Information

Sharing accurate and high-quality information is critical during the pandemic to reduce people's anxiety, making them well informed, and ensuring they follow the correct steps. Despite the importance of information in pandemic management, too much information or its untimely release can be harmful to individuals and communities. During the time of COVID-19 pandemic, as an example, people were overwhelmed with the amount of information they received from the public, newspapers, and social media. The information might not be from trusted sources, which might negatively affect people's psychological health. This chapter will examine the ways in which this can occur and the potential impacts of pandemic-related information overload on mental health and psychological well-being. The chapter will also examine the important issue of timeliness in releasing information through the traditional media or online, highlighting situations in which the untimely release of information has exacerbated the crisis in some national settings.

News Content: from Event to Viewer

The purpose of the research is to analyze the way of news information from the event to the screen, to identify the extent to which the use of new technologies affects the audience, to determine the role of a journalist, an editor, a video editor and a sound engineer in this chain, to prove the importance of verifying information. The research methodology is based on a comprehensive theoretical analysis and descriptive-analytical approach, which combines methods of observation, comparison and generalization. The method of theoretical analysis of television stories, scientific publications, as well as determining the role of each employee of the channel, who works on the release of information on the air. Scientific novelty is a detailed analysis of news content on television, determining aspects of interdependence, efficiency and reliability of information when submitting news. Conclusions. Trends in the dynamic development of television have led to significant transformation processes and the use of the latest technologies to influence the audience in news content. The article analyzes the work with information at different levels, elaborates on each stage of news verification, summarizes news factors, approach to writing news stories.

Investor Reaction to the Discovery of Accounting Fraud: The Period from the Discovery of the Fraud to the Completion of the Correction

This paper examines the period from the discovery of accounting fraud to the completion of correction and examines the reaction of investors on the date of the first news release suggesting accounting manipulation, the date of the subsequent release of information related to the amount of profit correction that was not disclosed on the date of the first news release, and the date of the submission of the correction report. The verification results show that the stock price falls sharply on the day of the first news release and the day when the information about the amount of profit revision is disclosed, that when the amount of profit revision is large and it takes time to disclose information about the amount of profit revision, there is a rebound in the stock price on the day when the correction report is submitted because investors like the resolution of uncertainty, and that there is a relationship between the amount of profit revision and the size of stock price decline. However, when there is no information about the amount of correction on the first day of the news release, investors react uniformly, and the reaction to a large (small) amount of correction is underreaction (overreaction). These results indicate that investors were misled by the misstatements until the fraud was discovered and made decisions based on overestimates of future cash flows, so they suffered unexpected losses when the fraud was discovered, and during the period from the fraud discovery to the completion of correction. Received: 3 August 2021 / Accepted: 6 October 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

Fake news and its Impact on national cohesion: the Nigerian story

This discussion paper explores fake news and its impact on national cohesion: the Nigerian perspective. Recently, fake news has become a global phenomenon and impacts nations' economic and socio-political activities. The current discussion paper utilizes secondary sources to buttress the effects of fake news on Nigeria's national cohesion. The paper opined that fake news intentionally fabricated and disseminated information to deceive and mislead others into believing falsehoods. Further, the study discovered that some of the adverse effects of fake news include ethno-religious crisis, electoral violence, and economic instability, among others. Also, it identified the causes of fake news as the mistrust of the ruling class by the masses, social media and affordable data, capitalist motives, late release of information by agencies of government, inadequate capacities of media outlets to verify and release authentic information etc. As a result of fake news, it is recommended that: There is a need always to check multiple sources to confirm the authenticity information before dissemination. We are encouraged to use verification tools and also check the metadata of the information. We should endeavor to be media literate; think before disseminating any information. However, fake news's menace may be impossible to eradicate, but its negative implications can be reduced or managed if we are committed to the preceding statement.

Cross-Platform Comparative Study of Public Concern on Social Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Empirical Study Based on Twitter and Weibo

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a global health crisis that has affected economies and societies worldwide. During these times of uncertainty and crisis, people have turned to social media platforms as communication tools and primary information sources. Online discourse is conducted under the influence of many different factors, such as background, culture, politics, etc. However, parallel comparative research studies conducted in different countries to identify similarities and differences in online discourse are still scarce. In this study, we combine the crisis lifecycle and opinion leader concepts and use data mining and a set of predefined search terms (coronavirus and COVID-19) to investigate discourse on Twitter (101,271 tweets) and Sina Weibo (92,037 posts). Then, we use a topic modeling technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), to identify the most common issues posted by users and temporal analysis to research the issue’s trend. Social Network Analysis (SNA) allows us to discover the opinion leader on the two different platforms. Finally, we find that online discourse reflects the crisis lifecycle according to the stage of COVID-19 in China and the US. Regarding the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, users of Twitter tend to pay more attention to the economic situation while users of Weibo pay more attention to public health. The issues focused on in online discourse have a strong relationship with the development of the crisis in different countries. Additionally, on the Twitter platform many political actors act as opinion leaders, while on the Weibo platform official media and government accounts control the release of information.

Corporate Boards, Audit Committees and Voluntary Disclosure: A Case Analysis on Bangladeshi Listed Companies

The study tries to find the interaction of corporate disclosure and governance within the organization, focused stakeholders, and shareholders representation with internal information in the board. The paper investigates seven governance variables as the willful release of information proxy concentrated on organizational structure and functioning. Multiple regression has been performed to identify the explanatory power of the variables. The results are very much similar and consistent with the understanding that both internal and external control exist simultaneously to affect the shareholders' control to restrict each other. The results suggest that the size of the board does not affect the external control of voluntary disclosure. This paper can help to exhibit the relationship between proper and transparent corporate governance and required disclosure to reduce agency conflicts. This paper focused on the existing companies listed in the stock exchanges to identify and develop model to improve the agency setting. The paper should be interesting for the regulators, stakeholders, and practitioners to construct consistent policies with calls for more disclosure requirements in this agency setting.

Factors Associated with COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy

It is critical to develop tailored strategies to increase acceptability of the COVID-19 vaccine and decrease hesitancy. Hence, this study aims to assess and identify factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Portugal. We used data from a community-based survey, “COVID-19 Barometer: Social Opinion”, which includes data regarding intention to take COVID-19 vaccines, health status, and risk perception in Portugal from September 2020 to January 2021. We used multinomial regression to identify factors associated with intention to delay or refuse to take COVID-19 vaccines. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in Portugal was high: 56% would wait and 9% refuse. Several factors were associated with both refusal and delay: being younger, loss of income during the pandemic, no intention of taking the flu vaccine, low confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine and the health service response during the pandemic, worse perception of government measures, perception of the information provided as inconsistent and contradictory, and answering the questionnaire before the release of information regarding the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. It is crucial to build confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine as its perceived safety and efficacy were strongly associated with intention to take the vaccine. Governments and health authorities should improve communication and increase trust.

Russian Soft and Sharp Power Resources

Beyond its reformed and upgraded traditional military capabilities, Russia under Vladimir Putin’s regime has also developed some new abilities and redeployed some old Soviet-era techniques to battle the West for global hearts and minds. In one sense they are forms of soft power as understood by Joseph Nye. These are power assets like the use of social media to promote Russian interests, traditional media, cultural centers, and goodwill emergency aid, but distinct from the way Nye defines the term as a passive pull toward the goals of a particular country’s preferences, Russian policymakers have used soft power to in a sense “wage friendship.” That is, they employ soft power resources as part of their foreign policy toolkit to further state interests. This chapter also looks at what has become known as “sharp” power—which includes cyber means to shape information environments in Russia’s favor. Various aspects of Russian sharp power include cyber theft and release of information, planting false stories and using fake social media accounts to launder and amplify a message, as well as purchasing Facebook and Twitter ads to further preferred candidates in foreign elections. The chapter includes a discussion of Russian use of sharp power capabilities in the US presidential election in 2016, as well as elsewhere.

Revising A Voluntary Disclosure Decision

Public information that becomes available after a manager's initial voluntary disclosure decision creates incentives for her to reconsider and possibly change that decision. We show that if she has private information that is value relevant or that impacts the firms ability to compete in its product market, the option to revise an initial disclosure decision in the face of a public release of information alters both the initial decision and the overall frequency of disclosure. These effects are amplified if she believes that public information arrival is more likely or if the firms value is more sensitive to it. We also show that an increase in the initial disclosure cost reduces the probability of an initial disclosure and increases the probability of a subsequent disclosure. These effects are reversed if the cost of a subsequent disclosure increases.