American Behavioral Scientist

Polat, Eileen; Gordley-Smith, Ava; Hackett, Paul M.W.

doi: 10.1177/00027642231166874pmid: N/A

In this article, we discuss the ways in which the United Kingdom and the United States communicate health information to their respective citizens. While this article is not limited to the study of COVID-19 health communications, we look at the institutions that were tasked with communication responsibilities regarding the COVID-19 virus in the United States and United Kingdom. To highlight the possible repercussions on the general public of each nation, we present a review of the institutions of communication as a gateway for discussion and an opportunity to unveil discrepancies and inequitable forms of communication. These institutions are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health in the United States, and the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. We consider the language and vocabulary used within these organizations’ mission statements, privacy policies, digital channels and platforms, regulations for advice and feedback from federal agents as well the general public, and accessibility. We use an intersectional lens to explore the nuanced and multifarious impacts of communication praxis and aim to discuss how these have led to limitations of passive and comprehensive communication influences in both nations and their relation to health infrastructure. By understanding the constraints of health infrastructure on the current disenfranchised citizens in both the United States and United Kingdom, we can register the adverse behavioral imprint on individuals as a result and finally call for further research into the impact of reconstructive governmental health communications.

Escamilla-Solano, Sandra; Diez-Martin, Francisco; Blanco-González, Alicia; Fernández de las Peñas, César

doi: 10.1177/00027642231191752pmid: N/A

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a number of business challenges that have highlighted latent business problems. In the search for solutions, academics have produced over 3,000 research articles in the field of business and management research. This research focuses on what we have learned from COVID-19 in business and management and on the future challenges for researchers. To outline the research that has been generated on the impact of COVID-19 on companies, we developed a bibliometric analysis to describe the intellectual structure of the field, identifying the main challenges for companies (Supply Chain, Consumer Behavior, SMEs, Stock Market, Tourism, ICTs, Work Stress, Cyberchondria, Education, Social Challenge, Teleworking); the ways in which scholars are developing solutions to these challenges; the main sources of knowledge in the area; and the future research challenges.

Paul, Newly

doi: 10.1177/00027642231166871pmid: N/A

This study explored how The New York Times and the Dallas Morning News used visuals on their front pages to frame the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Findings indicated that the Times was more likely to publish COVID-related images on the front page, use the threat frame in its images, and use photographs taken by staff photojournalists than sourced from wire services or freelancers. The two newspapers were equally likely to give prominence to COVID-related photos on their front pages, by publishing them above the fold. The implications of these trends are discussed.

Raisi, Alireza

doi: 10.1177/00027642231195807pmid: N/A

The article examines the determinants of the government’s approval in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak in the MENA region. A preliminary examination of public opinion polls demonstrates that trust in the government is the major determinant of satisfaction with the government’s handling of the crisis. In addition, the government approval improved over time in some countries challenging the rallying around the flag explanation. The impact of economic insecurity is mixed and inconsistent across the countries of the MENA region. In countries with an economic crisis such as Lebanon, economic hardship resulting from the pandemic affected the government approval of the crisis. Yet, in other countries, economic insecurity does not impact the government’s approval of the crisis. The findings of the article have important implications for understanding what constitutes effective leadership in addressing the pandemic at the state and regional levels and how external shocks influence state–society relations in authoritarian regimes.

Levy, Eric; Chiang, ERIC; Levy, Ting

doi: 10.1177/00027642231166879pmid: N/A

Pre-election polls have been conducted using different modes of data collection with varying degrees of accuracy. As media’s appetite for horserace polling increased, the demand for all types of data collection increased, raising the price of achieving a representative sample. Mixing modes of data collection have been popular due to the increased cost of polling using traditional methods such as face-to-face interviews, mail-in surveys, or live operator phone surveys. Due to technological advances in self-administered surveys, other forms of data collection provide more cost-effective solutions. Florida Atlantic University’s Business and Economics Polling Initiative conducted political polls throughout the fall of 2020 in anticipation of the general election for President of the United States. This unique dataset from polls conducted in September and October of 2020 showed interactive voice response (IVR) landline polling to be the most accurate statewide and across most regions of Florida. The survey data collected via opt-in online panels and via mobile phone text messaging exhibited results outside of the margin of error for certain regions. However, given the trend of declining landline phones and greater instances of exclusive mobile phone usage, polling by way of online and mobile phone surveys is becoming increasingly important.

Manfredi, Luciana Carla; Sayago-Gomez, Juan Tomas; Cabanelas, Pablo

doi: 10.1177/00027642231191749pmid: N/A

Legitimacy is a must for organizational success. Hence, those organizations able to gain legitimacy can increase effectiveness during periods of crisis or threats. Based on organizational perception management, which focuses its attention on those actions that aim to influence audiences’ perceptions of an organization. This paper presents multiple experiments to understand how different strategies executing verbal accounts can influence people’s perceptions of legitimacy. Results demonstrate that a threatening event will negatively affect legitimacy perception, whatever the response of the organization is. However, verbal accounts are also an important organizational perception management tactic to impact the perceptions of legitimacy during these threatening situations, as a defensive response will have a worse behavior on perceived legitimacy than the accommodative one. Furthermore, the type of event will also have a direct influence on certain dimensions of legitimacy, opening a wide range of actions to be taken depending on the characteristics of the event.

Bernal-Turnes, Paloma; Ernst, Ricardo; Ordeix, Enric

doi: 10.1177/00027642231164043pmid: N/A

The COVID-19 outbreak that emerged in December 2019 has had a dramatic impact on the global economy in which consumption, trade, and service activities have been greatly disrupted. Businesses across many sectors have experienced a severe decline in sales and jobs. But the magnitude and distribution of the pandemic greatly affected small firms, due to them being more financially constrained. This article provides a comprehensive assessment of the short-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Algerian businesses. Based on a novel data set, the article shows how, beyond adjusting their labor costs and enforcing government-mandated lockdowns and social distancing, businesses could respond to the shock of COVID-19 thanks to the use of communication tools, such as the Internet and digital technologies, as well as the cooperation between companies. The article concludes that those firms that used Internet-based communication tools and those that built new ways of business cooperation and provided help to community during the lockdown showed higher survival rates after the lockdown.

Meirick, Patrick

doi: 10.1177/00027642231164047pmid: N/A

This study analyzed data from a Pew survey (N = 5,681) to see how party identification, political knowledge, and use of different news sources related to two beliefs about COVID-19 promoted on the right early in the pandemic: that the virus was created in a laboratory and that a vaccine for it would be available within a few months. Republicans were more likely to hold these beliefs. The more that people used news outlets with right-leaning audiences, the more likely they were to hold those two beliefs. The more they used news with left-leaning audiences, the less likely they were to believe the virus was laboratory made, a relationship stronger among Democrats. Political knowledge appeared to discourage believing the virus was laboratory-made, again more so among Democrats. However, the more that Democrats (but not Republicans) used news with bipartisan audiences, the more likely they were to believe the virus was laboratory made. Similarly, the more that Democrats (but not Republicans) used social media for news, the more they believed a vaccine would be available soon, and right-leaning news use had a stronger relationship with the early vaccine belief among Democrats.

Ansabayeva, Ainur; Mailybaeva, Gulmira; Utegulov, Daniyar; Temerbayeva, Zhanna; Nugmanova, Farida

doi: 10.1177/00027642231192019pmid: N/A

Research on child-rearing technologies is always relevant in pedagogical science. The purpose of this study is to establish the relationship between the school and the family in the educational process of primary school age children. To investigate this issue, the study employed the following methods: comparative analysis, synthesis, logical analysis, modeling, deduction, analysis of scientific literature, and the study of student performance. The results of this study are the theoretical and practical foundations of the relationship between school and family in the course of raising a child, establishing common, and distinctive features in the approaches. The practical value of this study lies in the fact that the proposed means and methods of educating children of primary school age can be used by parents and teachers to improve the establishment of contact with the child and effectively influence on them, to form the student as a full-fledged participant in social relations.

Sendroiu, Ioana

doi: 10.1177/00027642221144843pmid: N/A

This article aims for a conceptual model of how crises and events function together and apart, starting from the view that the two are not interchangeable. I therefore define events as structural transformations that can be the object of empirical knowledge, but which are not self-evident or known to all as they take place. Crisis-claims, meanwhile, are performative judgments or demands for a different future. Given that structural transformations are not self-evident in the moment, a crisis-claim, in this sense, is a guess that an event is taking place. This distinction is elucidated through a computational text analysis of U.S. media reporting on shootings, focusing on the month before and the month after George Floyd’s death. Building on this conceptual distinction, I argue that events and crises can coincide, constitute, and even modify the other. But crises can occur without reference to events, and events can take place which are not deemed to be crises.