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Norman Angel Represents Whitehead Comm at Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Conference

9/20/2022

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In August 2022, you could find a piece of Whitehead Comm on the sidelines of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - held at Sheraton, downtown Philadelphia (USA) - at the Applied Networking and Research Workshop (ANRW’ 22).
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The Applied Networking and Research Workshop (ANRW) is an academic workshop that provides a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators, and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research. The goal of ANRW is to bring together researchers from academia, industry, and government to share their work and ideas.

Norman Angel, our Research Associate at Whitehead Communications Consult, and currently pursuing MSc. Data Science and Analytics at Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya, attended the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) primarily to participate in the Applied Networking and Research Workshop (ANRW), an academic workshop that provides a forum for researchers, vendors, network operators, and the Internet standards community to present and discuss emerging results in applied networking research, and to find inspiration from topics and open problems discussed at the IETF. The workshop consisted of a mix of invited talks, submitted talks and short papers.

It was his first IETF meeting and was a unique experience for me, particularly compared to other conferences he has attended before.


Norman brought his East African perspective to the global gathering. As an organisation, the IETF is focused on practical solutions and detailed specifications for working systems, as opposed to conceptual research. This practical focus appealed to Norman’s interest in systems-building research and is one of the reasons why he chose to attend IETF-114. By attending the academic research workshop, he gained a better understanding of what problems are currently in need of solutions, what problems will need to be solved in the near future, and what constraints shape the space of possible solutions to building the internet - particularly in Africa. IETF-144 gave Norman new research problems to think about and helped him identify better ways to evaluate any future research. In particular, Norman has been thinking more about capacity building to enable digital inclusion of people people in the countries where he lives and works, Kenya and Uganda.
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“I also realised what a great opportunity IETF meetings are to meet and talk with people from different parts of the world. Gaining these vastly different perspectives is valuable for researchers like myself. I’m grateful to ANRW organisers who provided support to student attendees like myself in terms of travel grants for enabling my attendance. Special thanks to everyone at Whitehead Communications Consult who have been a big part of my career development and for always supporting and providing room for learning.”

We're always excited to see our team learning and brining lessons back. 

If you want to talk more to Norman about his experience, please contact our team at research@whiteheadcommunications.com 


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How Ugandan Telemedicine Company Rocket Health Grew During The COVID-19 Pandemic

1/18/2022

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Starting near the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Whitehead Communications partnered with Ugandan telemedicine company Rocket Health to track the company's experience through the pandemic, looking at their market potential and public opinion toward the overall idea of telemedicine in a Sub-saharan African country, while advising on communication strategies that may help the company attract and retain more customers.

Our research included:

  • Focus Groups (conducted virtually using WhatsApp)
  • Surveys (distributed online, over the phone and in person)
  • Social media monitoring
  • Network analysis
  • Topic analysis
  • Sentiment analysis​
  • Digital news media monitoring
  • Business data review
  • Regional market research

While most of Whitehead Communications' research was supplied exclusively to Rocket Health in order to inform company strategy, we agreed to share some of our results with the general public.



You can download the full report here.
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Introduction

Rocket Health, a telemedicine and digital health service in Kampala operated by The Medical Concierge Group (TMCG), has experienced significant growth through the first year and a half of the pandemic. Seven years into operations, some doubted the company's market potential because it is heavily reliant on digital literacy in a country where internet access is limited, and much of the population is not highly educated or exposed to modern technology.

However, the pandemic crisis created an opportunity for Rocket Health. During the pandemic, residents had their movements restricted amidst great uncertainty and anxiety about health. In this context, Rocket Health experienced a spike in their clientele, with more people seeking to access healthcare services through digital tools. As a result, Rocket Health services were significantly embraced in Kampala and the surrounding areas. This progress built on and went beyond to the known growth of mobile and technology adoption in Africa by extending telehealth services beyond the digital divide through strategic marketing and communications.

Due to the government efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, most people were limited in their ability to travel to access healthcare, and by design Rocket Health served thousands of people through tele-consultations, home-based COVID-19 care, home COVID-19 testing, and delivery of pharmaceutical supplies. Even outside the occasional waves, this work has made Rocket health a household name in certain areas of Uganda.
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Summary of Rocket Health Growth

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda, Rocket Health experienced unprecedented growth, which was reflected on both their online and offline platforms. Both the phone-in contact number and website ‘E-Shop’ saw growth in users, particularly at key times of the pandemic such as the first lockdown in the month of April 2020, and the most impactful wave of COVID-19 experienced by Uganda in June 2021.
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From the period of October 2019 to September 2021, Rocket Health registered the following increases in business:
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  • Amount of voice call traffic increased by 315%
  • Number of encounters from insured members increased by 344%
  • Users of the online shop (E-shop) increased by 331%


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2020 Public Opinion Research on Telemedicine in Uganda

In August of 2020, the research team at Whitehead Communications carried out research on awareness of and public opinion on telemedicine in Uganda. The research objective was to ascertain to what extent Ugandans understood telemedicine and may be open to using such services. The team also gathered feedback from Rocket Health customers in Uganda with the intention of learning how the telemedicine provider could serve them better. This research was done through surveys and focus groups (more on the methodology below).
We surveyed 392 Ugandans about their views on Telemedicine, 37% of which were located in Kampala where Rocket Health is based, and the rest were spread across the country. Our findings suggested that while the majority (58%) had never heard of telemedicine, more (80% +) were open to the idea. 


The Challenge of Healthcare in Uganda

​In focus groups, the Whitehead Communications team asked Ugandans to describe their experience with healthcare in Uganda. Participants described a health system with services often distant from their homes, poorly resourced, and often expensive. This description spans both public and private healthcare. Furthermore, it was reported that there are often not enough doctors to meet patients’ needs, and services in health care are often slow and frustrating. 

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Demand for Telehealth Services in Uganda

​Among the Ugandans who understood what telemedicine is, whether they were an existing user or had just found out what it was, most respondents believed that it could be a good solution to their healthcare needs. 
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Benefits of Receiving Medical Assistance at Home

Most Ugandans we spoke with could quickly recognise the potential benefits of telemedicine services, whether or not they had experienced telemedicine services before. 


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Key Insights


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Challenges in Uganda’s Telemedicine Market

The biggest challenges respondents suggested that people may face in receiving healthcare from home included:
  • Connectivity
  • Digital illiteracy
  • Awareness
  • Trust
  • Financial constraints 

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Recommendations to Overcome Challenges and Meet Market Demands

Respondents in Uganda made several recommendations to help meet the challenges of rolling out telemedicine services in Uganda.

  1. Increase marketing to create more awareness about telemedicine
  2. Build trust in this new method of healthcare through strategic partnerships with trusted health........brands including the national Health Ministry and NGOs like USAID
  3. Introduce a USSD code to ease access for potential customers that do not have internet access or .......basic digital literacy skills
  4. Increase specialised services, such as mental healthcare and services for the chronically ill. 

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For more on how Rocket Health grew in 2020-2021 and which communications tactics were most successful...

You can download the full report here.

Please contact anne@whiteheadcommunications.com  or research@whiteheadcommunications.com for more information.
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Whitehead survey results published in the Scientific African

1/18/2022

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In 2020, Whitehead Communications conducted a national public opinion survey in Uganda on the impact of COVID-19. Development economist and Post-Doc at the University of Bonn in Germany, Emmanuel Nshakira-Rukundo, reached out and offered his expertise in further modelling the data to determine how different factors affect Ugandans' adherence to public health restrictions and how seriously they take the pandemic.

Near the end of 2021, a co-authored paper detailing our results was published in the academic journal Scientific African.

AbstractSince the COVID-19 pandemic started, countries have enacted a series of non-clinical preventive mechanisms aimed at slowing the rate of spread. However, these mechanisms can be effective only when they are correctly followed and only when individuals believe the risk of COVID-19 is high enough to warrant following them. As risk perceptions decline, individuals are more likely to relax following preventive measures and the rate of spread might increase. This study assesses the determinants of changes in perceptions of COVID-19 risk and the determinants of adherence to preventive measures in Uganda. Logistic regression results show that age, access to information and being supportive of preventive measures strongly predicts keeping higher risk perceptions and adhering to preventive actions. Qualitative results show that risk perceptions are also influenced by economic stress, citizens’ level of confidence in the government, local political climate and the extent of proliferation of misinformation about COVID-19.

You can read and download the full paper here.


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Topic Modelling of COVID-19 Media Coverage in Uganda - 2021

11/23/2021

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By Julian Park, Joyce Yanru Jiang & Anne Whitehead
​@ Whitehead Communications 2021 

As the COVID-19 pandemic carries on into 2021, despite vaccine development, countries like Uganda continue to see their fight against the pandemic reflected in news media coverage. In 2020, Whitehead Communications applied a machine learning technique to analyse the trends in Ugandan online news coverage of the pandemic. We have now updated our study using LDA Topic Modelling to identify dominant topics of Ugandan COVID-19 coverage from March 2020 up to the end of June 2021. This analysis shows an evolution in the pertinent themes of COVID-19 coverage in Uganda as well as a changing volume of overall coverage over time.

Whitehead Communications gathered 32,212 English-language news articles that include the keywords “COVID” and/or “Corona” from a selection of Uganda’s leading news websites. These websites include Uganda’s major print publications – Daily Monitor, Red Pepper and The Observer – as well as major online-only Ugandan media houses The Independent, Chimp Reports, Nile Post, PML Daily, Softpower, The Tower Post, Eagle News and Trumpet News. (Unfortunately, Uganda’s New Vision data was unavailable at the time of this analysis.) 
This research was done to broaden the chronological scope and topic diversity of previous exploratory research. As a result, the methodology of this research is largely consistent with said previous research. We used the machine learning method called Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), which is a type of Natural Language Processing (NLP) that groups content into categories based on identification of keywords. As with the previous study, this research is a demonstration of qualitative methodology. It provides insights into the prevalence of the story over time and indicates key trends in how the subject of Coronavirus was covered in Uganda, though it does not provide comprehensive data on all aspects of media coverage. 

PURPOSE


This research aims to expand our exploration of how COVID-19 has been covered by Ugandan online news media from the beginning of 2020 to June 2021 using machine learning. We identified and scraped articles from top Ugandan news sites publishing in English and processed them through a LDA Topic Modelling computational technique to determine which topics are covered related to the pandemic. Our research is intended to deliver further insights to parties with an interest in Uganda’s media industry, or its COVID-19 response, or the machine learning methodology as it applies to media and communications research. This update to our previous research is part of a wider research project by Whitehead Communications exploring the application of multiple new research methods to see the bigger picture, draw correlations and build stronger research-based foundations on which to develop communications strategy. 


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OVERVIEW OF RESULTS

When compared to the results of our first study, the number of articles more than doubled since July 2020 (from 13,000+ to 32,000+). However, the articles per month were less than in the first few months of the pandemic, indicating a drop in interest in late 2020 and early 2021. When the first Ugandan COVID-19 case was confirmed on March 21, 2020, alongside the declaration of Uganda’s first nation-wide lockdown, there was a spike in the number of articles including mentions of COVID/Corona. April 2020 marked the peak in number of articles published through online Ugandan media in one month of 2020, which was followed by a steady decline in the following months. However, since the lowest point in January 2021, we saw a significant increase in the number of Coronavirus related articles alongside a resurgence in Ugandan COVID-19 cases and new lockdown in June 2021, setting a new all-time high for COVID-19 coverage in one month.

It is worth noting that Uganda had an election in January 2021, which was accompanied by a total shutdown of the internet for about a week, during which time online media was not able to publish as usual. This focus on a political season, along with a normalisation of the pandemic and slow progression of cases in the country, may help explain why coverage decreased between May 2020 and May 2021.
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There were several recurring topics through multiple iterations of our modelling process. Topics such as “Education”, which was primarily centred around school closures and the impact of COVID-19 on students, is an example of this. Other Topics such as “Healthcare”, “Sports” and “Police Action” also appeared in almost every result in both years despite changing various parameters of the modelling process such as the number of topics. The articles that are most associated with these topics are highly distinct in vocabulary usage from the subject matter of other articles. For example, the aforementioned “Police Action” topic is associated with words such as “detain” or “arrested”. These words have a much lower chance of appearing in non-police related articles, which makes it easy for the algorithm to pick up on this pattern regardless of parameters. In addition to repeating topics, there were topics that evolved due to the additional articles used in our update.
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There were several topic changes between 2020 and 2021, which roughly reflected the global shift in perception about the pandemic – from an unprecedented emergency in the spring of 2020 to a continuous concern as new treatments and vaccines began to be introduced and the public and private sectors adjusted to getting on with things despite the continuing threats of the pandemic. New emerging topics in 2021 included “Travel & Tourism”, “Local Donations” and “Innovation Response To Domestic Outbreak”. 

The number of articles we scraped across different media houses is represented in the chart below. Daily Monitor – one of Uganda’s leading daily newspapers – produced the most online coverage among those in our sample, followed by The Independent. Other major online media PML Daily and Nile Post came in at a distant 3rd and 4th, followed by Chimp Reports, The Observer and other media houses. 
TOPICS

We tested out several parameters to determine the most effective new LDA Topic Modelling categorisation of articles. The following topics emerged in Ugandan articles about COVID-19 from the beginning (January 2020) up to the end of June 2021.
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    1. Healthcare
     2. Vaccines
     3. Economy & Finance
     4. Travel & Tourism
     5. Cases & Testing
     6. Editorials & Personal Stories
     7. President Museveni & Regional Politics
     8. Electoral Politics
     9. Police Action
     10. Children & Women
     11. Innovation Response To Domestic Outbreak 12.Sports
     13. Education
     14. Local Donations
     15. Global Outbreak
     16. Parliament, Courts & Justice
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These topics indicate the main types of COVID-19 stories being published in Uganda related to coverage of the pandemic and were identified using an unsupervised machine learning algorithm, which was run multiple times with fine-tuned parameters to determine the optimal results.

Most of these topics are carried over from the previous 2020 clustering process with some modifications. However, there were some differences from last year’s assessment. One main difference was the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and other treatments. Other differences indicate changes in various industries as Uganda begins to accept that life with Coronavirus will not be over as quickly as expected. This is shown in Cluster #11 where various Ugandan organisations are responding to the need for increased e-commerce and other COVID-19 caused needs. Furthermore, articles focused on travel shifted from focusing on restrictions in 2020 to integrating more stories about the re-emergence of the tourism industry in 2021 and how it has been faring with the effects of COVID-19.

More details on our methodology and an examination of key topics with representative articles are shared in the full report.



​DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT
 
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George The Poet launches virtual community platform COMMON GROUND to build on his Peabody award-winning ‘Have You Heard George’s Podcast?’

11/23/2021

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Chapter 3 of ‘Have You Heard George’s Podcast?’ aired its final episode on the 16th September on BBC Sounds, Radio 4 and Radio 1Xtra. It remains available to stream or download on the BBC Sounds website and wherever you listen to podcasts.

This chapter introduced a new, innovative platform for George’s global community of listeners to share their responses to Chapter 3, extend the experience of the podcast and find common ground. The COMMON GROUND experience begins as a conversation with George, and once listeners are onboarded, then the platform presents a few questions about each episode in the podcast and facilitates written, audio, image and video-based discussions between George and his listeners.
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www.GTPCG.com
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COMMON GROUND also showcases original artworks by black artists around the world and creates opportunities for listeners to reflect more deeply on each episode, give George their feedback, and share ideas with fellow listeners in a community space called ‘The Commons’. Contrary to social media platforms, COMMON GROUND does not focus on 'likes’, instant replies and addictive dopamine hits, but instead encourages users to click a 'lightbulb' on fellow users’ responses if the post opened their mind and made them think about an issue a little differently.
 
With more than a thousand sign ups already from nearly 50 countries around the world, the platform brings together diverse points of view and relays listeners’ answers back to fellow users, illustrating that there is a COMMON GROUND where people’s ideas can meet. The driving force of the discussion is George’s exploration of Black music, as users join him on his train of thought.


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​“I have an idea. For years I have written poems about the highs and lows of Black life, and for years the driving force behind this poetry has been Black music.
 
In this chapter, I look at the unifying power of this music, and how it has transformed the world. These episodes walk you through historic injustices that sparked Black music movements, which created fresh opportunities - over and over again. 
 
This process has always seemed random. Jazz in America. Reggae in Jamaica. Grime in Britain. But it’s clearly not random. What if the world anticipated this genius? What if 150 years of musical innovations in the harshest circumstances have proven Black music to be a safe bet? What if the listeners supporting this music were able to tackle the problems behind it? Could this be the future of art?
 
To test this idea out, I have created an interactive platform - called COMMON GROUND. This online discussion space allows listeners to dive into the world behind the words alongside original artworks by global artists.” 
​         
~ George The Poet
 
This 3rd chapter of ‘Have You Heard George’s Podcast?’ weaves the yarn of Black music through history, culture, market economics and social impact. In episode 23 ‘Back To UG’, George shares his views on Ugandan politics and tells the story of how a romance blossomed with his long-time friend and now Operations Manager and wife, Mrs. Sandra Mpanga. This episode also dives into the politics of Uganda, reflecting on the internet blackout experienced during Uganda’s 2021 election and the rise of Bobi Wine as he grew from music into politics. Chapter 3 also tells the story Uganda’s independence movement in Episode 24 ‘The Sixties’ alongside the American civil rights movement of the same era. Other episodes in this chapter share the chronicles of Jay-Z’s youth, an epic beef between Movado and Vybz Kartel, and how R&B has changed over the years, among other ‘edutaining’ stories that demonstrate the influence and market potential of Black music.
 


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​About George The Poet
 
George the Poet is a London-born spoken word performer of Ugandan heritage. His
innovative brand of musical poetry has won him critical acclaim both as a recording artist
and social commentator and seen his work broadcast to billions of people worldwide. In the summer of 2018, he opened the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle with his poem ‘The Beauty of Union’, and in 2019, his audio offering ‘Have You Heard George’s Podcast?’ won a prestigious Peabody Award and 5 Gold British Podcast Awards, including the highly-coveted Podcast of the Year. The podcast was described by BBC R4 as “a story that could change the world”. George has just launched chapter 3 of the podcast and is now embarking on a PhD.
 
GeorgeThePoet.com
Instagram / Twitter / Facebook @GeorgeThePoet
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​
​About COMMON GROUND

 
COMMON GROUND is an experiment. As well as displaying some of your answers in 'The Commons’, founders George Mpanga, Paul ‘Benbrick’ Carter, Anne Whitehead and Darshan Sangharajka are working hard behind the scenes to analyse the data and bring in artists, friends, and thinkers to illustrate that we can find COMMON GROUND between the way people think; this can be the beginning of a new way to address the social issues George talks about in the podcast – together.

 
We recommend that people first listen to the podcast – perhaps starting with Episode 19 ‘Common Ground’, the start of Chapter 3 – and then log into www.GTPCG.com to continue the discussion with George and fellow listeners! Share your views on social media using the hashtag #GTPCG
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Whitehead Comm has collaborated with Boston University on topic modelling Covid-19 news media

9/8/2020

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Over the past few months, Whitehead Communications has been testing out several new communications research techniques to see the bigger picture when it comes to public opinion. One of these was employing a novel machine learning technique called LDA Topic Modelling to analyse how the Ugandan online media has been covering Covid-19, which was led by our research teammate Joyce Yanru Jiang. We decided to use tailored Python code to scrape Ugandan news media websites collecting thousands of articles including the keywords "covid" or "corona" and then run them through a LDA Topic Modelling algorithm, testing out different parameters until we were able to confidently identify a range of sub-topics included in the Ugandan media's stories related to the coronavirus pandemic.


In the course of our research, we learned that there is a group at Boston University's Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science and Engineering that is applying a similar technique to analyse Covid-19 news in other countries, so we got in touch and had a couple Zoom meetings, as one does in 2020. Their code and sourcing methods were a little different than ours, but we decided to collaborate by updating our dataset and processing it through their method.

Our new Topic Model in collaboration with the team at Boston University (BU) can be found at this link.

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We're grateful to Dr. Lei Guo and the team at Boston University for their guidance and their very cool racing bar graph (in the link above) that shows how news topics changed over time.

For those who would appreciate more detailed notes on methodology: the differences between our model (which I'll call the Whitehead-Jiang model) in our earlier topic modelling report and the BU model are as follows.

1. We included additional TV and radio news from the web pages of NTV, UBC and KFM in our BU model, which resulted in a larger dataset of 14,947 news articles.

2. We applied BU's model to our dataset, which was based on a Mallet NLP tool kit, though we modified it slightly for the Ugandan context by adding stop words and paired words to improve accuracy.

3. The Whitehead-Jiang model processed the full text of articles, but the BU model only used headlines and lead paragraphs, so for the sake of consistency, we only used this shorter form dataset in our application of the BU model.

4. The BU model was run on each week of data separately, unlike the Whitehead-Jiang model, which processed all data from start to finish together.

5. We identified topics in our BU model by applying BU's recommended topics as used in other countries, and we adjusted them where necessary to the Ugandan context. This process was verified by our Ugandan team Owilla Mercy and Norman Angel.

6. Note that our dataset from Uganda was the only country included in BU's research that offered full text of articles because we scraped them manually instead of using a news database. This has made it possible for our data to be used in a second BU project analysing news framing. We also found that full text is preferable for checking the relevancy of the data thereby training better models.

This has been a great learning experience for us and we look forward to collaborating more with Boston University and other researchers around the world, as well as applying this technique to other projects in the future!

For more information on this or to enquire about working together, please contact me Anne Whitehead at anne@whiteheadcommunications.com


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Telemedicine market survey in the field

9/8/2020

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LDA Topic Modelling of Covid-19 media coverage in Uganda

8/26/2020

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By Joyce Yanru Jiang & Anne Whitehead  

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Uganda – like the rest of the world – has experienced a large volume of news coverage about the Covid-19 pandemic. Whitehead Communications used Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyse the dominant topics that emerged within Covid-19 coverage by online news websites in Uganda. We gathered more than 13,000 news articles that included the terms “covid” or “corona” from 13 English language news websites. This analysis included the websites of Uganda’s major print publications Daily Monitor, New Vision, and Red Pepper as well as major online-only Ugandan media houses Chimp Reports, Nile Post, PML Daily, Observer and The Independent (the last two of which became online-only just recently during the pandemic lockdown), and other online-only news publishers including Softpower, The Tower Post, Eagle News, Trumpet News and The Brink News.

This was exploratory and experimental research to find out which topics stood out in Ugandan media coverage of Covid-19 according to a machine learning method called LDA Topic Modelling, which employs a Natural Language Processing (NLP) technique. 
This methodology alone cannot be considered comprehensive or conclusive, but it offers an initial indication and useful insights into how the subject was covered in the Ugandan press.

​Figure 1 below shows of the volume of articles that we collected from each news website. This only represents the online written news media landscape in Uganda, but presents us with an initial sample for further analysis.


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Figure 1 - Total # of articles including "covid" or "corona" by media house
OUR PURPOSE 

This research aims to explore how Covid-19 has been covered by Ugandan online news websites within the first six months of 2020 using machine learning. We identified top news sites in Uganda that publish in English and applied an LDA Topic Modelling computational technique to discover which topics are being covered related to the coronavirus pandemic. Our research is intended to deliver insights to those who have a special interest in Uganda’s media industry, or the country’s experience with Covid-19, or those interested in the application of machine learning to media and communications research. This is part of a wider research project by Whitehead Communications exploring the application of multiple new research methods to see the bigger picture, draw correlations and build stronger research-based foundations on which to develop communications strategy. 


OVERVIEW OF COVID-19 MEDIA COVERAGE IN UGANDA 

The weekly number of articles produced by Ugandan online media increased dramatically in mid-March of 2020, as the first Ugandan case was declared on the 21st of March2 and the country went into lockdown in the same week3. Covid-19 related coverage by volume of online articles reached its height in April of 2020, then began to decline. This indicates that media interest in the disease and its impact peaked during the period when lockdown was strictest and cases were just beginning to mount, but before the first Covid-19 death was announced in Uganda on the 23rd of July, 20204. We removed from our dataset any stories republished from foreign media outlets in order to focus only on news produced in Uganda.
​

According to our dataset, the Daily Monitor published the largest volume of Covid-19 related articles online in April, averaging 150 per week, followed by The Independent (~141/week), then PML Daily (~137/week), Chimp Reports (~114/week), Nile Post (~104/week) and New Vision (~68/week). The volume of articles began to drop again in May. You can see this trend in Figure 2 below. 

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Figure 2 - Weekly volume of articles by media house
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TOPIC ANALYSIS 

Our analysis identified 16 topics that emerged in Ugandan online news media coverage of Covid-19,
as listed below:


1. Cases & testing
2. Healthcare
3. Domestic outbreak (and government enforcement)
4. Parliament budgeting
5. Travel restrictions
6. Global outbreak and international response
7. Contributions to Covid-19 budget
8. Economy & finance
9. Education
10. Courts & justice
11. Sports
12. Culture & religion
13. Electoral politics
14. Police action
15. Editorials & personal stories
16. Presidential directives


These topics were identified through an unsupervised algorithm, which we ran several times using different parameters until we found the most optimal result. We checked the articles it grouped together to identify what the topics were. Some topics were straightforward, as the articles shared common themes, such as # 9 Education and # 11 Sports. Others were made up of mixed subtopics under one major topic, such as # 3, which gathered together stories about the domestic outbreak and how the government was responding. We also chose to combine four automatically generated topics into two, since their topics were very similar: stories about cases and testing were combined into topic # 1, and editorials and personal stories were combined into topic # 15. The algorithm clustered together groups of stories that differed, but shared a common thread, such as those mentioning the courts system (#10), or those related to different types of restrictions on transport and travel (#5).

More details about our methodology, along with a further examination of a few key topics related to Covid-19 and how they manifested in Ugandan news coverage are shared in the full report below. 


Download the full report here.

If you wish to collaborate with us on further research, please email anne@whiteheadcommunications.com
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Public Opinion on the Impact of Covid-19 in Uganda: Survey Report

7/20/2020

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A survey conducted by Whitehead Communications in July 2020.

Uganda registered its first case of Covid-19 on March 21, 2020, and instated lockdown measures in the same month. These developments were accompanied by a series of Presidential addresses and a significant increase in media coverage about the pandemic. The following months witnessed changes in public opinion, behaviour and socio-economic conditions in Uganda.

This survey delivers data on both public opinion and self-reported behaviour concerning key issues related to the impact of Covid-19 in Uganda. Whitehead Communications gathered 1,353 responses – or 1,182 after data cleaning – between the 6th and 15th of July, 2020, using a mixed methodology collecting results from a purposive sample both online and through phone calls. This report is intended to serve as a resource to decision-makers and the general public by providing research-based insights to inform public discussion and policy in response to Covid-19.

KEY FINDINGS

Media Consumption

• The majority of respondents (72%) were exposed to news about Covid-19 at least once every day.

• Television was the most common type of media that respondents were exposed to at least once a week (68%).



Attitudes Toward Covid-19

• The majority of respondents in Uganda (78%) fear Covid-19 less in July than they did in March.

• Ugandans are not all behaving the same in how seriously they apply public health directives like physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand washing. 35% of respondents report being “very serious” and 27% are “somewhat serious”, while 23% are “somewhat relaxed” and 14% are “very relaxed”. 



Public Opinion on the Government Response to Covid-19

• The majority of those surveyed (80%) did not receive the posho and beans that were distributed by the Government of Uganda as food aid during the lockdown.

• The vast majority of respondents (92%) said that they watched at least one of President Museveni’s addresses on Covid-19.

• 75% of respondents approved or strongly approved of the Government’s decision to lockdown the country in March.

• Public opinion on the continuing curfew is mixed, as 41% approve or strongly approve, 50% disapprove or strongly disapprove, and 9% are not sure.

• 63% of respondents disapprove or strongly disapprove of the way that the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) handled the Covid-19 crisis.



Economic Impact of Covid-19 in Uganda

• Only 21% of respondents reported that their employment situation has not been affected by Covid-19.

• 19% lost their job, with job loss reporting slightly higher among women and people living upcountry.


• 31% had their work hours reduced and 26% had pay reduced.

• 23% of respondents are worried that they may lose their job or business.

• 25% have been working from home.

• Only 18% have managed fine with no financial difficulties.

• 26% have failed to pay back outstanding loans and 22% have taken on more debt.

• 12% of respondents have sold assets.

• 60% of respondents have spent from savings.

• 51% have reduced their spending.

• 23% have missed meals.



Changes in Transportation Habits

• Use of boda bodas decreased by 85% between March and July of 2020.

• Use of taxis (matatus) also dropped by 47%.

• Use of private cars was the same in March as July at 34% of respondents.

• Respondents reported a 187% increase in walking and 175% increase in riding
bicycles.


Public Opinion on Electoral Politics

• 64% of respondents disapprove or strongly disapprove of a “scientific election”.

• 52% of respondents believe that the next election should be postponed. 


Further details on our findings and methodology can be found in the full report below.
Download the full report here.

If you wish to collaborate with us on further research, please email anne@whiteheadcommunications.com
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Covid-19 Impact in Uganda: public opinion survey in field

7/6/2020

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Whitehead Communications has a new survey now in the field, which will publish results on this page before the end of July, 2020 - so watch this space!

You can take the survey -> here.
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The survey includes 25 questions related to the impact of Covid-19 in Uganda and takes about 5 to 10 minutes to complete. For those who wish to enter their contact details in the last question, we will randomly select 3 respondents to send a data bundle of 1GB to their number in the week of July 15th.
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