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The impacts of climate change on human health are a critical public health concern, with previous studies highlighting its clear effects on well-being. Understanding how state and territorial health agencies (STHAs) are addressing these emerging risks is important. This study conducted 26 in-depth interviews across the U.S. to explore the perceptions and communication strategies of STHA officials regarding climate change's impact on human health. Additionally, the study sought to identify the primary challenges faced by these officials to effectively communicate the impacts. Thematic analysis of the data revealed three major themes: community building and coalitions, climate denialism on social media, and misinformation about climate change and its effects on human health. These findings offer valuable insights for climate change and public health communication. The importance of the STHAs' development of technical and informational capacity to effectively communicate climate-related risks and threats is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the memorable messages about mental health that international students (N = 199) received from various sources since arriving on campus in the U.S. Utilizing the memorable messages framework, we examined the types of messages (normalizing, strategizing, minimizing) they received and their association with message satisfaction, mental health stigma, and attitude toward help-seeking. The most frequently recalled messages were normalizing messages (49.2%), followed by strategizing messages (31.7%), and minimizing messages (9.5%). Participants who recalled normalizing and strategizing messages reported higher satisfaction and a more favorable attitude toward help-seeking compared to those who recalled minimizing messages. These findings offer theoretical implications for memorable messages and immigrant populations, as well as practical implications for campaign messaging and design. These results can guide university officials in tailoring their efforts to meet the mental health needs of this vulnerable population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science journalism in Global South is hindered by several factors, including the absence of local science stories, insufficiently trained science journalists, and a communication gap between communities of scientists and journalists. Drawing on observations from South Asian science journalism and employing the communities of practice framework, this essay proposes ideas for a multi-stakeholder collaboration that aims to bridge the gap between science and journalism in the Global South and to bring science journalism to the mainstream, through a shared goal, partnership, resources, literacy, mentoring and content production. We propose a sustainable institutional interfacing structure — a reciprocal and iterative Coalition for Science Journalism (CSJ) — between science advocacy organizations (SAOs) that produce science knowledge, professional media associations (PMAs) that promote professionalism, and media organizations (MOs) that disseminate information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the induction of information technology and the use of imagerepair focused crisis response strategies on social media by Pakistan Railways amid a recent crisis. A mix-method based content analysis (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) to investigate whether and if so, how Pakistan Railways used Benoit's suggested image restoration strategies on social media to repair its image among customers and in print media. Our results show that Pakistan Railways predominantly used reducing the offensiveness of event (40%), followed by corrective action (34.6%), evasion of responsibility (10.6%), denial (8%) and mortification (6.4%) strategies, respectively. In addition, the use of image-repair focused crisis response strategies significantly varied by social media platform. An analysis of the publics' emotions found in their online comments reveals that, during the course of the organizational crisis communication, negative public emotions gradually subsided into ambivalent ones; and contrary to a highly negative newspaper coverage tone in the beginning of the crisis, the introduction of the Twitter handle has associated with more positive media coverage afterward. Theoretical and practical implications, especially the need for advancing social-mediated crisis response effectiveness in developing countries, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polio vaccine hesitancy remains high in Pakistan due to various socio-political, religious, and economic factors. To address this, the government of Pakistan and its international partners such as UNICEF have devised a multipronged communication strategy to counter resistance to polio vaccine in hard-to-reach areas of the country. In this strategy, mainstream news media has been identified as a key stakeholder, as they have the potential to reach a wide range of population and disseminate easy to understand messages including both visuals and text. However, less scholarly attention has been paid to how mainstream news media in Pakistan frame polio and polio vaccine in their visuals. This study aims to fill this gap. Using visual framing as a theoretical framework, we analyzed 115 images from three selected newspapers published from 2010 to 2022. Our results suggest that the newspapers depicted hard-to-reach areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province which were more affected by polio and highlighted the criminality and securitization of polio vaccine in the country. In addition, female polio healthcare workers, who are instrumental in eradicating the disease, have been given marginal coverage, reflecting the importance of gender sensitivity in the region. Overall, this study contributes to the fields of visual communication, health communication, and international communication, particularly related to the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the experiences of communication officials at local health departments (LHD) in the US Midwest regarding the correction of health misinformation on Facebook during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through interviews with communication officials, this study examined how and why they corrected health misinformation, the challenges they encountered during the correction process, and the importance of having fact-checkers within LHDs. The analysis of the data revealed four major themes: factors influencing misinformation correction on Facebook, perceived effectiveness of health misinformation correction, the intersection of the First Amendment and health misinformation, and the role of fact-checking in LHDs. The LHD communication officials often faced conflicts and public rebuttals when directly correcting misinformation leading them to adopt the strategy of addressing misinformation through future posts instead of direct correction. These findings provide significant insights for communication officials to identify and correct health misinformation and emphasize the need for healthcare organizations to provide essential resources to information and communication professionals during times of crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being among the world's most affected countries by climate change, Pakistan is facing a variety of cases of climate injustice committed by internal and external drivers. Waisbord's referred "Advocate-journalist" model carries a good potential to advocate these injustices to stimulate democratic dialogue among the audience that eventually pushes leadership to make eco-friendly policies. This study critically analyses advocacy journalism coverage of cases of local and regional climate injustice in the editorial contents of mainstream Pakistani newspapers by using the quantitative content analysis method. Results reveal that selected newspapers gave inappropriate coverage to climate injustice issues both in quantity and quality. Besides muddled local and regional climate injustice issues' priorities, editorialists also excessively recommended dirty energy solutions to the policymakers. The final analysis suggests that the findings of climate and energy-related scientific studies were not being reflected in the advocacy journalism contents as well. This failure of "advocate-journalist" model to perform its normative role of potentially advocating the cases of climate injustice with compelling scientific evidence seems to attribute to the political economy of the press or editorial inattention. As a way out of this journalistic lack, Waisbord's endorsed "civic advocacy" groups must intervene to plug the loopholes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about public reactions to state security officials' suicide in Muslim countries like Pakistan. To explore readers' reactions in online comments, we analyzed 1,765 comments related to 10 news stories about suicide published in five mainstream English newspapers. The findings revealed six themes: stress, depression, and mental health issues; controversial investigation reports and misinformation; need for stronger accountability to address corruption in the country; criticizing media and security institutions; sympathy for the deceased and their families; and suicide and Islam. We recommend that suicide prevention organizations should monitor audience comments to devise and suggest resources for the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the theory of normative conduct, which suggests that individuals get motivated by what most people do, this commentary argues that the COVID-19 vaccine selfies carry a reasonable potential to encourage the vaccine acceptance behavior among social media users. Despite having both its proponents and critics, the COVID-19 vaccine selfie could positively shape the public response to the vaccines by highlighting health, joy, and optimism. While discussing different strategies for taking and posting an effective selfie, this article recommends sharing vaccine selfies online as it is a powerful tool to send a message to anti-vaxxers that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prescription drug misuse and opioid overdose have become one of the most serious health crises in the US health system. In this study, we examined Last Week Tonight as hosted by John Oliver in order to explore topics, sentiments, and reactions by referring to online comments on YouTube. Using an unsupervised machine learning approach, we analyzed 33,741 user generated comments taken from three selected episodes published between 2016 and 2021. Our results revealed 13 topics: the politicization of the opioid crisis, side effects of opioid use, seeking help, legal issues, reactions to the John Oliver show, drug addiction, the US in comparison with other countries, case settlements, the drug business, addiction and pharmaceutical companies, profitability of companies from deaths, drugs and elections, as well as general awareness and education. In addition, we found that opioid side effects, seeking help, and the drug business had received the highest user engagements in terms of likes and replies. Our study suggests that comments with positive sentiments were more likely to cause a more widespread engagement from YouTube users than negative comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the COVID‐19 pandemic started, Asians, particularly those in Chinese communities, have faced increased discrimination and overt racism in addition to the virus itself. In this study, the authors examined social representations of COVID‐19 in mainstream newspapers. We evaluated 451 articles from three major publications representing three countries: China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. A qualitative thematic analysis, conducted through the lens of social representations theory (SRT) and its concept of cognitive polyphasia, revealed four major themes: (a) the virus' portrayal as a threat; (b) the racialization of COVID‐19 as a multi‐faceted threat; (c) calls for collectivization to curb the racialization of the virus; and (d) speculative solutions to end discrimination against Asians. Our results suggest that print media emphasize the idea that global efforts must be made to change how people think about, talk about, and understand the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has reportedly been rising in polio-stricken Pakistan. Prior research reports a variety of contributing factors including information sources, particularly the newspapers readers generally consult to stay abreast of vaccine roll-out developments. This viewpoint article argues that three commonly practised journalistic routines – as explicated by Tandoc and Duffy – are promoting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among Urdu-language newspaper readers in Pakistan. The first is a distinctive news sourcing routine, in which extracts of news items reporting COVID-19 vaccine campaigns from across the globe are combined in one news story, which is useful to keep readers updated but compromises the journalistic principle of completeness. Second, news values, which may determine the newsworthiness of a vaccine-related event, might reduce public trust in ongoing vaccine roll-outs. Third, an innovative news structure with striking headlines is used to make a newspaper visually appealing but may also support generalised impressions of the adverse effects associated with COVID-19 vaccinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic signifies not only a global health crisis but has also proven to be an infodemic characterised by many conspiracy theories. Prior research informs us that belief in health-related conspiracies can harm efforts to curtail the spread of a virus. Therefore, as the global efforts of mass inoculation are underway, it is crucial to understand which factors shape tendencies to believe in conspiracy theories. In the current study, we explore how Pakistani adults' perceived risk of COVID-19, sense of national identity, and trust in traditional and social media sources, are associated with their belief in conspiracy theories related to the pandemic. The data for this study come from an online survey of 501 adults ages 18–49 conducted in April and May 2020 in Pakistan. Our results show that a perception of risk makes it less likely for the participants to believe in conspiracy theories even when taking into account key demographic factors. Furthermore, trust in social media has a positive association with belief in conspiracy theories, whereas trust in traditional media and people's sense of national identity are not associated with conspiracy beliefs. This study offers important scholarly and policy implications for navigating major global health issues, in Pakistan and other similarly situated countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Polio is considered a serious threat to public health in Pakistan. • Online commenters show empathy for polio health care workers. • Misinformation on polio vaccine as an amplification of new polio cases. • Online commenters correct misinformation and false claims by providing factual information on polio. • Pakistan launches the Perception Management Initiative (PMI) to block anti-vaccination propaganda social media pages. Polio, which is caused by poliovirus, is a contagious, potentially crippling, and deadly disease. Pakistan is one of the countries in which polio is still endemic in the 21st century. In 2019, 146 polio cases were reported across the country with some resulting in deaths. Following the spread of rumors insinuating that children were falling sick after receiving an anti-polio vaccine, a mob attacked and set fire to a small hospital in the Peshawar district in April 2019. The present study investigates readers' discussions that emerged from Dawn's online readers' comments on polio-related news stories in Pakistan. Using thematic analysis, we analyzed (N = 2216) comments made by readers in the polio-related news stories published on Dawn.com from January 1, 2012, to March 1, 2020. Seven major themes emerged from the analysis of the comments: 1) reasons for and challenges resulting in the failure to eradicate polio; 2) proposed solutions and policy changes to eradicate polio; 3) misinformation; 4) criticism, frustration, and shame; 5) comparison of Pakistan to other countries; 6) the internet as a public sphere; 7) suffering, empathy, and appreciation. Overall, our findings suggested that commenters are knowledgeable about polio vaccines and consider polio a serious threat to public health in Pakistan. Our study not only validated previous study findings such as reasons, challenges, and issues related to polio vaccination, but also found new challenges in online news sites concerning misinformation on polio and polio vaccination in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last couple of years, digital diplomacy has become a fascinating area of research among Mass Communication, Peace and Conflict Studies, and International Affairs scholars. Social media and new technology open up new avenues for governments, individuals, and organizations to engage with foreign audiences. However, developing countries' governments are still lacking in the realization of the potential of social media. This study aims to analyze the usage of social media (Facebook & Twitter) by the two biggest countries in South Asia (Pakistan and India). I selected 10 government officials' social media accounts including prime ministers', national press offices', military public relations offices', public diplomacy divisions', and ministries of foreign offices' profiles. The study relies on quantitative content analysis and a comparative research approach. The total number of analyzed Twitter tweets (n=1,015) and Facebook posts (n=1,005) include 10 accounts, five from each country. In light of Kent and Taylor's (1998) dialogic communication framework, the results indicate that no digital engagement and dialogue occurs between government departments and the public through social networking sites. Government departments do not engage with local or foreign audiences through digital media. When comparing both countries, results reveal that India has more institutionalized and organized digital diplomacy. In terms of departmental use of social media, the digital diplomacy division and foreign office of India is more active than other government departments in that nation. Meanwhile, Pakistan's military public relations office and press office is more active than its other government departments. In conclusion, both countries realize the potential of social media in digital diplomacy, but still lack engagement with foreign audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide attempt rates are on the rise in predominantly Islamic Republic of Pakistan. However, there exists an indigenous academic apathy toward exploring media-suicide relationships. This study, using content analysis and interviews, examines the lack of compliance with international ethical guidelines for suicide reporting by Pakistani newspapers. In 553 reported suicide cases, 2,355 guideline violations were detected. The overall tone of suicide news stories remained overwhelmingly irresponsible, and analysis indicates that both Urdu and English language newspapers made similar violations. Largely ignorant of international standards, Pakistani journalists report attempted suicide cases just like any other crime. This study suggests a prompt action on the part of appropriate bodies to amend relevant codes of ethics and eventually educate relevant journalist fraternities to report suicides in a socially responsible way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed-method study investigates the state of media and information literacy education in Pakistan by underlining the availability of relevant courses and trained teaching and research faculty at both public and private universities. Using United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) framework, this study explores the perception of faculty members across six key areas of general education and teacher development to improve the quality of media and information literacy in the country. These six key areas include (a) policy and vision, (b) curriculum and assessment, (c) pedagogy, (d) media and information, (e) organization and administration, and (f) teachers' professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]