Melissa Suran

Detecting themes of public concern: A text mining analysis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Ebola live Twitter chat

A diagnosis of Ebola on US soil triggered widespread panic. In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a live Twitter chat to address public concerns. This study applied a textual analytics method to reveal insights from these tweets that can inform communication strategies. User-generated tweets were collected, sorted, and analyzed to reveal major themes. The public was concerned with symptoms and lifespan of the virus, disease transfer and contraction, safe travel, and protection of ones body.

The end of monkey research? New legislation and public pressure could jeopardize research with primates in both Europe and the USA.

Kevan A. C. Martin, a neurobiologist and director of the Institute of Neuroinformatics—a joint institute of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—has a moral dilemma. For the past four years, he has not hired any postdoctoral fellows or PhD students. He feels he cannot take them on in good conscience because he cannot guarantee they will be able to do research. It was another moral debate that put him in this position; his work on rhesus macaques has been put on hold and he is uncertain when, or if, it will resume in Switzerland. > …the real impact on primate labs might come from pending revisions to legislation in Europe and the USA that could potentially end research on apes and monkeys altogether In 2004, the Swiss Constitution was changed to acknowledge “the dignity of living beings,” which, according to Martin, was intended to address concerns about transgenic experimentation, rather than animal research in general. Nevertheless, the change resulted in some members of a local external advisory committee on animal experimentation legally challenging the 2006 renewal of Martins license to use the monkeys for neurobiological research. Similar legal action was taken against Daniel Kiper at the same institute, whose research on brain plasticity in monkeys has relevance for stroke patients. A third researcher, whose work on motor systems has implications for patients with spinal cord damage, has decided to leave Switzerland (Staub, 2007). All three of these projects were approved by the Zurich Cantons Veterinary Office, which controls experiments on animals. Martins case has been working its way through the Swiss courts and is finally before Switzerlands Federal Supreme Court. In the meantime, Martin, who established the Institute in Zurich with Rodney Douglas 13 years ago, has been limited to using post‐mortem monkey brains. These are …

Freedom from the press

As citizen journalism continues to increase in popularity, social news sites (i.e., websites where users produce the content) are also gaining prominence on the Internet. Nevertheless, there is little research about how social news sites function. One such website, known as Reddit, has a growing user base of more than 100 million individuals and has played an important role in distributing information about critical and current events. Through examining a major incident where Reddit was acknowledged as an important informational entity, this study analyzed varying characteristics of content posted on Reddit in order to determine whether the website, as it claims, has “freedom from the press,” or if it follows gatekeeping practices that are similar to those implemented by traditional media outlets.

Topical Punch Health Topics as Drivers of Idiosyncratic Reader Responses to Online News

Although scholars explore how news stories’ framing elements may affect reader responses, they have yet to examine how the topics of health-related articles affect those responses. By content analyzing three US newspapers’ online health content and reader comments, this study finds that certain health topics are idiosyncratic with reader responses. Readers reacted to personal health and obesity news with more episodic and gain-framed comments but relied more on loss frames when discussing chronic health issues. Readers also used more thematic frames in comments about mental illness. Health coverage related to politics and the government was associated with fewer episodic comments.

Content Analysis of a Live CDC Twitter Chat During the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

A public response to a looming health threat may be marked with misinformation and panic. However, providing the public with accurate information and updates may be an effective way to prevent widespread fear. In response to the 2014 Ebola panic in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiated a Twitter conversation with the public to alleviate concerns and provide accurate information about the disease. This study conducted a content analysis of 512 randomly selected tweets by the general public directed to the CDC. The major themes identified included the etiology of Ebola, policy, the environment, spread and scope of the disease, fear and anxiety from the public, and misinformation. Practical implications of these findings include encouraging government and emergency health response organizations to prepare educational messages and materials in advance that detail responses to common questions, such as transmission and symptoms.

Badges? Who needs them? Police press credential policies, professionalism, and the new media environment

This article examines shifts in one marker of professionalism for journalists as reflected in the police press pass system. Credentials can be interpreted both as a mark of occupational membership and as token that grants journalists access. Based on a census of 100 American police departments and interviews with representatives from those departments, we find that police credentialing policies are changing, in part because the new media environment has blurred journalism’s professional boundaries. Our analysis draws from Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, which suggests that institutional practices such as police department credentialing reproduce social hierarchies and power structures. Using this lens, we argue that credentials are losing their value as professional status symbols while becoming increasingly important for geophysical access.

The separation of church and science

Science and religion have long thought themselves mutually exclusive, despite science finding its roots in a theological view of the world. Since 1633, when Galileo Galilei faced the Roman Inquisition to answer for his discovery that the Earth revolves around the sun, there has been an often uneasy relationship between church and science. Religion has found itself ceding more and more ground to science as scientists have succeeded in explaining more about the Universe and the things within it. Although many scientists and religious people disagree about fundamental ‘truths’ and what their own worldview can say about them, moderate voices on both sides of the divide agree there is a role for both science and religion in the modern world. This year, evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala from the University of California at Irvine (UCI), USA, was praised for his view on this issue and honoured with the prestigious Templeton Prize. The prize is an award of £1 million granted each year by the John Templeton Foundation (West Conshohocken, PA, USA) to an individual who has made significant contributions to the spiritual dimension of life; the first recipient was Mother Teresa in 1973. In March this year, the foundation recognized Ayala, who has contributed important research to science while maintaining the value of religion. Ayala donated his prize to UCI, where he teaches evolution and the philosophy of science. > …science and God cannot stand as substitutes for each other ![][1] Ayala is originally from Madrid, Spain, where he was ordained a Catholic‐Dominican priest in 1960, although he never practiced as a member of the clergy. Instead, he began to study genetics and evolution, which led him to a career as an academic scientist. According to Ayala, who has written many books including Darwin and Intelligent Design (Ayala, 2006), science and religion are … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Reading the tea leaves of Congress

In 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the USA, amid hopes that he would fix the problems created or left unresolved by his predecessor. However, despite his positive mantra, “Yes we can,” the situation was going to get worse: the country was spiralling towards an economic recession, a collapsing residential real‐estate market and the loss of millions of jobs. Now, the deficit lingers around US

Natural healing. How does Nature repair itself after an oil spill

14 trillion (US Department of the Treasury, 2011). In response to these hardships and the presence of a perceived ‘socialist’ president in office, a new political movement started brewing that would challenge both the Democrats and the Republicans—the two parties that have dominated US politics for generations. Known as the Tea Party, this movement has been gaining national momentum in its denouncement of the status quo of the government, especially in relation to federal spending, including the support of scientific research. The name is a play on the Boston Tea Party, at which more than 100 American colonists dumped 45 tonnes of tea into Boston Harbour (Massachusetts, USA) in 1773 to protest against the British taxation of imported tea. Whereas the 18th century Boston Tea Party formed to protest against a specific tax, the Tea Party of the 21st century protests against taxes and ‘big’ government in general. Many view Tea Party followers as modern muckrakers, but supporters claim their movement is fundamentally about upholding the US Constitution. Tea Party Patriots, a non‐partisan organization, considers itself to be the official home of the Tea Party movement. Fuelled by the values of fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets, Tea Party Patriots believe, these three principles are granted by the Constitution, although not necessarily upheld by the administration. “If you read the Constitution, the limits of government involvement in society [are] pretty well‐defined and our …

A little hard to swallow

Few environmental disasters are as indicting of humanity as major oil spills. Yet Nature has sometimes shown a remarkable ability to clean up the oil on its own.