1,720,974 research outputs found
Coordinated inauthentic behavior: An innovative manipulation tactic to amplify COVID-19 anti-vaccine communication outreach via social media
No full textCoordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) is a manipulative communication tactic that uses a mix of authentic, fake, and duplicated social media accounts to operate as an adversarial network (AN) across multiple social media platforms. The article aims to clarify how CIB's emerging communication tactic “secretly” exploits technology to massively harass, harm, or mislead the online debate around crucial issues for society, like the COVID-19 vaccination. CIB's manipulative operations could be one of the greatest threats to freedom of expression and democracy in our society. CIB campaigns mislead others by acting with pre-arranged exceptional similarity and “secret” operations. Previous theoretical frameworks failed to evaluate the role of CIB on vaccination attitudes and behavior. In light of recent international and interdisciplinary CIB research, this study critically analyzes the case of a COVID-19 anti-vaccine adversarial network removed from Meta at the end of 2021 for brigading. A violent and harmful attempt to tactically manipulate the COVID-19 vaccine debate in Italy, France, and Germany. The following focal issues are discussed: (1) CIB manipulative operations, (2) their extensions, and (3) challenges in CIB's identification. The article shows that CIB acts in three domains: (i) structuring inauthentic online communities, (ii) exploiting social media technology, and (iii) deceiving algorithms to extend communication outreach to unaware social media users, a matter of concern for the general audience of CIB-illiterates. Upcoming threats, open issues, and future research directions are discussed
Artificial intelligence for severe speech impairment: innovative approaches to AAC and communication
No full textE-prescribing: The rise of socio-tech-med micronetworks of care during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThe present paper critically investigates the rise of e-prescribing socio-tech-med micronetworks of health care in Northern Italy and the role of innovative caregivers. Based on semi-structured one-to-one discursive interviews, this study's results show that e-prescribing innovative practices modify four domains: 1) introduce techno-care fluctuating dynamics, 2) modify spaces and time barriers to care, c) build socio-tech-med micro-networked connections, and d) create innovative "technological" carers. The interdigital carer may support distinctive forms of techno-based senior care in Italy, diffuse e-prescribing culture, and transmediate health objects and services. Careful planning and human-tailored decisionmaking are necessary to normalize e-prescribing socio-tech-med practices and avoid digital health inequalities in pandemic and post-pandemic scenarios
Digital Innovation: Failures and a Best Practice in Digital Health for Fragile Patients During and Beyond the Covid-19 Pandemic
No full textInternational evidence shows several benefits of the "dematerialization" of medical prescription (e-prescribing) for stay-at-home fragile individuals during and beyond the COVID-19 emergency, particularly in countries where digital health practices were already diffused (Koster et al., 2020; Craston et al., 2020; Urik et al., 2020). In Italy, unprecedented e-prescribing protocols aiming at avoiding contacts at the point of care and relying on user's availability to use Information and Communication Technologies failed to reach the digitally illiterate, fragile, stay-at-home people, particularly the older population, in great need of medications during the pandemic lockdown (Murero, 2021, 2022). This study presents how the initial failure of ICT-based digital health policy turned to partial success and critically reflects on the controversial future of digital health for digitally illiterate citizens and fragile people. Our empirical findings (n=156, 2 years, ongoing) show that 1) innovative workers (interdigital agents)"invisibly” secured home medication to old people during the 2020 lockdown, substituting caregivers and volunteers: they turned innovation aging failure into success thanks to access to mobile technology and digital literacy; 2) in 2021 and 2022 health care providers, caregivers and even senior citizens broadly adopted e-prescribing; 3) innovative practices appear to affect the social health relation by significantly) changing places of access to care, b) creating new socio-tech networked connections when fragile stay-at-home people suffer from (at least) one chronic condition (i.e., high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, metabolic disfunctions). Previous literature showed the importance of situational practice and informal work supporting aging care besides "formal" regulation. Building on the theoretical work of Mol (praxiography, 2002, 2010) and Murero (interdigital communication theory, 2012, 2020), the presentation investigates, with an ethnographic approach, how e-prescription modifies trajectories of care (Glaser and Strauss,1968) and family care re-organization (Riemann and Schütze, 1991) around fragile people, disproportionally affected by COVID-19 severe complications (Mueller et al., 2020). Finally, the work critically questions the limits of digital health future development in light of individual digital literacy, from teen to seniors, and the degree of acceptance of highly innovative digital therapeutics (SMILER serious game) aimed at reducing stress through human-machine interactions
Associazione Italiana di Sociologia- Sezione sociologia della salute e della medicina. Tavolo 1 Mente, cervello e comportamento tra neuroscienze e scienze sociali, Coordinatori: Boria, S., Giarelli G.. Conferenza AiS Salute : I nuovi orizzonti della salute in prospettiva interdisciplinare: cervello, tecnologie, ambiente e trasformazioni sociali .
No full textIntra-cardiac microcomputer allows for innovative telemedicine in chronic heart failure during coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
No full textBackground Heart failure patient management guided by invasive intra-cardiac and pulmonary pressure measurements through
permanent intra-cardiac micro-sensors has recently been published as a strategy to individualize the therapy of
patients with chronic heart failure to reduce re-hospitalization and optimize quality of life. Furthermore, the use of
telemedicine could have an important impact on infective disease spread during the current coronavirus disease-
2019 pandemic.
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Case summary Emergent hospitalization of a patient with acute on chronic heart failure, who is currently in self-isolation as a re-
sult of his comorbid profile that exposes him to high risk for severe course and mortality in case of severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection was prevented using a last generation telemedicine
tool.
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Discussion Further implementation of invasive telemedicine could prevent hospitalization for acute decompensated heart fail- ure and consecutive exposure to a potential hospital infection with SARS-CoV-2 in high-risk patients
Use of the Internet by Patients Before and After Cardiac Surgery: An Interdisciplinary Telephone Survey
No full textReviewer: Arvanitis, TheoReviewer: Browndyke, Jeffrey N[This item is a preserved copy and is not necessarily the most recent version. To view the current item, visit http://www.jmir.org/2001/3/e27/ ]
Background:
Little is known about to what extent patients who underwent medical treatment access the Internet and whether they benefit from consulting the Internet.
Objective:
To understand if cardiopathic patients use the Internet for health-related information and whether they find retrieved information understandable and useful.
Methods:
Telephone interviews, using a semi-structured questionnaire, were conducted with 82 patients who had undergone off-pump coronary-artery bypass grafting at the Center for Less Invasive and Robotic Heart Surgery in Buffalo, New York, USA. Study design was multidisciplinary, combining expertise of medical and communication science. Sources of medical information were identified (doctor, Internet, magazines, newspapers, television, radio, family members). Accessibility, quality, and readability of Internet medical information from the patients' point of view were investigated.
Results:
Out of 82 patients, 35 (35/82, 42.7%) were Internet users. Internet users had a significantly higher education level than Internet non-users (college education: 42.9% of users, 10.6% of non-users; P < .001). Among the Internet users, 18 (18/35, 51.4%) had used the Internet for retrieving medical information; 17 (17/35, 48.6%) had not. No statistically significant differences in demographic data were found when comparing these 2 sub-groups of patients. Family-members' involvement was high (15/18, 83.3%). Internet medical information was rated helpful in most cases; readability was acceptable for only 3 patients (3/18, 16.7%). To improve on-line medical information, all patients interviewed suggested sites designed by their physicians.
Conclusions:
Although 1 in 5 patients in our sample has used the Internet to retrieve medical information, the majority of them experiences difficulties comprehending the information retrieved. Health-care providers' should provide Internet medical information that is adequate for the non-medical public's needs
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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