Despite the release of his birth certificate, some Americans express continued skepticism over whether Barack Obama was born in the United States. This study examined two possible causes of birther ...beliefs: that Republicans and conservatives, whose ideological beliefs and policy preferences led to disapproval of the president, might be particularly prone to accepting birther beliefs, and that negative attitudes toward Blacks led some Americans to disapprove of the President and accept foreign birthplace claims. A nationally representative survey of Americans showed that birther sentiments were predominant among conservatives/Republicans and individuals holding anti-Black attitudes. These relations were mediated by disapproval of the president. Hence, it appears that birther beliefs were motivated both by politically-grounded disapproval and racially-driven disapproval of the president.
•Many Americans continued to believe that President Obama was born overseas in the summer of 2012.•Republicans/conservatives were more likely to believe Mr. Obama was born overseas than Democrats/liberals.•Individuals with anti-Black attitudes were more likely to believe Mr. Obama was born overseas than individuals with pro-Black attitudes.•Relations linking partisanship/ideology and racial attitudes with birther beliefs were mediated by presidential job approval.•Relations observed support the notion that birther beliefs are the product of a motivated dislike of the president.
The COVID-19 pandemic has reached an entirely new level of severity. It has jolted the entire world and caused pervasive chaos. A significant portion of the psychological responses thus far have been ...reactions to events in other countries, worries about the future, and responses to confinement. Initial and prominent responses to the pandemic in India have been appalling, with a sense of impending and palpable danger. Concerns based on facts coexist with those based on the abundance of information and misinformation disseminated by the media, particularly social media. Even with the stringent requirements for testing, many individuals still seek reassurance through testing. Despite the lack of general indications for their use, they stockpile pharmaceuticals out of dread of contracting the disease. In addition to recommendations regarding hand cleansing, there are uncertainties regarding whether to wear a mask, the type of mask to use, the distance to be maintained, and how to disinfect surfaces. There are legitimate concerns regarding employment losses and economic decline during and after the pandemic. Social isolation and social prejudice are not synonymous. Maintaining a distance of 1-2 meters is permissible for security purposes. In terms of status and opportunities, everyone should be treated equally. The situation calls for a cheerful tone of speech. Using expressions such as "the end of the world" and "the plague" is discouraged. Contamination caused by rumors must be avoided. It is essential to promote early detection and prevention. Those who have been afflicted with COVID-19 must share their accounts of compassion and struggle. Before COVID-19, only a minority of individuals with mental health issues were treated. According to studies, the pandemic has widened the mental health treatment divide, and outpatient mental health services have been particularly disrupted.
This article offers an ethnographic account of Covid-19 infection in Venda, South Africa. During July 2021, a research interlocutor and I tested positive for the virus and embarked on a 10-day period ...of isolation together. During this time, we practiced steaming rituals (u aravhela) on a daily basis and observed several healing practices related to eating, drinking and observing space. For me, the anthropologist, it was a period of intense participant observation; for the interlocutor, it was a period of teaching during which he became a makeshift ritual expert and I, his apprentice. Simultaneous to our isolation, exaggerated rumours about the interlocutor's illness circulated in the area. This article frames Covid-19 infection as a Turnerian rite of passage whilst using ethnographic evidence to illustrate weaknesses in Turner's model. The article concludes that the rumour and ritual around Covid-19 revealed the interconnected dynamics between stability, instability and efforts to make certainty under profoundly uncertain circumstances.
With effective COVID-19 vaccines in hand, we must now address the spread of information on social media that might encourage vaccine hesitancy. Although misinformation comes in many forms,1 including ...false claims, disinformation (e.g., deliberately false information), and rumors (e.g., unverified information), social media companies now seek to interdict this objectionable content-for the first time in their history-by removing content explicitly containing conspiracy theories and false or debunked claims about vaccines. Concurrently, social media users routinely disparage "anti-vaxxers" online, conflating a large group of vaccine-hesitant individuals who may be using social media to seek information about vaccination with a potentially much smaller group of "vaccine refusers." Both strategies could cause more harm than good, necessitating a change in strategy informed by a large body of scientific evidence for making online communications about COVID-19 vaccines more effective.
Social media have been viewed as an important channel through which dissenting and marginalized voices can be disseminated and discussed in authoritarian political settings, such as Cambodia. Drawing ...on a case study of viral discussions on Facebook concerning a hit-and-run traffic accident that took place in March 2019 in Cambodia, this paper explores (1) the key themes that arose from the online conversations and whether they constituted counterpublic discourse, (2) the discursive strategies used by online discussants, and (3) the political implications of such online phenomena. Based on a thematic and discourse analysis of 5000 Facebook comments generated from 100 widely shared public posts about the incident, the study uncovered a number of recurrent themes emerging from the online interactions, most of which were critical of the authoritarian establishment. The study also identified three key discursive strategies employed by Facebook users to discuss and question the status quo: satire, direct criticism and rumour. In addition, guided by Fraser (1990) and Warner (2002)’s concepts of “counterpublics” and boyd (2010)’s recent notion of “networked publics”, the study argues that, through such online discursive interactions, a new social identity in the form of online counterpublics has been formed.
Purpose
This paper explores the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korea in 2015 in order to examine social implications of news media's roles during rumour propagation. There ...was an alarming level of public fear during the disease outbreak due toan information crisis, resulted by the government's holdback of vital information and the widespread MERS rumours on social media. By paying attention to news coverage patterns of rumours and comparing them across the outbreak period, the paper examines the following research questions: (a) Under what media frames were the MERS rumours reported by the online news? (b) Which media frame did the online news use most frequently? (c) How did the media frames change during and after the information vacuum?
Methods
Content analysis of news articles that covered MERS rumours during the outbreak has been conducted. Inductive open coding has been performed to investigate what reactions and media frames the news coverages have demonstrated to report the rumour propagation.
Sample
The article samples were retrieved for big data analysis from the Big Kinds or the Korea Integrated News Database System (www.bigkinds.or.kr), by using the search terms, “MERS” and “SNS (Social Network Services).” A total of 142 articles have been sampled.
Results
The paper found 7 reaction variables and categorized them into 2 risk‐reporting media frames: risk‐alarming frame(Anxiety, Criticisms and Damage) and risk‐mitigating frame (Government, Correction, Remedies and Causes). The paper discovered that anxiety was the most frequently observed reaction variable across all phases. The paper also concluded that there has been a decrease in risk‐alarming media frames and an increase in attempts to analyze causes for the rumour propagation (Causes), as the outbreak proceeds to the second phase, when the information vacuum finally ended.
Conclusion
By exploring a disease outbreak in which ineffective risk management and absence of official information caused significant problems, the paper underlines the need for systematic risk communication measures, endorsed by effective collaboration among political leadership, media and the public.
While rumors predominate in conflict settings, researchers have not identified whether and why they influence the start of organized armed conflict. In this paper, we advance a new conceptualization ...of initial rebel group formation that aims to do so. We present a simple game-theoretic network model to show why the structure of trusted communication networks among civilians where rebel groups form—which carry credible rumors about the rebels—can influence whether incipient rebels become viable. We argue further that in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, kinship network structures favorable to nascent rebels often underlie ethnically homogeneous localities, but not heterogeneous ones. In doing so, we advance a new explanation for why ethnicity influences conflict onset, and show why ethnic grievances may not be a necessary condition for the emergence of “ethnic rebellion.” We illustrate our arguments using new evidence from Uganda that provides a rare window into rebel group formation.
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