Abstract:Online and in the real world, communities are bonded together by emotional consensus around core issues. Emotional responses to scientific findings often play a pivotal role in these core issues. When there is too much diversity of opinion on topics of science, emotions flare up and give rise to conflict. This conflict threatens positive outcomes for research. Emotions have the power to shape how people process new information. They can color the public's understanding of science, motivate policy positions, ev… Show more
“…In contrast to the idea of basic emotions, the circumplex model of affect proposes that human emotion is more complex and diverse than the basic emotion theory explains ( Russell, 1980 ). At least 28 interconnected emotional states of humans can be defined with two variables: emotional valence or sentiment and emotional arousal or intensity ( Citron et al , 2014 ; Freeman et al ., 2020 ; Yang & Chen, 2012 ). This two-dimensional model of human emotions defines emotional valence as positive and negative and emotional arousal as high and low ( Preoţiuc-Pietro et al , 2016 ).…”
Background: Facebook, as the world’s most popular social media platform, has been playing various important roles throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing users to produce and share health-related information that both eases and complicates public health communication. However, the characteristics of vaccine-related Facebook content and users’ reaction to the vaccine issue has been an unexplored area to date. Methods: To fill the previous knowledge-gap, this exploratory study wants to understand the communication climate of Facebook on the COVID-19 vaccine issue, including the nature of dominant content and users’ engagement patterns with them. Therefore, the study analyzes the 10,000 most popular Facebook posts with the highest interactions on the vaccine issue. Results: The results show that Facebook users prioritize more vaccine-related news links (71.22%) over other content. The declining interactions on the issue suggests that interaction growth mainly depends on positive news on the vaccine. Finally, users’ reaction to the vaccine issue is dominantly positive, though they may show a highly negative attitude toward vaccine misinformation. Conclusions: A few limitations and strengths of this study are discussed along with values and implications. This study for the first time analyzes Bangla language-based Facebook content related to the COVID-19 vaccine issue, which is largely overlooked in global academic research.
“…In contrast to the idea of basic emotions, the circumplex model of affect proposes that human emotion is more complex and diverse than the basic emotion theory explains ( Russell, 1980 ). At least 28 interconnected emotional states of humans can be defined with two variables: emotional valence or sentiment and emotional arousal or intensity ( Citron et al , 2014 ; Freeman et al ., 2020 ; Yang & Chen, 2012 ). This two-dimensional model of human emotions defines emotional valence as positive and negative and emotional arousal as high and low ( Preoţiuc-Pietro et al , 2016 ).…”
Background: Facebook, as the world’s most popular social media platform, has been playing various important roles throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing users to produce and share health-related information that both eases and complicates public health communication. However, the characteristics of vaccine-related Facebook content and users’ reaction to the vaccine issue has been an unexplored area to date. Methods: To fill the previous knowledge-gap, this exploratory study wants to understand the communication climate of Facebook on the COVID-19 vaccine issue, including the nature of dominant content and users’ engagement patterns with them. Therefore, the study analyzes the 10,000 most popular Facebook posts with the highest interactions on the vaccine issue. Results: The results show that Facebook users prioritize more vaccine-related news links (71.22%) over other content. The declining interactions on the issue suggests that interaction growth mainly depends on positive news on the vaccine. Finally, users’ reaction to the vaccine issue is dominantly positive, though they may show a highly negative attitude toward vaccine misinformation. Conclusions: A few limitations and strengths of this study are discussed along with values and implications. This study for the first time analyzes Bangla language-based Facebook content related to the COVID-19 vaccine issue, which is largely overlooked in global academic research.
“…However, the majority of reactions observed across all posts and livestock species were positive (e.g., Likes and Loves). Freeman et al (2020) also reported that uncontroversial scientific findings shared on Facebook yielded a greater number of Likes than other reactions.…”
Infographics utilize visuals to narrate complex information in a simple and concise manner and may represent an educational opportunity for Extension professionals. The objective of this project was to evaluate the effect of communication mode on audience engagement and reach through social media. We hypothesized infographic posts would elicit a greater number of reactions, comments, shares, and people reached compared to webpage link posts. Four informational webpages for five different livestock species (n = 20) were selected from the University of Minnesota (UMN) Extension website and were utilized to create corresponding infographics.Two infographic-webpage pairs were systematically assigned to a month and posted to the associated UMN Extension livestock Facebook page (www.facebook.com).Posts occurred on the first and third Mondays of the month with a one-week washout period between post types. Facebook metrics were recorded at 1, 4, 8, 12, 24, 48, and 168 h following posting. Results were compared using mixed-effect negative binomial regression models and reported as estimated marginal means following back transformation. Overall, posts containing infographics tended to elicit more reactions, comments, shares, and reach compared to posts containing webpage links; however, significance varied among audiences. These findings support infographics as a valuable tool for Extension professionals to effectively disseminate science-based, livestock information on social media.
“…The impact of research on society is increasingly being considered by research communities (Samuel and Derrick, 2015;Bornmann, 2013;Shaikh and Alhoori, 2019). Additionally, a growing amount of scholarly content is shared and discussed on social media platforms on a daily basis (Ding et al, 2009;Fausto et al, 2012;Freeman et al, 2020Freeman et al, , 2019. The number of research articles shared on these platforms is estimated to be increasing at a rate of 5-10% per month (Adie and Roe, 2013).…”
Section: Online Impact Of Scholarly Articlesmentioning
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