Ali Zain

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication at Arizona State University

Objective: Philip Morris International’s Smoke-Free Future (SFF) campaign pledged to replace conventional cigarettes with smoke-free alternatives, promoting smokers’ health and combating smoking-related misinformation. Method: We interviewed 25 college students to assess their perceived credibility of SFF messages and interest in smoke-free produc...

This study analyzed 1432 questions asked in 19 surveys (N = 43,014) on COVID-19 vaccines between January 2020 and August 2022 using dimensions including (1) information sources about COVID-19 vaccine, (2) information about the access, effectiveness, and side effects of COVID-19 vaccine, (3) COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy (i.e. false perception, skeptic...

This study examined the coverage of artificial intelligence (AI) in newspapers from 12 countries by analyzing news articles (N = 38,787) collected from 12 mainstream English newspapers, between 2010 and 2023. We used LDA topic modeling to identify prevalent frames in the news articles and SentiStrength to examine sentiments in the news headlines. F...

Analyzing data from a survey of U.S. adults (N = 509), our study examines the role of partisan media in (a) shaping people's perceptions of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, (b) producing an echo-chamber effect, influencing users to believe that other people have an opinion similar to their own, and (c) creating a polarized public opinion envi...

This study uses the theory of planned behavior to predict individuals’ intentions to quit social media. Attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control significantly predicted intentions to quit social media, accounting for 68 percent of variance among participants (N = 525) representing the US census data. Political partisanship and b...

Using data from a national survey in South Korea, this study offers micro-level evidence for the two-culture model of public understanding of science, which posits that a shift from an industrializing to a post-industrial society is accompanied by a transition from a culture of idealized science to a culture of skepticism. We investigate whether ol...

Prescription drug misuse and opioid overdose have become one of the most serious health crises in the US health system. In this study, we examined Last Week Tonight as hosted by John Oliver in order to explore topics, sentiments, and reactions by referring to online comments on YouTube. Using an unsupervised machine learning approach, we analyzed 3...

We investigate social media discourses on the relationship between cancer and COVID-19 vaccines focusing on the key textual topics, themes reflecting the voice of cancer community, authors who contribute to the discourse, and valence toward vaccines. We analyzed 6,427 tweets about cancer and COVID-19 vaccines, posted from when vaccines were approve...

Anti-intellectualism (resentment, hostility, and mistrust of experts) has become a growing concern during the pandemic. Using topic modeling and supervised machine learning, this study examines the elements and sources of anti-Fauci tweets as a case of anti-intellectual discourse on social media. Based on the theoretical framework of science-relate...

Building on the global trend of celebrity activism and concept of celebrity capital, this study qualitatively examines Twitter posts of the Bollywood celebrities. The aim of this analysis was to identify varying discourses about the 2020–21 Indian farmers’ protest as celebrities are considered significant players of discourse building and social mo...

Objectives: Emerging evidence indicates that young adults who use e-cigarettes can withhold greater exposure to COVID-19 risk. We examine how young e-cigarette users perceive COVID-19 related threat of e-cigarette use and benefit of cessation as compared to traditional ones, applying the health belief model. We investigate changes of such perceptio...

Background: Many countries show low COVID-19 vaccination rates despite high levels of readiness and delivery of vaccines. The public’s misperceptions, hesitancy, and negative emotions toward vaccines are psychological factors discouraging vaccination. At the individual level, studies have revealed negative perceptual/behavioral outcomes of COVID-19...

BACKGROUND Many countries show low COVID-19 vaccination rates despite high levels of readiness and delivery of vaccines. The public’s misperceptions, hesitancy, and negative emotions towards vaccines are psychological factors discouraging vaccination. At the individual level, studies have revealed negative perceptual/behavioral outcomes of COVID-19...

China`s Belt and Road Initiative is a massive infrastructural project that Ethiopia is encompassed. Yet, in Ethiopia, public opinion over the subject has never been homogenous as there are both apparent faiths that the initiative would positively contribute to Ethiopia’s economy, and suspicions that it is merely China`s veiled ambition to accelerat...

Background: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the marketing of the IQOS tobacco heating system as a modified risk tobacco product (MRTP) in July 2020, permitting its 'reduced exposure' marketing. This decision is accompanied by much controversy among the global health community. We provide a preliminary analysis of Twitter conv...

This study develops an understanding of how India’s Bharatiya Janata Party used Hindutva doctrine for building populist discourse on Twittersphere during 2019 general elections. Keeping in view the close ideological connection of the BJP with extreme right wing Hindu organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – which laid ground for modern-era Hindut...

Bu çalışma, Pakistan, Etiyopya ve Türkiye’deki kanaat teknisyenlerinin Twitter’da Çin ve Uşak ve Yol Girişimi’ne (KYG) yönelik ürettikleri içerikleri karşılaştırmalı olarak analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır. KYG, Çin’in alternatif küreselleşme vizyonu olarak ka tılımcı ülkelerin birbirleriyle ticari ve kültürel ağ kurmasını ve alt yapı yatırımlarını koo...

This study is an attempt to understand how the doctrine of Hindutva which considers Hinduchauvinism as the spirit of Indian nationalism has played a central role in the development of populist discourse of Bharatiya Janata Party during the 2019 general elections in India. The BJP has close ideological association with ultra-right-wing Hindu organiz...

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the most crucial trade route in contemporary South Asia which connects Pakistan’s Gwadar port located in Balochistan province and China’s Kashgar, shortening the Middle Eastern oil route for China. It happens to be a core project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which embodies Chinese alternat...

Abstract The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is most crucial trade route in contemporary South Asia which connects Pakistan’s Gwadar port located in Balochistan province and China’s Kashgar, shortening the Middle Eastern oil route for China. It happens to be a core project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which embodies Chinese alt...

Yaşlanma devam ettikçe, 2020’de 65 yaş üstü insanların dünya nüfusunun %17'sini oluşturarak, bilinen insan tarihinde ilk defa 5 yaşın altındaki çocuk nüfusundan daha fazla yüksek bir sayıya ulaşmaları bekleniyor (He ve diğ, 2016). Dünya Sağlık Örgütü'nün (WHO) “Yaşlanma ve Sağlık” (2018) raporunda yer alan bir tahmine göre, dünya nüfusunun %22’si,...

Sports and politics have been intertwined throughout human history (Guttmann 2003: 363) and they have a very strong footprint of ethnicity, nationalism and social movements. The global platforms of sports such as world cups and Olympics often become a source of expression of the sentiments associated with nationalism and political consciousness (Se...

This work analyzes the features of design and user-interface of the smartphones exclusively designed for the elderly citizens in a bid to enhance their usability among people aged 65 or more to overcome digital divide in the ageing society of today. These features are more focused on size of the device, visibility, text-speech function and emergenc...

Populism remains a vaguely defined concept having porous boundaries though widely mentioned as a terminology in the literature. It is often associated with democracy; however, the theorists mainly depend on a specific political context to describe populism (Mouzelis, 1985; Taguieff, 1995). This context carries such features as the distasteful invol...

The book is the Urdu translation of "The Ecology of Democracy", originally authored by David Mathews, translated by Ali Zain and edited by Nauman Tasleem Khan. All rights reserved by Kettering Foundation.

Cultural continuity and mass media: An analysis of leading English online newspapers of Pakistan Abstract Cultural continuity has been identified as one of the primary functions of mass media (McQuail, 1983). This paper has investigated leading Pakistani online English newspapers to assess their role in transmission of cultural images. The populati...

As cultural continuity has been identified as one of the primary functions of mass media institutions, this study thoroughly examines leading Pakistani online English newspapers in terms of their role to transmit local cultural values to the next generation. The lifestyle pages which are considered as showcase of cultural selection of newspaper, ha...