Background: Stigma relating to health can result in a broad range of vulnerabilities and risks for patients and healthcare providers. The media play a role in people’s understanding of health, and stigma is socially constructed through many communication channels, including media framing. Recent health issues affected by stigma include monkeypox and COVID-19. Objectives: This research aimed to examine how The Washington Post (WP) framed the stigma around monkeypox and COVID-19. Guided by framing theory and stigma theory, online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19 was analyzed to understand the construction of social stigma through media frames. Methods: This research used qualitative content analysis to compare news framings in The Washington Post’s online news coverage of monkeypox and COVID-19. Results: Using endemic, reassurance, and sexual-transmission frames, The Washington Post predominantly defined Africa as the source of monkeypox outbreaks, indirectly labeled gays as a specific group more likely to be infected with monkeypox, and emphasized that there was no need to worry about the spread of the monkeypox virus. In its COVID-19 coverage, The Washington Post adopted endemic and panic frames to describe China as the source of the coronavirus and to construct an image of panic regarding the spread of the virus. Conclusions: These stigma discourses are essentially manifestations of racism, xenophobia, and sexism in public health issues. This research confirms that the media reinforces the stigma phenomenon in relation to health through framing and provides suggestions for the media to mitigate this issue from a framing perspective.

Family communication often becomes an important discourse in the discussion on family function as one of an entity in our society. Parents are the pillars in providing a good environment in the family. Communication among family members and siblings is also found affecting the decision-making process and clear communication between parents and child can bring them to a very positive and effective interaction. McLeod and Chaffee (1972) formulated the quadrant family communication pattern framework namely, permissive, pluralistic, prohibitive and protective. Applying this framework, this study aimed to identify patterns of family communication between parents and their children in the choice of a life partner. Using a survey method, questionnaires were distributed to 400 respondents throughout Peninsular Malaysia and analyzed using Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS) version 23. The mean analysis was performed to identify the most dominant family communication patterns when discussing marriage matters. The study found that protective family communication pattern showed the highest level of practice among all communication patterns and have proven to be a significant contributor for Malaysian youth on their decisions towards marriage and life partner choices. The results from this study contribute to the understanding of the importance of communication among family in the decision making with regards to marriage. The present study adds to the existing knowledge on the importance of communication among family members and provides direction for future research work in this area. Keywords: Family communication, pattern, youth, marriage, protective family.

Visuals are an effective communication medium for communicating a message to an audience. The choice of visual type to use in the delivery of a message needs to be carefully planned so that the message can be delivered effectively. Through the medium of Instagram, the Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH) uses a variety of visuals to enhance health awareness and healthy lifestyle practices among the community. There are three types of visuals that are frequently displayed, namely photos, infographics, and illustrations. How do these three visuals impact and which visuals are most influential in raising health awareness? In this regard, the study aims to identify the most effective visual types for improving health awareness. To address this question, the study used a focus group discussion (FGD) method with five informants from the Corporate Communication Unit, MOH. The selected informants are individuals who are directly involved in visual production and are responsible for maintaining the MOH social site. The findings show that all informants agree that infographic is commonly used in MOH's Instagram because infographic, not only capture the attention of the audience but also reinforce the message they want to convey.

Framing analysis is a widely employed method for examining multiple narratives in media reporting to investigate potential political orientations and possible influences on viewers. However, there has been a lack of extensive investigation into the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian Conflict, specifically regarding the analysis of Western and Eastern media coverage from a war journalism and peace journalism perspective. To fill this vacancy, this study applied the Framing theory and the peace journalism model developed by Lee & Maslog (2005) to identify multiple strategies related to the themes, sources and war/peace journalism applied by CNN for America and CCTV for China. Analysing how CNN and CCTV present the conflict from WJ/PJ perspectives helps to facilitate an understanding of how two different media systems might shape their respective audiences’ perceptions according to different ideologies. The findings revealed that CNN mainly focused on “Humanitarian Crisis and Civilian Impacts” and “Military Operations and Strategic”, whereas CCTV predominantly centred on the themes of “Military Operations and Strategic” and “Political Reactions and Stances”. Additionally, CNN’s coverage overwhelmingly relies on Ukrainian sources and international voices, while CCTV is significantly centred on Russian sources and also includes considerable Ukrainian voices. Finally, CNN and CCTV both use a war journalism frame, but CCTV’s use of a peace journalism frame is slightly higher than CNN’s. This study displays similarities and differences in portraying international conflicts to diverse viewers, offering valuable insights into how Western and Eastern media influence perceptions of worldwide conflicts.

After the outbreak of COVID-19, the world faced various economic, health, and social challenges alongside terror from fake news and posts on social media. There has been a significant impact from the spread and sharing of fake news on the mental health of social media users. Henceforth, this study examined this issue within the context of uses and gratification theory. In doing so, the study performed a meta-analysis using cross-sectional studies regarding social media usage and the association between use and gratification among social media users. Fifteen articles from 2010 to 2020 were retrieved and finalised through strict selection criteria from Google Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science. A random effect model was deployed to estimate the uses and gratification achieved from social media usage and the motivation behind sharing specific posts. The selected articles suggested a positive and significant role of the uses and gratification perspective in motivating users to select specific social media platforms to create and share posts. It was also identified that gratification can result from the performance of both positive and negative actions on social media by social media users. This study offers new insights into social media usage from the uses and gratification perspective during health crises, shedding light on its impact on fake news dissemination and suggesting practical algorithmic control measures. Keywords: Uses and gratifications, meta-analysis, fake news, mental health, social media.

As a new form of social media, short videos have been deeply seated in Chinese life. In order to expand their influence, China's mainstream media also opened accounts on short video platforms, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. They use short video platforms to report news, which play a key role in guiding public opinion and stabilising people's hearts. Based on the pandemic coverage of two of China's representative media, People's Daily and China Daily on Douyin platform, content analysis method is used to analyse the reporting frequency, video length, reporting content, reporting tendency, and user engagement, and compare the similarities and differences between the two media in the above five aspects. It was found that in terms of reporting frequency, the development trend of the two media is different, but they post roughly the same number of videos per day on average, and the number of videos released during the pandemic is higher than usual. In terms of video length, most of the videos of the two media are produced in a duration of one minute. China Daily produced more long videos than People's Daily. In terms of the reporting content, the two media are involved in 11 constructed categories, but the top four categories are different because of the different position. About the reporting tendency, People's Daily has strong subjective emotion, and China Daily reported more neutral news. As for user engagement, People's Daily did better in likes, comments and shares, although both posted more likes, comments and shares than usual during the pandemic. Keywords: Douyin, short video coverage, People's Daily, China Daily, COVID-19.