Tag: Climate Change Disinformation

Abstract

This study explores epistemic virtue as a new lens to scrutinize organizational behavior. Organizational epistemic virtues are the qualities of organizations that support the creation, sharing, and retaining of knowledge. We study how well organizations handle information and if that can prevent organizational misconduct. We propose a theoretical framework to link epistemic virtue to the prevention of misconduct and test this model using data from 822 U.S. companies. These companies are scored on six epistemic virtues by analyzing over one million online employee reviews using natural language processing. We focus on the epistemic virtues of curiosity, epistemic beneficence, epistemic justice, epistemic integration, humility, and open-mindedness. We find that companies with these virtues engage in less corporate misconduct, measured in terms of the number of penalties imposed by government agencies. We also give practitioners a framework to assess the epistemic virtues of organizations.

Abstract

Increasingly, universities have been seen as sites for practicing decolonization work. Examples include the introduction of Land-based curricula, tribal relationship building, and the offering of critical Indigenous studies courses. However, universities remain spaces with deep colonial foundations. This paper offers a description of the challenges and insights gained through attempted decolonial reconcili-action work within this imperfect environment. We critically examine the conception, implementation and lasting impact of a course offered at Western Washington University (WWU), located in Washington State on the ancestral territory of the Lummi and Nooksack peoples. The “Socio-ecology and Reconcili-action in the Northern Salish Sea” course wove together Land-based learning and relationship-building to engage students in reconciliation. We worked specifically with the ɬaʔəmen (Tla’amin) Nation, located in British Columbia, and included classroom and virtual work in Bellingham and a field trip to the Nation’s traditional territory near qathet Regional District (so called Powell River). Two settler students and a settler instructor reflect on the course through a series of reflexive vignettes culminating in a list of learning commitments: to learn from a diversity of peoples, especially Indigenous community members; to learn with gratitude, respect, and reciprocity, and without fear of making mistakes; and to actively apply our knowledge to further reconciliation and decolonization. These commitments are offered as a starting point for other members of the higher education community who recognize their responsibility to advance reconciliation and decolonization.

Abstract

Long COVID represents the constellation of post-acute and long-term health effects caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection; it is a complex, multisystem disorder that can affect nearly every organ system and can be severely disabling. The cumulative global incidence of long COVID is around 400 million individuals, which is estimated to have an annual economic impact of approximately $1 trillion—equivalent to about 1% of the global economy. Several mechanistic pathways are implicated in long COVID, including viral persistence, immune dysregulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, complement dysregulation, endothelial inflammation and microbiome dysbiosis. Long COVID can have devastating impacts on individual lives and, due to its complexity and prevalence, it also has major ramifications for health systems and economies, even threatening progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing the challenge of long COVID requires an ambitious and coordinated—but so far absent—global research and policy response strategy. In this interdisciplinary review, we provide a synthesis of the state of scientific evidence on long COVID, assess the impacts of long COVID on human health, health systems, the economy and global health metrics, and provide a forward-looking research and policy roadmap.

Abstract

COVID-19 impacted citizens around the globe physically, economically, socially, or emotionally. In the first 2 years of its emergence, the virus dominated media in offline and online conversations. While fear was a justifiable emotion; were online discussions deliberately fuelling it? Concerns over the prominent negativity and mis/disinformation on social media grew, as people relied on social media more than ever before. This study examines expressions of stress and emotions used by bots on what was formerly known as Twitter. We collected 5.6 million tweets using the term “Coronavirus” over two months in the early stages of the pandemic. Out of 77,432 active users, we found that over 15% were bots while 48% of highly active accounts displayed bot-like behaviour. We provide evidence of how bots and humans used language relating to stress, fear and sadness; observing substantially higher prevalence of stress and fear messages being re-tweeted by bots over human accounts. We postulate, social media is an emotion-driven attention information market that is open to “automated” manipulation, where attention and engagement are its primary currency. This observation has practical implications, especially online discussions with heightened emotions like stress and fear may be amplified by bots, influencing public perception and sentiment.

Abstract

Data stand as the foundation for studying, evaluating, and addressing the multifaceted challenges within environmental health research. This chapter highlights the contributions of the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE) in generating and democratizing access to environmental exposure data across Canada. Through a consortium-driven approach, CANUE standardizes a variety of datasets – including air quality, greenness, neighborhood characteristics, and weather and climatic factors – into a centralized, analysis-ready, postal code-indexed database. CANUE’s mandate extends beyond data integration, encompassing the design and development of environmental health-related web applications, facilitating the linkage of data to a wide range of health databases and sociodemographic data, and providing educational training and events such as webinars, summits, and workshops. The operational and technical aspects of CANUE are explored in this chapter, detailing its human resources, data sources, computational infrastructure, and data management practices. These efforts collectively enhance research capabilities and public awareness, fostering strategic collaboration and generating actionable insights that promote physical and mental health and well-being.

Abstract

Curiosity is a universal characteristic of childhood that can motivate and direct attention during information-seeking to support knowledge development. Understanding the development of curiosity could inform practical applications to support children’s curiosity and learning across contexts, such as fostering curiosity-supportive environments at home and in schools. In this Review, we focus on the state component of curiosity, defined as information-seeking behaviour that is internally motivated in response to a specific question or gap in knowledge. We synthesize research on children’s curiosity, considering the distinction between internal and external curiosity and variation in curiosity across ages and contexts. On the basis of this research, we suggest several areas for future research.

Abstract

In today’s knowledge economy, it is critical to make decisions based on high-quality evidence. Science-related decision-making is thought to rely on a complex interplay of reasoning skills, cognitive styles, attitudes, and motivations toward information. By investigating the relationship between individual differences and behaviors related to evidence-based decision-making, our aim was to better understand how adults engage with scientific information in everyday life. First, we used a data-driven exploratory approach to identify four latent factors in a large set of measures related to cognitive skills and epistemic attitudes. The resulting structure suggests that key factors include curiosity and positive attitudes toward science, prosociality, cognitive skills, and openmindedness to new information. Second, we investigated whether these factors predicted behavior in a naturalistic decision-making task. In the task, participants were introduced to a real science-related petition and were asked to read six online articles related to the petition, which varied in scientific quality, while deciding how to vote. We demonstrate that curiosity and positive science attitudes, cognitive flexibility, prosociality and emotional states, were related to engaging with information and discernment of evidence reliability. We further found that that social authority is a powerful cue for source credibility, even above the actual quality and relevance of the sources. Our results highlight that individual motivating factors toward information engagement, like curiosity, and social factors such as social authority are important drivers of how adults judge the credibility of everyday sources of scientific information.

Abstract

This research explores Malaysia’s post-independence interaction between the government, civil society, and Islam, the majority religion in the nation. Many predicted that Islam would cause social and economic deterioration when Malaya gained independence from the British in 1957. The constitution declares Islam to be the official state religion, but it also guarantees non-Muslims the right to practice their faith freely and without hindrance. Since then, the state has continued to be in charge of everything related to religion, and Malaysia has been praised for many years as a haven of moderate Islam. However, for a variety of reasons, hate inspired by religion has grown more common and well-liked in Malaysia over the past several years. This research highlights the causes of the rise in hate crimes and the fall of Malaysia’s once-moderate form of Islam. It suggests that rather than attributing the radicalization of Malaysian Muslims to localized issues at the regional and national levels, it should be assessed in light of contemporary geopolitics and its implications for the welfare of the Muslim world. The study suggests that some of the best strategies for combating extremism and avoiding radicalization include ensuring that individuals’ rights are upheld and implementing good government.

Abstract

Digitalization of the healthcare industry is a major trend and focus worldwide. It has the capability to improve the quality of care, reduce costs, and increase accessibility. India’s Healthcare Vision 2030 serves as a driving force compelling healthcare organization in India to embrace digitalization in their operations and services. We surveyed Indian healthcare employees to provide a comprehensive understanding of how external factors impact an organization's internal resources towards successful adoption of healthcare digitalization. The integration of three theoretical perspectives Institutional Theory (IP), Resource-Based View (RBV), and Absorptive Capacity Theory (ACT)) enables a more holistic and intricacies view. Our results emphasize that healthcare digital transformation requires more than just investment and time. Neglecting to respond to external pressures can lead to limited outcomes in digitalization efforts. It necessitates the presence of an appropriate organizational culture, accompanied by strong belief and support from top management.