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AbstractConcerns over the resilience of individuals within communities impacted by extreme weather events have heightened in recent years due to the increasing frequency and intensity of these events. Individuals' participation in communicative activities is an integral part of how they prepare for and respond to natural disasters. This study focuses on how individuals express resilience in social media posts from Twitter before, during, and after a regional flooding event in Colorado in 2013 (N = 210,303). Findings show that both negative and positive emotional responses spike at the start of the event, with positive emotions remaining high in the weeks following the event. Uses of language related to social connections, as well as references to home and work, increased during and after the event. Tweets used pronouns focused on the self during the event but shifted to pronouns focused on the collective after the event. This study points the importance of language for understanding the lasting impact extreme weather events can have on individuals, as well as when and how to reach individuals with information about recovery. The increased focus on collective language after the event provides an opportunity for calls to action in collecting and distributing shared resources.

Despite the wealth of research linking Internet-based communication technologies (ICTs) with the rise of anti-government demonstrations in non-democracies, empirical evidence on the impact of ICTs on protest remains inconclusive. Using data from the sixth-wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), I test the relationship between ICT use and protest in non-democracies, finding that although Internet use helps to explain protest participation, organizational networks remain crucial for mobilizing protesters, even in the digital age. Notably, I find that active membership in formal organizations (i.e., attending meetings, holding leadership positions, etc.) significantly increases the likelihood of individual protest participation, providing members with the skills necessary for political engagement and connections to a sustained flow of information about protest events. Most important, I find significant interactive effects between organizational membership and ICT use—while Internet use increases the likelihood of protest engagement for all individuals, the effects of ICT use are greatest for multiply-engaged citizens who are actively involved in both online and offline organizational networks. This work thus illuminates a largely overlooked symbiosis between online and offline communities and forces a reconsideration of the ways in which organizations work to mobilize contention under authoritarian rule.

This study analyzes the issue attention cycle for print and online media coverage of a scientific publication examining the deaths of Chinese factory workers due to lung damage from chronic exposure to nanoparticles. The results of the nanoparticle study, published in 2009, embody news values that would make the study a prime candidate for press coverage, namely, novelty, negativity, controversy, and potential widespread impact. Nevertheless, mentions of the event in traditional English-language print media were nearly nonexistent. Online media, on the other hand, gave the story greater coverage. This case study exemplifies why online media may not be bound to the same issue attention cycle that print media are for controversial scientific events.

The shift toward online communication in all realms, from print newspapers to broadcast television, has implications for how the general public consumes information about nanotechnology. The goal of this study is threefold: to investigate who is using online sources for information and news about science and nanotechnology, to examine what the general public is searching for online with regards to nanotechnology, and to analyze what they find in online content of nanotechnology. Using survey data, we find those who report the Internet as their primary source of science and technology news are diverse in age, more knowledgeable about science and nanotechnology, highly educated, male, and more diverse racially than users of other media. In a comparison of demographic data on actual visits by online users to general news and science Web sites, science sites attracted more male, non-white users from the Western region of the United States than news sites did. News sites, on the other hand, attracted those with a slightly higher level of education. Our analysis of published estimates of keyword searches on nanotechnology reveals people are turning to the Internet to search for keyword searches related to the future, health, and applications of nanotechnology. A content analysis of online content reveals health content dominates overall. Comparisons of content in different types of sites—blogs, government, and general sites—are conducted.

Here, we explore how individuals develop trust in institutions as sources of information for the issue of nanotechnology. The United States and the European Union have invested $14 billion and $6 billion, respectively, within the past 10 years in nanotechnology-related research and development (Cordis Europa, 2010; National Nanotechnology Initiative, 2010). More than 1,000 products in cosmetics, sport equipment, and computer technologies (among other applications) containing some nano-related components have already been commercialized. Nanotechnology is also representative of increasingly complex emerging technologies with potentially controversial applications since their levels of toxicity have yet to be clearly established. At the same time, lay publics are not familiar with nanotechnology (Cobb, & Macoubrie, 2004; Scheufele, Corley, Shih, Dalrymple, & Ho, 2009; Scheufele & Lewenstein, 2005). Therefore, the social dynamics surrounding trust in institutions, such as governmental agencies and scientists, who are the most likely to provide formal information on nanotechnology will be of critical importance as global markets emerge for nanotechnology. Adapted from the source document.

ObjectivesThe current study examines upstream engagement initiatives using the issue of nanotechnology as a case study.MethodsA series of logistic and OLS regression analyses explore data from a laboratory experiment on information‐seeking behavior, knowledge, and willingness to engage with the issue of nanotechnology in the future.ResultsOur results fail to offer evidence of positive relationships between anticipated discussion and learning and the willingness to engage with the issue of nanotechnology in the future. In addition, our results show that anticipated discussion with opposing others actually encourages individuals to seek out an editorial or opinion piece first as opposed to a news item.ConclusionOur findings point toward important variations in the kinds of information‐seeking behaviors likely to emerge from different conditions under which individuals may be motivated to learn more about emerging science issues, and provide practical insights into which kinds of information‐seeking behaviors are most conducive to knowledge gain and issue engagement.

BACKGROUND: PATHFx is a clinical decision-support tool based on machine learning capable of estimating the likelihood of survival after surgery for patients with skeletal metastases. The applicability of any machine-learning tool depends not only on successful external validation in unique patient populations but also on remaining relevant as more effective systemic treatments are introduced. With advancements in the treatment of metastatic disease, it is our responsibility to patients to ensure clinical support tools remain contemporary and accurate. QUESTION/PURPOSES: Therefore, we sought to (1) generate updated PATHFx models using recent data from patients treated at one large, urban tertiary referral center and (2) externally validate the models using two contemporary patient populations treated either surgically or nonsurgically with external-beam radiotherapy alone for symptomatic skeletal metastases for symptomatic lesions. METHODS: After obtaining institutional review board approval, we collected data on 208 patients undergoing surgical treatment for pathologic fractures at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center between 2015 and 2018. These data were combined with the original PATHFx training set (n = 189) to create the final training set (n = 397). We then created six Bayesian belief networks designed to estimate the likelihood of 1-month, 3-month, 6-month, 12-month, 18-month, and 24-month survival after treatment. Bayesian belief analysis is a statistical method that allows data-driven learning to arise from conditional probabilities by exploring relationships between variables to estimate the likelihood of an outcome using observed data. For external validation, we extracted the records of patients treated between 2016 and 2018 from the International Bone Metastasis Registry and records of patients treated nonoperatively with external-beam radiation therapy for symptomatic skeletal metastases from 2012 to 2016 using the Military Health System Data Repository (radiotherapy-only group). From each ...