. Based on our findings, we offer art-based practices as a way to support young adults as they process the negative impact of the pandemic, transition back to campus, and navigate the college experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People labelled/with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) participate in community-based studio programming across the United States, yet their experiences and preferences for studio programming are not well known. The goal of this research was to learn what artists in a community-based studio think is important about their studio and what they want to change in the future. Using art-based appreciative inquiry and online methods, the artists were prompted to talk and create artwork about 'what is most important' in the studio and 'what we want for the future'. The artists reported that the most important aspects of the studio are the staff and their friends at the studio and the opportunity to make art that is motivated by their interests. The wishes expressed by the artists included increased opportunities to be social, to make more money, to have more community access and more choice and control in the studio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-dating COVID-19 it was widely acknowledged that there was a loneliness epidemic and that prolonged loneliness and reduced human touch results in increased propensity to heart disease, stroke and clinical dementia. Given such statistics, and the use of isolation and shielding as a health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that creative projects or research investigations embed strategies to address the potential fragmentation of community and increased difficulty of social connection. This discussion examines two Australian art-based projects – 'A Place in Our Art' and 'Shorewell Presents ... Dear Friend' – to illustrate the use of arts and cultural activities to maintain and support social connection. The article draws on arts-health and performance theory to unpack project design and outcomes of using both physical and virtual creative art-based engagement strategies in a crisis to entice continued participation and support well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the use of digital collage as art-based research (ABR) to process the COVID-19 pandemic by an employed art therapist. The researcher/artist created a series of digital collages over a four-month period that were explored symbolically and metaphorically to comprehend a period of collective grief. The investigation explores digital collage as an applicable ABR method and highlights the importance of expressive therapists creating their own art, especially during times of crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shortly after the first lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Amsterdam Museum launched the online exhibition Corona in the City. The multimedia platform, which invites inhabitants of the city of Amsterdam to contribute their own stories, aims to collect the pandemic as it is experienced. The authors look back on the trajectory of the platform during its first year and observe how, through a combination of curating and 'uncurating' the content, the museum demonstrates a broader change in its policy towards collecting and storytelling. We reflect on ways in which the platform has and will change according to how the pandemic unfolds, and propose that it can serve as a pilot for more democratic, co-created institutions in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 March 2020, it has become a source of worry across countries within the global space. It has posed not only a health challenge but also an economic and a linguistic burden. Linguistic burden because many efforts are being made by stakeholders to appropriately represent or codify the manifestations of the disease in unambiguous and understandable terms. Hence, one of the major platforms where COVID-19 has been variously represented is the social media. This study, therefore, focuses on a multimodal analysis of the representation of the COVID-19 pandemic on two social media platforms: Facebook and WhatsApp. The study adopts Kress's social semiotic model as theoretical framework. This model explains the meaning affordances of verbal and non-verbal semiotic resources. It examines communicators' intentions and makes meanings through multiple semiotic modes. This model is adopted because it offers a sociological perspective to the interpretation of visual texts. Twenty-five semiotic resources comprising memes and flash headlines, which were purposively sourced from Facebook and WhatsApp over a period of twelve weeks between April and July 2020, were analysed in the study. The data were subjected to both pictorial and simple descriptive linguistic analysis. The study reveals that COVID-19 memes extend economic and social concerns in Nigeria. The semiotic resources expose social problems such as poverty, insecurity and inequality in the Nigerian society which pose a threat to strict adherence to safety measures; and establish the manifestation of religion and gender issues in COVID-19 debates. Furthermore, it provides informative-cum-instructional functions in the fight against COVID-19. The study suggests that the deployment of appropriate linguistic and extralinguistic codes could guarantee effective and targeted public health enlightenment on COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has had a long history of institutionalized racial segregation and although it came to an end in the early 1990s, the level of power, racial and inequalities are still evident to date, making South Africa one of the most unequal societies in the world. Kenya, on the other hand, has had its share of inequalities, particularly inclined towards political and ethnic dimensions. The emergence of COVID-19 has further uncovered social and political fractures within the two societies with racialized and discriminatory responses to fear disproportionately affecting marginalized groups. Using qualitative research design, and case study approach, a corpus of tweets from social media archive (Twitter) when the first COVID-19 cases were recorded in both countries were analysed to ascertain the conversations occurring and if it re-enforces existing postcolonial issues. The study argued that Twitter conversations that occurred in both countries show that postcolonial issues of power and race are rife and appeared in many public conversations on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the first death from Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was reported in Kenya on 15 March 2020 the mainstream media seemed to play its role of sensitizing the public and giving coverage as the government enforced regulations to fight the pandemic. However, a critical observation indicated that the media were not doing much more than government propaganda. The focus of this study is to analyse the ideology that drives the Kenyan mainstream media. The research particularly focuses on the study of photographs that were published in Kenya's two leading newspapers, the Daily Nation and The Standard, between 15 March and 30 April 2020, to decode the ideological meanings hidden in the photographs. This study is guided by these three research questions: how is the fight against COVID-19 photographically represented in Kenyan newspapers? What mythic meanings are embedded in these photographs? What ideological nuances can be read in these photographs? The analysis used Roland Barthes's framework of semiotic analysis. Findings show that the photographs published in the two newspapers in the period of study support the dominant government ideology and promote gender and class inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has presented both a health and an information risk with the viral spread of sometimes partial, false or erroneous news. In the Arab region, the media spheres have been saturated with information regarding coronavirus news. From social and traditional media, Arab audiences have been bombarded with a plethora of information, some of which was confusing and contradictory. As coronavirus sweeps across the world, many questions have been raised about the possibility of practicing the rites of the month of Ramadan and to observe fasting by Muslims. With the multiplication of the responses from medical staff, doctors of the law and political representatives, COVID-19 has simultaneously become a health, religious, political and ethical problem for the Muslim world. The premise elaborated so far calls for an in-depth research on the return of news on the official Facebook pages of three online magazines during the coronavirus emergency. The research carries out a qualitative media content analysis of all the news published by three digital ethnic newspapers: The Muslim News (United Kingdom), the Saphir News (France) and the Daily Muslim (Italy). The magazines have undertaken to stem the spread of fake news by offering users data and updates on COVID-19, proposing themselves as authoritative voices and reliable sources of information. Ramadan turns out to be a very central element in the three magazines in different measures, since it is an issue that becomes more and more urgent for the Muslim community as the weeks go by. The centrality of the religious element in the information flows is in line with the centrality of Islam in the individual and community life of the faithful. The health and religious emergency were narrated together providing updates on the daily measures to be put in place. Individuals have been called to face the health emergency stimulated by their sense of responsibility towards others also through religious principles. Social media have played an important role from religious, cultural and social points of view in one of the most important moments of the year for the Islamic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of society and no more so than in educational applications of theatre for children in schools. This article explores the complexities of what applied theatre/drama offer the young to think critically and develop empathetic human relationships crucial to sound mental health. The article's authors reaffirm ways in which applied theatre/drama and TIE have contributed to healthy social development through contributions to the Personal, Social and Health Education curriculum. Cited are recent projects with compromised praxis in the face of the pandemic. Identified is a shift in educational priorities that are returning to traditional approaches in place of wider heuristic social education. Consequent moves to online teaching and imposition of social distancing has led to concerning levels of social distancing potentially impacting negatively on mental health of the young. However, applied theatre/drama disciplines play a particular role in facilitating emotional maturity through critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article creatively presents a framework of conducting expressive arts therapy online during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to help people tap into the four modes of being through multimodal arts to respond to the alienation in each of them due to the pandemic. Tea, which has similarities with watercolour but is more natural and easily accessible, serves as the core art material in the creative process. This article includes experience of the participants who voluntarily joined a one-off online workshop, giving a clearer picture of the therapeutic process and changes. The relevance of tea to the four modes of being is discussed, and the ways in which the framework can be implemented are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As collaborators from different nationalities, genders, cultural backgrounds, occupations and age cohorts, in this article we present an account of our art-based research during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project employed art practice as a way to deal with the noxious effects of isolation on our mental health and well-being during the many prolonged lockdowns in Melbourne, Australia. With reference to Warren Lett's concept of companioning, in our ongoing companioning dialogue through poetry and paintings, together with a final song, we explore our psychological struggles. This contribution can be read in several ways: as an example of our research into art practice, as an artistic companioning dialogue between two writers and friends trying to make sense of and survive isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and finally, as an offer, an invitation to explore art as a cathartic and coping process in a companioning process, which we have termed companioning autoethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural experiments are examinations of spontaneous and often transformative acts of nature, including artistic expression. The empirical research produces generalizable outcomes as documented during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. This article discusses how the unplanned nature of natural experiments is contrary to the pervasive practice of research in higher education, including the author's personal experience as a research advisor. It is suggested that in the future, art-based natural experiments will enable research to correspond to life processes more fully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]