Social Media Effects on Public Trust in the European Union
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PROVIDER: S-EPMC10662665 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Over the past decade, the European Union has lost the trust of many citizens. This article investigates whether and how media information, in particular visibility and tonality, impact trust in the European Union among citizens. Combining content analysis and Eurobarometer survey data from 10 countries between 2004 and 2015, we study both direct and moderating media effects. Media tone and visibility have limited direct effects on trust in the European Union, but they moderate the relation between trust in national institutions and trust in the European Union. This relation is amplified when the European Union is more visible in the media and when media tone is more positive towards the European Union, whereas it is dampened when media tone is more negative. The findings highlight the role of news media in the crisis of trust in the European Union.
| S-EPMC6376603 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The study investigates the relationship between trust in social media and beliefs and preventive behaviours in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We surveyed 1008 respondents in South Africa to study how trust in social media relative to other information sources predicts perceived risk and adoption of preventive behaviours. Although engagement with and trust in social media do not predict less adoption of preventive behaviours, trusting information from social media more than information from mass media or scientists is associated with less risk perception from COVID-19 and reduces the adoption of preventive behaviours (including vaccines).
| S-EPMC9560499 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSocial media platforms are frequently used in health communication campaigns. Common understandings of campaign effects posit a sequential and linear series of steps from exposure to behavior change, commonly known as the hierarchy of effects model (HOE). These concepts need to be reevaluated in the age of social media, which are interactional and communal.ObjectiveThis review aims to update the traditional HOE for health communication campaigns in the context of social media, including identifying indicators of effectiveness and how these are conceptualized to lead to health-related outcomes.MethodsWe conducted a systematic review of studies following PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines reporting on the use of social media as part of health communication campaigns, extracting campaign information such as objectives, platforms used, and measures of campaign performance. We used these data, combined with our understanding of the HOE, to develop an updated conceptual model of social media campaign effects.ResultsWe identified 99 eligible studies reporting on 93 campaigns, published between 2012 and 2022. The campaigns were conducted in over 20 countries, but nearly half (n=42) were conducted in the United States. Campaigns targeted a variety of health issues and predominantly used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Most campaigns (n=81) set objectives targeting awareness or individual behavior change. Process measures (n=68; eg, reach and impressions) and engagement measures (n=73; eg, likes and retweets) were reported most frequently, while two-fifths (n=42) did not report any outcomes beyond engagement, such as changes in knowledge, behavior, or social norms. Most campaigns (n=55) collected measures that did not allow them to determine if the campaign objective had been met; that is, they were process evaluations only. Based on our review, our updated model suggests that campaign exposure can lead to individual behavior change and improved health outcomes, either through a direct or indirect pathway. Indirect pathways include exposure through social and policy changes. "Engagement" is positioned as critical to success, replacing awareness in the traditional HOE, and all types of engagement are treated as equal and good. No consideration is being given to potential negative engagement, such as the distribution of misinformation. Additionally, the process is no longer linear and sequential, with circular pathways evident, such as engagement not only influencing behavior change but also generating additional exposure to campaign messages.ConclusionsOur review has highlighted a change in conventional understandings of how campaigns can influence health outcomes in the age of social media. The updated model we propose provides social media campaigners with a starting point to develop and tailor campaign messages and allows evaluators to identify critical assumptions to test, including the role and value of "engagement."Trial registrationPROSPERO CRD42021287257; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=287257.
| S-EPMC10382952 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC11018069 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Public consultations strengthen the informational advantage and policy legitimacy of bureaucracies by allowing them to collect and aggregate information on stakeholder preferences. How well consultations perform this function depends on the dimensional structure and complexity of the policy spaces describing them. Building on the research on spatial models of politics, we derive a set of expectations about the dimensional structure and policy content of consultation policy spaces. We assess our argument empirically by analysing 42 consultations organised by the European Commission via online surveys across all policy areas. Using Specific Multiple Correspondence Analysis (SMCA) we find that more than 70% of the analysed consultations present low-dimensional policy spaces characterised by one or two main dimensions, although some also display a three-dimensional space. The substantive content of policy dimensions is consultation-specific and varies greatly across events. Most dimensions capture stakeholder alignments with respect to policy instruments, and only a few with respect to the orientation of the policy regime. The unveiled consultation policy spaces reflect a regulatory model of stakeholder engagement in policymaking. Our findings underscore the challenges and opportunities of information provision, preference aggregation and the identification of stable majority equilibria in the context of public consultations and bureaucratic policymaking.
| S-EPMC11835313 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The growing use of social media field experiments demands a rethink of current research ethics in computational social science and psychological research. Here, we provide an exploratory empirical account of key user concerns and outline a number of critical discussions that need to take place to protect participants and help researchers to make use of the novel opportunities of digital data collection and field studies. Our primary contention is that we need to elicit public perceptions to devise more up-to-date guidelines for review boards whilst also allowing and encouraging researchers to arrive at more ethical individual study design choices themselves. To ground our discussion in real-world examples of online experiments, we focus on recent social media studies in the field of misinformation, polarization, and hate speech research. We conclude by discussing how we can better strike a balance between meeting ethical guidelines and the concerns of social media users alongside maximizing scientific impact and credibility.
| S-EPMC11525638 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Foodborne illness is prevented by inspection and surveillance conducted by health departments across America. Appropriate restaurant behavior is enforced and monitored via public health inspections. However, surveillance coverage provided by state and local health departments is insufficient in preventing the rising number of foodborne illness outbreaks. To address this need for improved surveillance coverage we conducted a supplementary form of public health surveillance using social media data: Yelp.com restaurant reviews in the city of San Francisco. Yelp is a social media site where users post reviews and rate restaurants they have personally visited. Presence of keywords related to health code regulations and foodborne illness symptoms, number of restaurant reviews, number of Yelp stars, and restaurant price range were included in a model predicting a restaurant's likelihood of health code violation measured by the assigned San Francisco public health code rating. For a list of major health code violations see (S1 Table). We built the predictive model using 71,360 Yelp reviews of restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area. The predictive model was able to predict health code violations in 78% of the restaurants receiving serious citations in our pilot study of 440 restaurants. Training and validation data sets each pulled data from 220 restaurants in San Francisco. Keyword analysis of free text within Yelp not only improved detection of high-risk restaurants, but it also served to identify specific risk factors related to health code violation. To further validate our model we applied the model generated in our pilot study to Yelp data from 1,542 restaurants in San Francisco. The model achieved 91% sensitivity 74% specificity, area under the receiver operator curve of 98%, and positive predictive value of 29% (given a substandard health code rating prevalence of 10%). When our model was applied to restaurant reviews in New York City we achieved 74% sensitivity, 54% specificity, area under the receiver operator curve of 77%, and positive predictive value of 25% (given a prevalence of 12%). Model accuracy improved when reviews ranked highest by Yelp were utilized. Our results indicate that public health surveillance can be improved by using social media data to identify restaurants at high risk for health code violation. Additionally, using highly ranked Yelp reviews improves predictive power and limits the number of reviews needed to generate prediction. Use of this approach as an adjunct to current risk ranking of restaurants prior to inspection may enhance detection of those restaurants participating in high risk practices that may have gone previously undetected. This model represents a step forward in the integration of social media into meaningful public health interventions.
| S-EPMC4811425 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The main objective of this paper is to assess the efficiency of the European Union's public sector from a quality of governance approach, employing a two-step methodology. In the first stage, EU states' efficiency scores are determined using Data Envelopment Analysis. Once quantifying public efficiency, the second step of the methodology examines the determinants of efficiency using a quantile regression estimation technique, with an emphasis on demographic features, corruption, economic freedom, and governmental digitalization. The novelty is provided by the assessment of the public sector's efficiency and efficacy from a broader approach in order to determine the efficiency scores of European Union countries, as well as the key factors that may impact the public sector's performance. The main findings, namely that governance quality can be considered an important resource in analysing public performance and that human resources, freedom, democracy, corruption, and digitalization have an impact on efficiency, are important considerations not only for policymakers but also for society, researchers, and the academic community. Reform measures should strive to improve both the technical and democratic components of public institutions in order to more effectively and transparently allocate public resources, while taking into consideration local and national peculiarities.
| S-EPMC10490916 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Today, as an increasing share of women and men is involved in both paid tasks at work and unpaid care tasks for children and other relatives, more people are at risk of work-family conflict, which can be a major threat to well-being and mental, but also physical health. Both organizations and governments invest in arrangements that are meant to support individuals in finding a balance between work and family life. The twofold goal of our article was to establish the level of work-family conflict in the member states of the European Union by gender and to analyze to what extent different arrangements at the organizational level as well the public level help to reduce this. Using the European Working Conditions Survey supplemented with macro-data on work-family facilities and the economic and emancipation climate in a country, we performed multilevel analyses. Our findings show that the intensity of work-family conflict does not vary widely in EU28. In most countries, men experience less work-family conflict than women, although the difference is small. Caring for children and providing informal care increases perceived work-life conflict. The relatively small country differences in work-family conflict show that different combinations of national facilities and organizational arrangements together can have the same impact on individuals; apparently, there are several ways to realize the same goal of work-family conflict reduction.
| S-EPMC6888593 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundInternationally, there is a drive to involve patients and the public in health research, due to recognition that patient and public involvement (PPI) may increase the impact and relevance of health research. This scoping review describes the extent and nature of PPI in dementia research in the European Union (EU) and summarises: (i) how PPI is carried out; and (ii) the impact of PPI on people living with dementia and the public, researchers, and the research process.MethodsRelevant studies were identified by searches in electronic reference databases and then filtered by two reviewers independently. Eligibility criteria for included studies were: (i) people living with dementia and/or care partners; (ii) PPI activity in dementia research conducted in the European Union (EU); and (iii) published between 2000 and 2018. An adapted version of the Guidance for Reporting Involvement of Patients and the Public (GRIPP2 SF) was used to collate the data. There was no language restriction other than the abstract needed to be available in English.ResultsWe found 19 studies from the UK and one from the Netherlands meeting inclusion criteria. No studies from other EU countries met inclusion criteria. Studies reported various methods of PPI including workshops, drop-in sessions, meetings, consensus conference, reader consultation and participatory approach. The reported aims of PPI included identifying and prioritising research questions (n = 4), research design (n = 5), undertaking and managing research (n = 8), and data analysis and interpretation (n = 3). All PPI related to design and implementation of non-pharmacological studies. One study described two pharmacological studies as case studies incorporating PPI. Seventeen studies reported anecdotal impacts of PPI.ConclusionsFurther development of PPI in dementia research in the EU and in pharmacological dementia research is required. Given the wide range of objectives of PPI in dementia research, PPI methods should be flexible and appropriate for the research context. Researchers should also formally evaluate and report the impacts of PPI for researchers, patients and the general public using good quality research designs to foster development of the field and enable the benefits and challenges of PPI to be better understood.Trial registrationPROSPERO 2017: CRD42017053260 .
| S-EPMC6694462 | biostudies-literature