Due to the ubiquitous use of social media, our aim was to examine how social media communities are being accessed, created and maintained by D/deaf and hard of hearing users. We examined 133 social media communities of the D/deaf and hard of hearing from three main aspects: relational, substantive and technical aspects. The analysis included the size, strength, organisation and content nature of communities, members' communication and accessibility of the platform, as well as its availability, attention and response indicators. Firstly, most communities were found to be small, containing less than 500 members, being determined regionally and led mainly by organisations with an aim to create awareness among members. Secondly, members communicate mostly in written language and use sign language to a lesser extent. Thirdly, Facebook provides advantageous opportunities for D/deaf and hard of hearing users in terms of availability of captions/subtitles in videos on demand and live videos. The findings may serve educators, social practitioners and representatives of deaf clubs to get acknowledged with the functioning of social media communities, allowing the D/deaf and hard of hearing to be connected to each other in a more efficient way beyond Facebook as well.
One important theme in captioning is whether the implementation of captions in individual sign language interpreter videos can positively affect viewers’ comprehension when compared with sign language interpreter videos without captions. In our study, an experiment was conducted using four video clips with information about everyday events. Fifty-one deaf and hard of hearing sign language users alternately watched the sign language interpreter videos with, and without, captions. Afterwards, they answered ten questions. The results showed that the presence of captions positively affected their rates of comprehension, which increased by 24% among deaf viewers and 42% among hard of hearing viewers. The most obvious differences in comprehension between watching sign language interpreter videos with and without captions were found for the subjects of hiking and culture, where comprehension was higher when captions were used. The results led to suggestions for the consistent use of captions in sign language interpreter videos in various media.
During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, people have, in many cases, acquired information primarily from social media. Users’ need to stay informed and the intensive circulation of news has led to the spread of misinformation. As they have engaged in news, it has raised the question of trust. This study provides a model on how news trust can be explained through a need for cognition and news engagement. Accordingly, 433 Slovenian social media users participated in our survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that (1) the lower the need for cognition and the more prior knowledge about COVID-19 users have, the more they believe that social media news comprises all facts about the disease; (2) the more users believe that news comprises all essential facts, the more they trust that the news depicts the actual situation about COVID-19 accurately; (3) the more users are interested in engaging with social media news, the more they trust that the actual situation about COVID-19 is depicted accurately. These findings may help authorities to frame messages about COVID-19 effectively. We suggest investing more effort in disseminating new scientific evidence about the disease to contribute to the accurate shaping of knowledge about COVID-19 among social media users.
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