• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.20-43
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• 2017

While the Internet has been used to galvanise people for the collective good, many have voiced concerns over the noise and vitriol present online and polarisation. In Singapore where the government regulates traditional mainstream media such as print and broadcast, the online space has been described as a "Wild Wild West" rife with rumours, untruths and misinformation. Such developments do not only exert a potential negative effect on the deliberative nature of public discourse but also skew bias towards the online space, affecting the ability of online users to communicate with authority and power. This study seeks to examine the rationality of the cyberspace through using a new "rationality" framework to analyse political discourse online. Comprising objectivity, emotionality and partisanship, the rationality framework was applied to a content analysis of 197 blogs with political content in 2014. The analysis indicated that the online political space was not the Wild Wild West that it was touted to be with significant levels of objectivity and non-partisanship. There was a stark absence of emotional discourse, and relationships were observed between bloggers' anonymity and rationality. Cognisant of academia's and policymakers' interest on the quality and effects of online discourse, the proposed analytical framework and the study findings hold implications for both developed and developing countries.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.77-90
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• 2020

This study analyzes N=181 social media rumors from Bangladesh to find out the most popular themes, sources, and aims. The result shows that social media rumors have seven popular themes: political, health & education, crime & human rights, religious, religiopolitical, entertainment, and other. Also, online media and mainstream media are the two main sources of social media rumors, along with three tentative aims: positive, negative, and unknown. A few major findings of this research are: Political rumors dominate social media, but its percentage is decreasing, while religion-related rumors are increasing; most of the social media rumors are negative and emerge from online media, and social media itself is the dominant online source of social media rumors; and, most of the health-related rumors are negative and surge during a crisis period, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper identifies some of its limitations with the data collection period, data source, and data analysis. Providing a few research directions, this study also elucidates the contributions of its results in academia and policymaking.

• 한국IT서비스학회지
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• 제18권1호
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• pp.219-234
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• 2019

Fake news threaten democratic elections and causes social conflicts, resulting in major damage. However, the concept of fake news is hard to define, as there is a saying, "News is not fake, fake is not news." Fake news, however, has irreversible characteristics that can not be recovered or reversed completely through post-punishment of economic and political benefits. It is also rapidly spreading in the early days. Therefore, it is very important to preemptively detect these types of articles and prevent their blind proliferation. The existing countermeasures are focused on reporting fake news, raising the level of punishment, and the media & academia to determine the authenticity of the news. Researchers are also trying to determine the authenticity by analyzing its contents. Apart from the contents of fake news, determining the behavioral characteristics of the promoters and its qualities can help identify the possibility of having fake news in advance. The online community has a fake news interception and response tradition through its long-standing community-based activities. As a result, I attempted to model the fake news by analyzing the affirmation-denial analysis and posting behavior by securing the web board crawl of the 'M community' bulletin board during the 2017 Korean presidential election period. Random forest algorithm deemed significant. The results of this research will help counteract fake news and focus on preemptive blocking through behavioral analysis rather than post-judgment after semantic analysis.

• Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research
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• 제9권1호
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• pp.25-47
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• 2021

This study analyzes 419 fake news items published in India, a fake-news-prone country, to identify the major themes, content types, and sources of social media fake news. The results show that fake news shared on social media has six major themes: health, religion, politics, crime, entertainment, and miscellaneous; eight types of content: text, photo, audio, and video, text & photo, text & video, photo & video, and text & photo & video; and two main sources: online sources and the mainstream media. Health-related fake news is more common only during a health crisis, whereas fake news related to religion and politics seems more prevalent, emerging from online media. Text & photo and text & video have three-fourths of the total share of fake news, and most of them are from online media: online media is the main source of fake news on social media as well. On the other hand, mainstream media mostly produces political fake news. This study, presenting some novel findings that may help researchers to understand and policymakers to control fake news on social media, invites more academic investigations of religious and political fake news in India. Two important limitations of this study are related to the data source and data collection period, which may have an impact on the results.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• 제21권11호
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• pp.73-80
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• 2021

Nowadays microblogs have become the most popular platforms to obtain and spread information. Twitter is one of the most used platforms to share everyday life event. However, rumors and misinformation on Arabic social media platforms has become pervasive which can create inestimable harm to society. Therefore, it is imperative to tackle and study this issue to distinguish the verified information from the unverified ones. There is an increasing interest in rumor detection on microblogs recently, however, it is mostly applied on English language while the work on Arabic language is still ongoing research topic and need more efforts. In this paper, we propose a combined Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) to detect rumors on Twitter dataset. Various experiments were conducted to choose the best hyper-parameters tuning to achieve the best results. Moreover, different neural network models are used to evaluate performance and compare results. Experiments show that the CNN-LSTM model achieved the best accuracy 0.95 and an F1-score of 0.94 which outperform the state-of-the-art methods.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.1-13
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• 2023

This study determines how social media users (SMUs) verify the information they come across on the Internet. It determines SMUs' perception of online fact-checking services in terms of their ease of use, usefulness, and trust. By conducting a focus group discussion and key informant interviews, themes were derived in determining fact-checking practices while a survey was further conducted to determine such perceived ease of use, usefulness, and trust in fact-checking services. The thematic analysis revealed major information verification practices, such as cross-checking and verifying with other sources, inspecting comments and reactions, and confirming from personal and social networks. The results showed that SMUs considered fact-checking services easy to use. However, a concern was raised about their usefulness stemming from the delayed action in addressing the information issues that need to be verified. As to perceived trust, it was found that SMUs have reservations about fact-checking services. Finally, it is believed that fact-checking services are expected to be credible and need to be promoted to mitigate any form of fake news, particularly on social media platforms.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• 제50권3호
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• pp.305-310
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• 2023

Background In this modern era of science-based medicine, some people still accept folk remedies as an alternative form of medicine. However, misinformation and misuse of folk medicines can result in dangerous complications. Among the possible complications of folk remedy use, this study focused on the clinical characteristics of burns caused by folk remedies. Methods We retrospectively reviewed the clinical records of patients who had been treated for burns caused by folk remedies from May 2015 to April 2022. Data were collected on patients' age and gender, type of folk remedy, reason for using the folk remedy, the severity of the burn, the number of wounds, lesion type, and type of treatment. Results We found 59 patients with burns due to folk remedies. Most were female (76.3%) and ≥ 60 years old (72.9%). The most common type of folk remedy was moxibustion (74.6%), followed by the use of glacial acetic acid (20.3%). The reasons for using folk remedies were arthralgia relief (39%), health improvement (18.6%), and treatment of tinea pedis (11.9%). Most patients had multiple wound sites and had burns that were considered severe, requiring surgical treatment (72.9%). The majority of lesions were on the lower extremity, including the foot. Conclusion This study described the risk of burns caused by folk remedies and the clinical characteristics of the wounds. The results emphasize the need for greater public awareness of the risk of burn injuries when using folk remedies.

• 대순사상과 동아시아종교
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• 제2권2호
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• pp.51-72
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• 2023

This article explores the intersection of freedom of religion, sangsaeng, and symbiosis when considering the post-COVID study of religions, especially new religions. When it comes to the study of new and alternative religious groups, where there is more potential for misunderstanding and misinformation, it becomes all the more important-and indeed mutually beneficial, in the areas of religious liberty, religious freedom, and cross-cultural dialogue-to learn about a tradition by taking into account the spiritual life and practices of members themselves and their own sacred writings and practices. Daesoon Jinrihoe offers a case study of the importance of this principle and the notion of sangsaeng in particular is a fruitful utilitarian lens for thinking about how scholars, journalists, and others might approach the study of religion in our complex and global digital age of (mis) information. Daesoon Jinrihoe is also considered in light of Roy Wallis's typology of world-rejecting, world-affirming, and world-accommodating new religious movements. Open areas for sociological research are proposed and the nascent field of Daesoon studies is compared to some similar scholarly endeavors within NRM studies.

• 대한한의학회지
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• 제44권4호
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• pp.1-13
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• 2023

Objectives: Weight counseling is an inevitable process for patients with obesity who intend to lose weight; however, the contents of real-world counseling practices remain uncertain in Korean medicine (KM) practice. This study aimed to explore the structure and constituents of obesity counseling in KM. Methods: Qualitative methods were used to explore the structure of weight counseling and clinicians' approaches to weight counseling, particularly the advice and main constituents of weight counseling in KM. Nine KM clinicians (4 women, 5 men) from nine clinics completed face-to-face, individual and semi-structured interviews from September 2019 to February 2020 in Seoul, Daejeon, Cheonan, Seongnam, Asan, and Hwaseoug. The interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed verbatim, and categorized based on their constituents. Results: During weight loss counseling, the six principal constituents of KM identified were: planning with patients, motivation, correcting misinformation on weight loss, dietary and exercise advice, medication guidance, and customized guides for each type. Conclusion: Clinicians with in-depth knowledge about obesity prescribed personalized guidance for exercise, diet, and medication through an integrative approach. The study results provide an in-depth understanding of weight counseling in KM. These six constituents could guide the counseling provided by clinicians in obesity care.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• 제23권3호
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• pp.162-165
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• 2020

Purpose: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought the world to a standstill and has exposed the lack of preparedness of most nations' health care systems. Even in usual times, palliative care has not received its fair share of recognition as an important component of patient care; instead, the emphasis is often placed on aggressive patient management. Now, with the entire medical community and decision-making committees focussed on intensive patient care, end-of-life care has taken a backseat. Methods: This article is a brief communication. Results: COVID 19 infection has been shown to lead to greater mortality and morbidity in patients with pre-existing illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, renal failure, and cancer. Patients typically in need of end-of-life care, such as those with late-stage cancer or heart failure, are therefore at a higher risk of both contracting COVID-19 and suffering a more severe disease course. The strict nationwide lockdowns being imposed in most countries have deterred patients from seeking medical attention or hospice care. Every day new research is coming to light regarding COVID 19. This has helped significantly in creating awareness and limiting the spread of disease. However, misinformation is also rampant, leading to discrimination and mistreatment of infected patients. Conclusion: This pandemic has been a terrifying ordeal for all and has exposed our entire population physically, psychologically, emotionally, and financially to unimaginable stresses. In the present scenario, EOL care is as much a necessity as intensive care and should be given at least a fraction of its importance.