Search results for: negative media influence
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 14186

Search results for: negative media influence

13346 Commericializing Fashion Goods in the Digital Age

Authors: Jianli Hu

Abstract:

The internet has fundamentally revolutionized access to data and ushered new ways of creating and accessing information for commercializing products. Digital media such as computer programs, software, apps, websites, and social media have allowed the proliferation of information and ideas to grow exponentially. In recent years, a new wave of innovative e-commerce formats has begun to emerge in the fashion marketplace, responding to the ever-greater need for transparency and connectivity. For example, many fashion wholesalers and retailers have modified their operations using software systems that enable brands to cost, track, and analyze products and client orders, sales tools that connect buyers and brands to create a more dynamic market-place, as well as retailer-end apps designed to drive traffic back to brick-and-mortar stores. In this paper, we review the recently developed tools and applications of commercializing fashion, and present results of several field studies and interviews with fashion producers and buyers.

Keywords: fashion, digital media, commercializing products, internet

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13345 Fake News Domination and Threats on Democratic Systems

Authors: Laura Irimies, Cosmin Irimies

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The public space all over the world is currently confronted with the aggressive assault of fake news that have lately impacted public agenda setting, collective decisions and social attitudes. Top leaders constantly call out most mainstream news as “fake news” and the public opinion get more confused. "Fake news" are generally defined as false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting and has been declared the word of the year 2017 by Collins Dictionary and it also has been one of the most debated socio-political topics of recent years. Websites which, deliberately or not, publish misleading information are often shared on social media where they essentially increase their reach and influence. According to international reports, the exposure to fake news is an undeniable reality all over the world as the exposure to completely invented information goes up to the 31 percent in the US, and it is even bigger in Eastern Europe countries, such as Hungary (42%) and Romania (38%) or in Mediterranean countries, such as Greece (44%) or Turkey (49%), and lower in Northern and Western Europe countries – Germany (9%), Denmark (9%) or Holland (10%). While the study of fake news (mechanism and effects) is still in its infancy, it has become truly relevant as the phenomenon seems to have a growing impact on democratic systems. Studies conducted by the European Commission show that 83% of respondents out of a total of 26,576 interviewees consider the existence of news that misrepresent reality as a threat for democracy. Studies recently conducted at Arizona State University show that people with higher education can more easily spot fake headlines, but over 30 percent of them can still be trapped by fake information. If we were to refer only to some of the most recent situations in Romania, fake news issues and hidden agenda suspicions related to the massive and extremely violent public demonstrations held on August 10th, 2018 with a strong participation of the Romanian diaspora have been massively reflected by the international media and generated serious debates within the European Commission. Considering the above framework, the study raises four main research questions: 1. Is fake news a problem or just a natural consequence of mainstream media decline and the abundance of sources of information? 2. What are the implications for democracy? 3. Can fake news be controlled without restricting fundamental human rights? 4. How could the public be properly educated to detect fake news? The research uses mostly qualitative but also quantitative methods, content analysis of studies, websites and media content, official reports and interviews. The study will prove the real threat fake news represent and also the need for proper media literacy education and will draw basic guidelines for developing a new and essential skill: that of detecting fake in news in a society overwhelmed by sources of information that constantly roll massive amounts of information increasing the risk of misinformation and leading to inadequate public decisions that could affect democratic stability.

Keywords: agenda setting democracy, fake news, journalism, media literacy

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13344 Impact of Newspaper Coverage of 2015 General Elections in Nigeria

Authors: Shola H. Adeosun, Lekan M. Togunwa, Kolawole Z. Amos

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This paper appraises ‘Newspaper Coverage of 2015 General Election: A study of The Punch and Guardian Newspapers’. The objectives of the study were to examine how credible newspaper reports of 2015 election were and to examine the significant role Nigeria Newspapers played in the 2015 general elections. Also this study examined the extent at which the print media contributed to the success of 2015 general election and to ascertain the extent at which print media reports serve as a tool for sensitizing the masses. The research questions that guided this research include: How credible was newspaper report of 2015 general election? To what extent did the print media contributed to the success of 2015 general elections? To what extent did the print media reports serve as a tool for sensitizing the masses? The research work was given solid theoretical foundation with the review of Agenda-setting theory, Media System Dependency Theory and Normative theories. This study was given solid theoretical foundation with the review of Agenda-setting theory, Media Dependency Theory and Normative theories. The theory was conducted using content analysis method of research and 30 publications of both The Guardian and Punch Newspaper between January 1st and March 30, 2015 forms the population for this research work. Selection of the dates and editions of Newspaper under study were done using the composite week sampling technique. All the days of the week were used for the newspapers because they (The Punch and The Guardian) are published all the days of the week. Coding sheet was the tool of data collection for the content analysis of this study. Findings of the study revealed that by the Punch newspaper and Guardian has played a significant role in eradicating election malpractices in Nigeria. It therefore concludes that media is metaphoric when we termed it to be a watchdog of the nation as well the mirror through which the nation see and recognize itself. The study also recommends that Nigerian media should strike balance between entertainment stories, crisis stories, economic stories, law story, education stories, terrorism stories, health stories, sport stories, metropolitan stories instead of portraying the country as being crime oriented.

Keywords: newspaper, coverage, general elections, impact

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13343 Major Role of Social Media in Encouraging Public Interaction with Health Awareness: A Case Study of Successful Saudi Diabetes Campaign

Authors: Budur Almutairi

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Introduction: There is an alarming increase in the number of diabetic patients in Saudi Arabia during the last twenty years. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the country ranks seventh in the world for the rate of diabetes. It is also estimated that around 7 million of the population are diabetic and almost around 3 million have pre-diabetes. The prevalence is more in urban area than in rural and more in women than in men and it is closely associated with the parallel rise in obesity rates. Diabetes is found to be contributing to the increasing mortality, morbidity and vascular complications and becoming a significant cause of medical complications and even death. The trends shown by the numbers are worrying as the prevalence is steadily doubling every two decades and particularly in Saudi Arabia, this could soon reach 50% in those over 50 years of age. The economic growth and prosperity have shown notable changes in the lifestyle of the people. Most importantly, along with an increased consumption of fast foods and sugar-rich carbonated soft drinks, eating habits became less healthy and the level of physical activity is decreased. The simultaneous technological advancement and the introduction of new mechanical devices like, elevators, escalators, remotes and vehicles pushed people to a situation of leading a more sedentary life. This study is attempting to evaluate the success of the campaign that introduced through popular social media in the country. Methodology: The Ministry of Health (MoH) has initiated a novel method of campaign activity to generate discussion among public about diabetes. There were mythical monsters introduced through popular social media with disguised messages about the condition of diabetes has generated widespread discussions about the disease among the general public. The characters that started appearing in social media About 600 retweets of the original post was testimonial for the success of the Twitter campaign. The second most successful form of campaign was a video that adopted a very popular approach of using Dark Comedy in which, the diabetes was represented through a twisted negative character that talks about his meticulous plans of how he is going to take the common people into his clutches. This fictional character gained more popularity when introduced into twitter and people started interacting with him raising various questions and challenging his anti-social activities. Major findings: The video generated more than 3,200,000 views ranking 9th in You Tube’s most popular video in Saudi Arabia and was shared 7000 times in a single week. Also, the hashtag got over 4,500,000impressions and over one million visits. Conclusion: Diabetes mellitus in Saudi Arabia is emerging as an epidemic of massive proportions, threatening to negate the benefits of modernization and economic revival. It is highly possible that healthy practices connected with the prevention and management of DM can easily be implemented in a manner that does not conflict with the cultural milieu of Saudi Arabia.

Keywords: campaign, diabetes, Saudi, social media

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13342 EFL Saudi Students' Use of Vocabulary via Twitter

Authors: A. Alshabeb

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Vocabulary is one of the elements that links the four skills of reading, writing, speaking, and listening and is very critical in learning a foreign language. This study aims to determine how Saudi Arabian EFL students learn English vocabulary via Twitter. The study adopts a mixed sequential research design in collecting and analysing data. The results of the study provide several recommendations for vocabulary learning. Moreover, the study can help teachers to consider the possibilities of using Twitter further, and perhaps to develop new approaches to vocabulary teaching and to support students in their use of social media.

Keywords: social media, twitter, vocabulary, web 2

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13341 Evidence of a Negativity Bias in the Keywords of Scientific Papers

Authors: Kseniia Zviagintseva, Brett Buttliere

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Science is fundamentally a problem-solving enterprise, and scientists pay more attention to the negative things, that cause them dissonance and negative affective state of uncertainty or contradiction. While this is agreed upon by philosophers of science, there are few empirical demonstrations. Here we examine the keywords from those papers published by PLoS in 2014 and show with several sentiment analyzers that negative keywords are studied more than positive keywords. Our dataset is the 927,406 keywords of 32,870 scientific articles in all fields published in 2014 by the journal PLOS ONE (collected from Altmetric.com). Counting how often the 47,415 unique keywords are used, we can examine whether those negative topics are studied more than positive. In order to find the sentiment of the keywords, we utilized two sentiment analysis tools, Hu and Liu (2004) and SentiStrength (2014). The results below are for Hu and Liu as these are the less convincing results. The average keyword was utilized 19.56 times, with half of the keywords being utilized only 1 time and the maximum number of uses being 18,589 times. The keywords identified as negative were utilized 37.39 times, on average, with the positive keywords being utilized 14.72 times and the neutral keywords - 19.29, on average. This difference is only marginally significant, with an F value of 2.82, with a p of .05, but one must keep in mind that more than half of the keywords are utilized only 1 time, artificially increasing the variance and driving the effect size down. To examine more closely, we looked at those top 25 most utilized keywords that have a sentiment. Among the top 25, there are only two positive words, ‘care’ and ‘dynamics’, in position numbers 5 and 13 respectively, with all the rest being identified as negative. ‘Diseases’ is the most studied keyword with 8,790 uses, with ‘cancer’ and ‘infectious’ being the second and fourth most utilized sentiment-laden keywords. The sentiment analysis is not perfect though, as the words ‘diseases’ and ‘disease’ are split by taking 1st and 3rd positions. Combining them, they remain as the most common sentiment-laden keyword, being utilized 13,236 times. More than just splitting the words, the sentiment analyzer logs ‘regression’ and ‘rat’ as negative, and these should probably be considered false positives. Despite these potential problems, the effect is apparent, as even the positive keywords like ‘care’ could or should be considered negative, since this word is most commonly utilized as a part of ‘health care’, ‘critical care’ or ‘quality of care’ and generally associated with how to improve it. All in all, the results suggest that negative concepts are studied more, also providing support for the notion that science is most generally a problem-solving enterprise. The results also provide evidence that negativity and contradiction are related to greater productivity and positive outcomes.

Keywords: bibliometrics, keywords analysis, negativity bias, positive and negative words, scientific papers, scientometrics

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13340 The Hall Coefficient and Magnetoresistance in Rectangular Quantum Wires with Infinitely High Potential under the Influence of a Laser Radiation

Authors: Nguyen Thu Huong, Nguyen Quang Bau

Abstract:

The Hall Coefficient (HC) and the Magnetoresistance (MR) have been studied in two-dimensional systems. The HC and the MR in Rectangular Quantum Wire (RQW) subjected to a crossed DC electric field and magnetic field in the presence of a Strong Electromagnetic Wave (EMW) characterized by electric field are studied in this work. Using the quantum kinetic equation for electrons interacting with optical phonons, we obtain the analytic expressions for the HC and the MR with a dependence on magnetic field, EMW frequency, temperatures of systems and the length characteristic parameters of RQW. These expressions are different from those obtained for bulk semiconductors and cylindrical quantum wires. The analytical results are applied to GaAs/GaAs/Al. For this material, MR depends on the ratio of the EMW frequency to the cyclotron frequency. Indeed, MR reaches a minimum at the ratio 5/4, and when this ratio increases, it tends towards a saturation value. The HC can take negative or positive values. Each curve has one maximum and one minimum. When magnetic field increases, the HC is negative, achieves a minimum value and then increases suddenly to a maximum with a positive value. This phenomenon differs from the one observed in cylindrical quantum wire, which does not have maximum and minimum values.

Keywords: hall coefficient, rectangular quantum wires, electron-optical phonon interaction, quantum kinetic equation

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13339 Multidimensional Sports Spectators Segmentation and Social Media Marketing

Authors: B. Schmid, C. Kexel, E. Djafarova

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Understanding consumers is elementary for practitioners in marketing. Consumers of sports events, the sports spectators, are a particularly complex consumer crowd. In order to identify and define their profiles different segmentation approaches can be found in literature, one of them being multidimensional segmentation. Multidimensional segmentation models correspond to the broad range of attitudes, behaviours, motivations and beliefs of sports spectators, other than earlier models. Moreover, in sports there are some well-researched disciplines (e.g. football or North American sports) where consumer profiles and marketing strategies are elaborate and others where no research at all can be found. For example, there is almost no research on athletics spectators. This paper explores the current state of research on sports spectators segmentation. An in-depth literature review provides the framework for a spectators segmentation in athletics. On this basis, additional potential consumer groups and implications for social media marketing will be explored. The findings are the basis for further research.

Keywords: multidimensional segmentation, social media, sports marketing, sports spectators segmentation

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13338 Influence of Irregularities in Plan and Elevation

Authors: Houmame Benbouali

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Some architectural conditions required some shapes often lead to an irregular distribution of masses, rigidities and resistances. The main object of the present study consists in estimating the influence of the irregularity both in plan and in elevation which presenting some structures on the dynamic characteristics and his influence on the behavior of this structures. To do this, it is necessary to apply both dynamic methods proposed by the RPA99 (spectral modal method and method of analysis by accelerogram) on certain similar prototypes and to analyze the parameters measuring the answer of these structures and to proceed to a comparison of the results.

Keywords: irregularity, seismic, response, structure, ductility

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13337 Multicasting Characteristics of All-Optical Triode Based on Negative Feedback Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Authors: S. Aisyah Azizan, M. Syafiq Azmi, Yuki Harada, Yoshinobu Maeda, Takaomi Matsutani

Abstract:

We introduced an all-optical multi-casting characteristics with wavelength conversion based on a novel all-optical triode using negative feedback semiconductor optical amplifier. This study was demonstrated with a transfer speed of 10 Gb/s to a non-return zero 231-1 pseudorandom bit sequence system. This multi-wavelength converter device can simultaneously provide three channels of output signal with the support of non-inverted and inverted conversion. We studied that an all-optical multi-casting and wavelength conversion accomplishing cross gain modulation is effective in a semiconductor optical amplifier which is effective to provide an inverted conversion thus negative feedback. The relationship of received power of back to back signal and output signals with wavelength 1535 nm, 1540 nm, 1545 nm, 1550 nm, and 1555 nm with bit error rate was investigated. It was reported that the output signal wavelengths were successfully converted and modulated with a power penalty of less than 8.7 dB, which the highest is 8.6 dB while the lowest is 4.4 dB. It was proved that all-optical multi-casting and wavelength conversion using an optical triode with a negative feedback by three channels at the same time at a speed of 10 Gb/s is a promising device for the new wavelength conversion technology.

Keywords: cross gain modulation, multicasting, negative feedback optical amplifier, semiconductor optical amplifier

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13336 ISIS and Social Media

Authors: Neda Jebellie

Abstract:

New information and communication technologies (ICT) not only has revolutionized the world of communication but has also strongly impacted the state of international terrorism. Using the potential of social media, the new wave of terrorism easily can recruit new jihadi members, spread their violent ideology and garner financial support. IS (Islamic State) as the most dangerous terrorist group has already conquered a great deal of social media space and has deployed sophisticated web-based strategies to promote its extremist doctrine. In this respect the vastly popular social media are the perfect tools for IS to establish its virtual Caliphate (e-caliphate) and e-Ommah (e-citizen).Using social media to release violent videos of beheading journalists, burning their hostages alive and mass killing of prisoners are IS strategies to terrorize and subjugate its enemies. Several Twitter and Facebook accounts which are IS affiliations have targeted young generation of Muslims all around the world. In fact IS terrorists use modern resources of communication not only to share information and conduct operations but also justify their violent acts. The strict Wahhabi doctrine of ISIS is based on a fundamental interpretation of Islam in which religious war against non Muslims (Jihad) and killing infidels (Qatal) have been praised and recommended. Via social media IS disseminates its propaganda to inspire sympathizers across the globe. Combating this new wave of terrorism which is exploiting new communication technologies is the most significant challenge for authorities. Before the rise of internet and social media governments had to control only mosques and religious gathering such as Friday sermons(Jamaah Pray) to prevent spreading extremism among Muslims community in their country. ICT and new communication technologies have heighten the challenge of dealing with Islamic radicalism and have amplified its threat .According to the official reports even some of the governments such as UK have created a special force of Facebook warriors to engage in unconventional warfare in digital age. In compare with other terrorist groups, IS has effectively grasped social media potential. Their horrifying released videos on YouTube easily got viral and were re-twitted and shared by thousands of social media users. While some of the social media such as Twitter and Facebook have shut down many accounts alleged to IS but new ones create immediately so only blocking their websites and suspending their accounts cannot solve the problem as terrorists recreate new accounts. To combat cyber terrorism focusing on disseminating counter narrative strategies can be a solution. Creating websites and providing online materials to propagate peaceful and moderate interpretation of Islam can provide a cogent alternative to extremist views.

Keywords: IS-islamic state, cyber terrorism, social media, terrorism, information, communication technologies

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13335 Domain Specificity and Language Change: Evidence South Central (Kuki-Chin) Tibeto-Burman

Authors: Mohammed Zahid Akter

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In the studies of language change, mental factors including analogy, reanalysis, and frequency have received considerable attention as possible catalysts for language change. In comparison, relatively little is known regarding which functional domains or construction types are more amenable to these mental factors than others. In this regard, this paper will show with data from South Central (Kuki-Chin) Tibeto-Burman languages how language change interacts with certain functional domains or construction types. These construction types include transitivity, person marking, and polarity distinctions. Thus, it will be shown that transitive clauses are more prone to change than intransitive and ditransitive clauses, clauses with 1st person argument marking are more prone to change than clauses with 2nd and 3rd person argument marking, non-copular clauses are more prone to change than copular clauses, affirmative clauses are more prone to change than negative clauses, and standard negatives are more prone to change than negative imperatives. The following schematic structure can summarize these findings: transitive>intransitive, ditransitive; 1st person>2nd person, 3rd person; non-copular>copular; and affirmative>negative; and standard negative>negative imperatives. In the interest of space, here only one of these findings is illustrated: affirmative>negative. In Hyow (South Central, Bangladesh), the innovative and preverbal 1st person subject k(V)- occurs in an affirmative construction, and the archaic and postverbal 1st person subject -ŋ occurs in a negative construction. Similarly, in Purum (South Central, Northeast India), the innovative and preverbal 1st person subject k(V)- occurs in an affirmative construction, and the archaic and postverbal 1st person subject *-ŋ occurs in a negative construction. Like 1st person subject, we also see that in Anal (South Central, Northeast India), the innovative and preverbal 2nd person subject V- occurs in an affirmative construction, and the archaic and postverbal 2nd person subject -t(V) in a negative construction. To conclude, data from South Central Tibeto-Burman languages suggest that language change interacts with functional domains as some construction types are more susceptible to change than others.

Keywords: functional domains, Kuki-Chin, language change, south-central, Tibeto-Burman

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13334 The Implementation of Special Grammar Circle (Spegraci) as the Media Innovation for Blind People to Learn English Tenses

Authors: Aji Budi Rinekso, Revika Niza Artiyana, Lisa Widayanti

Abstract:

English is one of the international languages in the world. People use this language to communicate with each other in the international forums, international events or international organizations. As same as other languages, English has a rule which is called grammar. Grammar is the part of english which has a role as the language systems. In grammar, there are tenses which provide a time period system for past, present and future. Sometimes it is difficult for some English learner to remember all of the tenses completely. Especially for those with special needs or exceptional children with vision restrictiveness. The aims of this research are 1) To know the design of Special Grammar Circle (Spegraci) as the media for blind people to learn english grammar. 2) To know the work of Special Gramar Circle (Spegraci) as the media for blind people to learn english grammar. 3) To know the function of this device in increasing tenses ability for blind people. The method of this research is Research and Development which consists of several testing and revision of this device. The implementation of Special Grammar Circle (Spegraci) is to make blind people easily to learn the tenses. This device is easy to use. Users only roll this device and find out the tense formula and match to the name of the formula in braille. In addition, this device also enables to be used by normal people because normal written texts are also provided.

Keywords: blind people, media innovation, spegraci, tenses

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13333 Phytosynthesized Iron Nanoparticles Elicited Growth and Biosynthesis of Steviol Glycosides in Invitro Stevia rebaudiana Plant Cultures

Authors: Amir Ali, Laura Yael Mendoza

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The application of nanomaterials is becoming the most effective strategy of elicitation to produce a desirable level of plant biomass with complex medicinal compounds. This study was designed to check the influence of phytosynthesized iron nanoparticles (FeNPs) on physical growth characteristics, antioxidant status, and production of steviol glycosides of in vitro grown Stevia rebaudiana. Effect of different concentrations of iron nanoparticles replacement of iron sulfate in MS medium (stock solution) on invitro stevia plant growth following positive control (MS basal medium), negative control (iron sulfate devoid medium), iron sulfate devoid MS medium and supplemented with FeNPs at different concentrations (5.6 mg/L, 11.2 mg/L, 16.8 mg/L, 22.4 mg/L) was evaluated. The iron deficiency leads to a drastic reduction in plant growth. In contrast, applying FeNPs leads to improvement in plant height, leave diameter, improved leave morphology, etc., in a concentration-dependent manner. Furthermore, the stress caused by FeNPs at 16.8 mg/L in cultures produced higher levels of total phenolic content (3.7 ± 0.042 mg/g dry weight: DW) and total flavonoid content (1.9 ± 0.022 mg/g DW and antioxidant activity (78 ± 4.6%). In addition, plants grown in the presence of FeNPs at 22.4 mg/L resulted in higher enzymatic antioxidant activities (SOD = 3.5 ± 0.042 U/mg; POD = 2.6 ± 0.026 U/mg; CAT = 2.8 ± 0.034 U/mg and APx = 3.6 ± 0.043 U/ mg), respectively. Furthermore, exposure to a higher dose of FeNPs (22.4 mg/L) exhibited the maximum amount of stevioside (stevioside: 4.6 ± 0.058 mg/g (DW) and rebaudioside A: 4.9 ± 0.068 mg/g DW) as compared to other doses. The current investigation confirms the effectiveness of FeNPs in growth media. It offers a suitable prospect for commercially desirable production of S. rebaudiana biomass with higher sweet glycosides profiles in vitro.

Keywords: cell culture, stevia, iron nanoparticles, antioxidants

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13332 Health Communication and the Diabetes Narratives of Key Social Media Influencers in the UK

Authors: Z. Sun

Abstract:

Health communication is essential in promoting healthy lifestyles, managing disease conditions, and eventually reducing health disparities. The key elements of successful health communication always include the development of communication strategies to engage people in thinking about their health, inform them about healthy choices, persuade them to adopt safe and healthy behaviours, and eventually achieve public health objectives. The use of 'Narrative' is recognised as a kind of health communication strategy to enhance personal and public health due to its potential persuasive effect in motivating and supporting individuals change their beliefs and behaviours by inviting them into a narrative world, breaking down their cognitive and emotional resistance and enhance their acceptance of the ideas portrayed in narratives. Meanwhile, the popularity of social media has provided a novel means of communication for both healthcare stakeholders, and a special group of active social media users (influencers) have started playing a pivotal role in providing health ‘solutions’. Such individuals are often referred to as ‘influencers’ because of their central position in the online communication system and the persuasive effect their actions may have on audiences. They may have established a positive rapport with their audience, earned trust and credibility in a specific area, and thus, their audience considers the information they delivered to be authentic and influential. To our best knowledge, to date, there is no published research that examines the effect of diabetes narratives presented by social media influencers and their impacts on health-related outcomes. The primary aim of this study is to investigate the diabetes narratives presented by social media influencers in the UK because of the new dimension they bring to health communication and the potential impact they may have on audiences' health outcomes. This study is situated within the interpretivist and narrative paradigms. A mixed methodology combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches has been adopted. Qualitative data has been derived to provide a better understanding of influencers’ personal experiences and how they construct meanings and make sense of their world, while quantitative data has been accumulated to identify key social media influencers in the UK and measure the impact of diabetes narratives on audiences. Twitter has been chosen as the social media platform to initially identify key influencers. Two groups of participants are the top 10 key social media influencers in the UK and 100 audiences of each influencer, which means a total of 1000 audiences have been invited. This paper is going to discuss, first of all, the background of the research under the context of health communication; Secondly, the necessity and contribution of this research; then, the major research questions being explored; and finally, the methods to be used.

Keywords: diabetes, health communication, narratives, social media influencers

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13331 Language Use in Autobiographical Memory Transcripts as a Window into Attachment Style and Personality

Authors: McKenzie S. Braley, Lesley Jessiman

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If language reveals internal psychological processing, then it is also likely that language use in autobiographical memory transcripts may be used as a window into attachment style and related personality features. The current study, therefore, examined the possible associations between attachment style, negative affectivity, social inhibition, and linguistic features extracted from autobiographical memory transcripts. Young adult participants (n = 61) filled out attachment and personality questionnaires, and orally reported a relationship-related memory. Memories were audio-recorded and later transcribed verbatim. Using a computerized linguistic extraction tool, positive affect words, negative affect words, and cognition words were extracted. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients revealed that attachment anxiety was negatively correlated with cognition words (r2 = -0.26, p = 0.047) and that negative affectivity was negatively correlated with positive affect words (r2 = -0.32, p = 0.012). The findings suggest that attachment style and personality are associated with speech styles indicative of both emotionality and depth of processing. Because attachment styles, negative affectivity, and social inhibition are associated with poor mental health outcomes, analyses of key linguistics features in autobiographical memory narratives may provide reliable screening tools for mental wellbeing.

Keywords: attachment style, autobiographical memory, language, negative affectivity, social inhibition

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13330 Mixture statistical modeling for predecting mortality human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and tuberculosis(TB) infection patients

Authors: Mohd Asrul Affendi Bi Abdullah, Nyi Nyi Naing

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The purpose of this study was to identify comparable manner between negative binomial death rate (NBDR) and zero inflated negative binomial death rate (ZINBDR) with died patients with (HIV + T B+) and (HIV + T B−). HIV and TB is a serious world wide problem in the developing country. Data were analyzed with applying NBDR and ZINBDR to make comparison which a favorable model is better to used. The ZINBDR model is able to account for the disproportionately large number of zero within the data and is shown to be a consistently better fit than the NBDR model. Hence, as a results ZINBDR model is a superior fit to the data than the NBDR model and provides additional information regarding the died mechanisms HIV+TB. The ZINBDR model is shown to be a use tool for analysis death rate according age categorical.

Keywords: zero inflated negative binomial death rate, HIV and TB, AIC and BIC, death rate

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13329 Social and Digital Transformation of the Saudi Education System: A Cyberconflict Analysis

Authors: Mai Alshareef

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The Saudi government considers the modernisation of the education system as a critical component of the national development plan, Saudi Vision 2030; however, this sudden reform creates tension amongst Saudis. This study examines first the reflection of the social and digital education reform on stakeholders and the general Saudi public, and second, the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the ethnoreligious conflict in Saudi Arabia. This study employs Cyberconflict theory to examine conflicts in the real world and cyberspace. The findings are based on a qualitative case study methodology that uses netnography, an analysis of 3,750 Twitter posts and semi-structural interviews with 30 individuals, including key actors in the Saudi education sector and Twitter activists during 2019\2020. The methods utilised are guided by thematic analysis to map an understanding of factors that influence societal conflicts in Saudi Arabia, which in this case include religious, national, and gender identity. Elements of Cyberconflict theory are used to better understand how conflicting groups build their identities in connection to their ethnic/religious/cultural differences and competing national identities. The findings correspond to the ethnoreligious components of the Cyberconflict theory. Twitter became a battleground for liberals, conservatives, the Saudi public and elites, and it is used in a novel way to influence public opinion and to challenge the media monopoly. Opposing groups relied heavily on a discourse of exclusion and inclusion and showed ethnic and religious affiliations, national identity, and chauvinism. The findings add to existing knowledge in the cyberconflict field of study, and they also reveal outcomes that are critical to the Saudi Arabian national context.

Keywords: education, cyberconflict, Twitter, national identity

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13328 TMIF: Transformer-Based Multi-Modal Interactive Fusion for Rumor Detection

Authors: Jiandong Lv, Xingang Wang, Cuiling Shao

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The rapid development of social media platforms has made it one of the important news sources. While it provides people with convenient real-time communication channels, fake news and rumors are also spread rapidly through social media platforms, misleading the public and even causing bad social impact in view of the slow speed and poor consistency of artificial rumor detection. We propose an end-to-end rumor detection model-TIMF, which captures the dependencies between multimodal data based on the interactive attention mechanism, uses a transformer for cross-modal feature sequence mapping and combines hybrid fusion strategies to obtain decision results. This paper verifies two multi-modal rumor detection datasets and proves the superior performance and early detection performance of the proposed model.

Keywords: hybrid fusion, multimodal fusion, rumor detection, social media, transformer

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13327 Academic Influence of Social Network Sites on the Collegiate Performance of Technical College Students

Authors: Jameson McFarlane, Thorne J. McFarlane, Leon Bernard

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Social network sites (SNS) is an emerging phenomenon that is here to stay. The popularity and the ubiquity of the SNS technology are undeniable. Because most SNS are free and easy to use people from all walks of life and from almost any age are attracted to that technology. College age students are by far the largest segment of the population using SNS. Since most SNS have been adapted for mobile devices, not only do you find students using this technology in their study, while working on labs or on projects, a substantial number of students have been found to use SNS even while listening to lectures. This study found that SNS use has a significant negative impact on the grade point average of college students particularly in the first semester. However, this negative impact is greatly diminished by the end of the third semester partly because the students have adjusted satisfactorily to the challenges of college or because they have learned how to adequately manage their time. It was established that the kinds of activities the students are engaged in during the SNS use are the leading factor affecting academic performance. Of those activities, using SNS during a lecture or while studying is the foremost contributing factor to lower academic performance. This is due to “cognitive” or “information” bottleneck, a condition in which the students find it very difficult to multitask or to switch between resources leading to inefficiency in information retention and thus, educational performance.

Keywords: social network sites, social network analysis, regression coefficient, psychological engagement

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13326 Addressing Cultural Discrimination in Research Design: The Responsibilities of Ethics Committees

Authors: Elspeth McInnes

Abstract:

Research design is central to ethical research. Discriminatory research design is a key risk for researchers examining diverse cultural groups without conscious commitment to anti-discrimination values or knowledge of their culture. Culturally discriminatory research design is defined here as research proceeding from negative assumptions about people on the basis of race, colour, ethnicity, nationality or religion. Such discrimination can be direct or indirect. Direct discrimination is the uncritical mobilization of dominant group negative stereotypes of cultural minorities. Indirect discrimination is the examination of policies or programs grounded in dominant culture negative stereotypes that have been uncritically accepted by the researchers. This paper draws on anonymized elements of planned research projects and considers both direct and indirect cultural discrimination in research design and the responsibilities of ethics committees. Human research ethics committees provide a point of scrutiny with responsibility to alert researchers to risks of basing research on negative cultural stereotypes, as well as protecting participants from being subjected to negative discourses about them. This issue has become an increasing concern in a globalizing world of human displacement and migration creating a rise in the presence of minority cultures in host countries. As a nation established through colonization and immigration Australia has a long history of negative cultural stereotypes of Indigenous Australians as well as a legacy of the White Australia policy, which still echoes in attitudes to each wave of non-European immigration. The task of eliminating cultural discrimination in research design is vital to sustaining research integrity and ensuring that research is not used to reinforce or justify cultural discrimination.

Keywords: cultural discrimination, cultural stereotypes, participant risk, research design

Procedia PDF Downloads 133
13325 Analysis of Transmedia Storytelling in Pokémon GO

Authors: Iva Nedelcheva

Abstract:

This study is part of a doctoral thesis on the topic of Hyperfiction: Past, Present and Future of Storytelling through Hypertext. It explores in depth the impact of transmedia storytelling and the role of hypertext in the realm of the currently popular social media phenomenon Pokémon GO. Storytelling is a powerful method to engage and unite people. Moreover, the technology progress adds a whole new angle to the method, with hypertext and cross-platform sharing that enhance the traditional storytelling so much that transmedia storytelling gives unlimited opportunities to affect the everyday life of people across the globe. This research aims at examining the transmedia storytelling approach in Pokémon GO, and explaining how that contributed to its establishment as a massive worldwide hit in less than a week. The social engagement is investigated in all major media platforms, including traditional and online media channels. Observation and content analyses are reported in this paper to form the conclusion that transmedia storytelling with the input of hypertext has a promising future as a method of establishing a productive and rewarding communication strategy.

Keywords: communication, hypertext, Pokemon Go, storytelling, transmedia

Procedia PDF Downloads 171
13324 Television, Internet, and Internet Social Media Direct-To-Consumer Prescription Medication Advertisements: Intention and Behavior to Seek Additional Prescription Medication Information

Authors: Joshua Fogel, Rivka Herzog

Abstract:

Although direct-to-consumer prescription medication advertisements (DTCA) are viewed or heard in many venues, there does not appear to be any research for internet social media DTCA. We study the association of traditional media DTCA and digital media DTCA including internet social media of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter with three different outcomes. There was one intentions outcome and two different behavior outcomes. The intentions outcome was the agreement level for seeking additional information about a prescription medication after seeing a DTCA. One behavior outcome was the agreement level for obtaining additional information about a prescription medication after seeing a DTCA. The other behavior outcome was the frequency level for obtaining additional information about a prescription medication after seeing a DTCA. Surveys were completed by 635 college students. Predictors included demographic variables, theory of planned behavior variables, health variables, and advertisements seen or heard. Also, in the behavior analyses, additional predictors of intentions and sources for seeking additional prescription drug information were included. Multivariate linear regression analyses were conducted. We found that increased age was associated with increased behavior, women were associated with increased intentions, and Hispanic race/ethnicity was associated with decreased behavior. For the theory of planned behavior variables, increased attitudes were associated with increased intentions, increased social norms were associated with increased intentions and behavior, and increased intentions were associated with increased behavior. Very good perceived health was associated with increased intentions. Advertisements seen in spam mail were associated with decreased intentions. Advertisements seen on traditional or cable television were associated with decreased behavior. Advertisements seen on television watched on the internet were associated with increased behavior. The source of seeking additional information of reading internet print content was associated with increased behavior. No internet social media advertisements were associated with either intentions or behavior. In conclusion, pharmaceutical brand managers and marketers should consider these findings when tailoring their DTCA advertising campaigns and directing their DTCA advertising budget towards young adults such as college students. They need to reconsider the current approach for traditional television DTCA and also consider dedicating a larger advertising budget toward internet television DTCA. Although internet social media is a popular place to advertise, the financial expenditures do not appear worthwhile for DTCA when targeting young adults such as college students.

Keywords: brand managers, direct-to-consumer advertising, internet, social media

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13323 Synthesis of TiO2 Nanoparticles by Sol-Gel and Sonochemical Combination

Authors: Sabriye Piskin, Sibel Kasap, Muge Sari Yilmaz

Abstract:

Nanocrystalline TiO2 particles were successfully synthesized via sol-gel and sonochemical combination using titanium tetraisopropoxide as a precursor at lower temperature for a short time. The effect of the reaction parameters (hydrolysis media, acid media, and reaction temperatures) on the synthesis of TiO2 particles were investigated in the present study. Characterizations of synthesized samples were prepared by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. It was shown that the reaction parameters played a significant role in the synthesis of TiO2 particles.

Keywords: crystalline TiO2, sonochemical mechanism, sol-gel reaction, XRD

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13322 Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers Sentiment Analysis Applied to Three Presidential Pre-Candidates in Costa Rica

Authors: Félix David Suárez Bonilla

Abstract:

A sentiment analysis service to detect polarity (positive, neural, and negative), based on transfer learning, was built using a Spanish version of BERT and applied to tweets written in Spanish. The dataset that was used consisted of 11975 reviews, which were extracted from Google Play using the google-play-scrapper package. The BETO trained model used: the AdamW optimizer, a batch size of 16, a learning rate of 2x10⁻⁵ and 10 epochs. The system was tested using tweets of three presidential pre-candidates from Costa Rica. The system was finally validated using human labeled examples, achieving an accuracy of 83.3%.

Keywords: NLP, transfer learning, BERT, sentiment analysis, social media, opinion mining

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13321 Rural Population Participation in Minsu Industry as the Method for Rural Revitalization in China

Authors: Xiaoxin Zhao

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Because of the long-time dual structure development in urban and rural areas, the rapid urbanization in China devours the rural resources and causes the unbalanced development of cities and the countryside. On one side, the urban sprawl is swallowing the villages in the peripheral area of cities and forms the ‘urban village’. On the other side, people from traditional and vernacular villages immigrate to the metropolis that their homeland becomes the ‘hollowed village’. In 2005, the national state council noticed the significance of rural development and promoted the ‘beautiful countryside’ project when Minsu was rising. In the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (2017), president Xi Jinping announces the importance of ‘rural revitalization’ and states that the relationship between urban and rural areas should be an integrated development model. However, most Minsu projects in China was invested and managed by individual or group investors and focused on the profits but not the vernacular culture and rural development, and enhanced the urban-rural distinction. This paper introduces two Minsu projects in China designed by star-architects and advertised by social network media as case studies through photos and public comments collections. Architects as the servant to the investors, designed fancy houses, brings the urban life mode but expelled the real vernacular lifestyle as a cultural experience in rural areas. Moreover, to advertise the Minsu hotel, the social media propagates a distorted value that ‘luxury is good taste’ and motivates the vanity of people. Lastly, to maximize the profits, the investors set a high price that caused another unbalanced development in rural area since the price for one night in the Minsu hotel may exceed the monthly income of a local inhabitant. With these material, the author discusses the problems in Chinese Minsu industry and argues that the media, architects and investors play the negative role in the separation between Minsu cultural tourism and rural population. As a result, the author points out the significance of rural population participation that sharing the profits with them if we take Minsu industry as a method for rural revitalization in China.

Keywords: Minsu, vernacular, rural development, rural population participation

Procedia PDF Downloads 259
13320 “I” on the Web: Social Penetration Theory Revised

Authors: Dr. Dionysis Panos Dpt. Communication, Internet Studies Cyprus University of Technology

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The widespread use of New Media and particularly Social Media, through fixed or mobile devices, has changed in a staggering way our perception about what is “intimate" and "safe" and what is not, in interpersonal communication and social relationships. The distribution of self and identity-related information in communication now evolves under new and different conditions and contexts. Consequently, this new framework forces us to rethink processes and mechanisms, such as what "exposure" means in interpersonal communication contexts, how the distinction between the "private" and the "public" nature of information is being negotiated online, how the "audiences" we interact with are understood and constructed. Drawing from an interdisciplinary perspective that combines sociology, communication psychology, media theory, new media and social networks research, as well as from the empirical findings of a longitudinal comparative research, this work proposes an integrative model for comprehending mechanisms of personal information management in interpersonal communication, which can be applied to both types of online (Computer-Mediated) and offline (Face-To-Face) communication. The presentation is based on conclusions drawn from a longitudinal qualitative research study with 458 new media users from 24 countries for almost over a decade. Some of these main conclusions include: (1) There is a clear and evidenced shift in users’ perception about the degree of "security" and "familiarity" of the Web, between the pre- and the post- Web 2.0 era. The role of Social Media in this shift was catalytic. (2) Basic Web 2.0 applications changed dramatically the nature of the Internet itself, transforming it from a place reserved for “elite users / technical knowledge keepers" into a place of "open sociability” for anyone. (3) Web 2.0 and Social Media brought about a significant change in the concept of “audience” we address in interpersonal communication. The previous "general and unknown audience" of personal home pages, converted into an "individual & personal" audience chosen by the user under various criteria. (4) The way we negotiate the nature of 'private' and 'public' of the Personal Information, has changed in a fundamental way. (5) The different features of the mediated environment of online communication and the critical changes occurred since the Web 2.0 advance, lead to the need of reconsideration and updating the theoretical models and analysis tools we use in our effort to comprehend the mechanisms of interpersonal communication and personal information management. Therefore, is proposed here a new model for understanding the way interpersonal communication evolves, based on a revision of social penetration theory.

Keywords: new media, interpersonal communication, social penetration theory, communication exposure, private information, public information

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13319 A Literature Review of Emotional Labor and Non-Task Behavior

Authors: Yeong-Gyeong Choi, Kyoung-Seok Kim

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This study, literature review research, intends to deal with the problem of conceptual ambiguity among research on emotional labor, and to look into the evolutionary trends and changing aspects of defining the concept of emotional labor. In addition, in existing studies, deep acting and surface acting are highly related to a positive outcome variable and a negative outcome variable, respectively. It was confirmed that for employees performing emotional labor, deep acting and surface acting are highly related to OCB and CWB, respectively. While positive emotion that employees come to experience during job performance process can easily trigger a positive non-task behavior such as OCB, negative emotion that employees experience through excessive workload or unfair treatment can easily induce a negative behavior like CWB. The two management behaviors of emotional labor, surface acting and deep acting, can have either a positive or negative effect on non-task behavior of employees, depending on which one they would choose. Thus, the purpose of this review paper is to clarify the relationship between emotional labor and non-task behavior more specifically.

Keywords: emotion labor, non-task behavior, OCB, CWB

Procedia PDF Downloads 351
13318 A Three Step Approach Analysis of the Portrayal of Images of Women in Three Ghanaian Newspapers: Newsone, Ebony and the Mirror

Authors: H. K. Bonsu-Owu

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Media portrayal of women in traditional stereotypical roles such as mothers, or seductress has been the norm for years. However, the changing socioeconomic and political environment and advancement of women in today’s society have given rise to questions on the appropriate portrayal of women in the media today. The purpose of the study is to analyze the portrayal of women in Ghanaian newspapers and find women’s perception on the issue. The study uses a three step approach in gathering data for analysis. Using the stratified sampling method, it analyzes front page images of women from 210 issues of the selected newspapers. Further, it administers questionnaires to 100 female students to find out how they relate to the images of women in the selected newspapers. Finally, editors of the newspapers are interviewed to find their rational for portraying women as seen on their front pages. The findings suggest that the newspapers portray women for varied reasons such as promoting sales and influencing the public agenda. Further, the female students claim that in spite of women’s vast contribution to the growth of society, the media continue to marginalize them. They add that such portrayals promote and reinforce social construct, however, refuse to see themselves through the male gaze concept. The study concludes that the stereotyped portrayal of women is likely to continue if the government, regulatory bodies, the media and society do not make a conscious effort to address this problem.

Keywords: women, newspaper, portrayal, social construct

Procedia PDF Downloads 133
13317 Examining the Effects of National Disaster on the Performance of Hospitality Industry in Korea

Authors: Kim Sang Hyuck, Y. Park Sung

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The outbreak of national disasters stimulates the decrease of the both internal and domestic tourism demands, causing bad effects on the hospitality industry. The effective and efficient risk management regarding national disasters are being increasingly required from the hospitality industry practitioners and the tourism policymakers. To establish the effective and efficient risk management strategy on national disasters, the most essential prerequisite condition is the correct estimation of national disasters’ effects in terms of the size and duration of the damages occurred from national disaster on hospitality industry. More specifically, the national disasters are twofold: natural disaster and social disaster. In addition, the hospitality industry has consisted of several types of business, such as hotel, restaurant, travel agency, etc. As reasons of the above, it is important to consider how each type of national disasters differently influences on the performance of each type of hospitality industry. Therefore, the purpose of this study is examining the effects of national disaster on hospitality industry in Korea based on the types of national disasters as well as the types of hospitality business. The monthly data was collected from Jan. 2000 to Dec. 2016. The indexes of industrial production for each hospitality industry in Korea were used with the proxy variable for the performance of each hospitality industry. Two national disaster variables (natural disaster and social disaster) were treated as dummy variables. In addition, the exchange rate, industrial production index, and consumer price index were used as control variables in the research model. The impulse response analysis was used to examine the size and duration of the damages occurred from each type of national disaster on each type of hospitality industries. The results of this study show that the natural disaster and the social disaster differently influenced on each type of hospitality industry. More specifically, the performance of airline industry is negatively influenced by the natural disaster at the time of 3 months later from the incidence. However, the negative impacts of social disaster on airline industry occurred not significantly over the time periods. For the hotel industry, both natural disaster and social disaster negatively influence the performance of hotel industry at the time of 5 months and 6 months later, respectively. Also, the negative impact of natural disaster on the performance of restaurant industry occurred at the time of 5 months later, as well as for both 3 months and 6 months later for the social disaster. Finally, both natural disaster and social disaster negatively influence the performance of travel agency at the time of 3 months and 4 months later, respectively. In conclusion, the types of national disasters differently influence the performance of each type of hospitality industry in Korea. These results would provide an important information to establish the effective and efficient risk management strategy for the national disasters.

Keywords: impulse response analysis, Korea, national disaster, performance of hospitality industry

Procedia PDF Downloads 185