CoronaCrime #6

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has taken a terrible toll in lives, illness, and economic devastation and it is having diverse effects on violence and crime. Therefore, the Daily Prevention News publishes weekly a Corona Crime Issue dedicated to collect related relevant news and information.

1. Social Network Analysis for Coronavirus (COVID‐19) in the United States
   This study explores how public key players play an important role in social networks for coronavirus (COVID‐19). This study finds that President Trump plays the most important role in social networks among the top 20 key players for both in‐degree centrality and content in tweets. Second, Donald Trump and Barak Obama show the opposite result for the in‐degree centrality and follower analysis. The result shows that the topic‐based networks and the person‐based networks play a different role in social networks. This study demonstrates that the presidents, the World Health Organization (WHO) and its regional offices, the Centers for Disease Control, and news channels play a crucial role in the news of COVID‐19 for people. Key players, such as Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and BBC, are located in the central networks. In contrast, U.S. news channels and WHO and its regional offices have independent channels. Source: Social Science Quarterly
2. Covid-19 has gifted us a chance to end gender-based violence. We must take it
   The pandemic is gifting us an unprecedented opportunity to take innovative action and comprehensively confront the scourge of violence against women. Source: The Guardian
3. Coronavirus: what a second wave might look like
   With the relaxation of the lockdown rules, warnings are being sounded about a possible resurgence of COVID-19 cases – a so-called second wave. The second wave of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-20 was particularly devastating, as was the second wave of the H1N1 epidemic in 2009-10. So what can be done to avoid a second wave of COVID-19? Source: World Economic Forum
4. Impact on Africa - this week's World Vs Virus podcast
   Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala ex-finance minister of Nigeria, ex-managing director of World Bank, current Chair of the Board of the Gavi alliance for vaccines, warns of complacency at a relatively small number of COVID cases in Africa. Michelle Bachelet, UN human rights chief, says COVID has helped exposed inequalities; calls for an end to police brutality. Source: World Economic Forum
5. COVID-19 Disinformation Briefing No.4.
   Multiple states across the US are launching or scaling up mass contact tracing campaigns as part of their preparations to reopen society.This has contributed to a rapid increase in conspiratorial narratives, mis- or disinformation, and direct threats to the safety of contact tracers.
6. Policy Brief: Drivers of Disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe and Their Utilization During the Pandemic
   Research shows that Central and Eastern European region is receptive to disinformation and conspiracy theories. But are there any region-specific drivers behind? How can malign superpowers abuse the current situation to build their image, and exploit the already existing vulnerabilities? Source: GLOBSEC
7. Ideas for Resilient Democracies: Push and Pull Factors of the COVID-19 Infodemic
   A short brief provides fresh ideas on how to counter the most pressing challenges associated with the infodemic  – including the enhancement of the EU’s image, developing a shared European public broadcasting sphere, ensuring equal treatment of the EU member states by digital platforms, and supporting healthier information ecosystem. Source: GLOBSEC
8. COVID-19 infodemic: More retweets for science-based information on coronavirus than for false information
   The World Health Organization has not only signalled the health risks of COVID-19 but also labelled the situation as infodemic, due to the amount of information, true and false, circulating around this topic. Research shows that, in social media, falsehood is shared far more than evidence-based information. However, there is less research analyzing the circulation of false and evidence-based information during health emergencies. Thus, the present study aims at shedding new light on the type of tweets that circulated on Twitter around the COVID-19 outbreak for two days, in order to analyze how false and true information was shared. Source: International Sociology
9. Corruption and Graft Afflict Latin America’s Pandemic Response
   As Latin America emerges as the new global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, corruption has proliferated, with politicians and middlemen quick to line their pockets. Source: InSightCrime
10. How drugs gangs are exploiting lockdown
    The coronavirus outbreak has put entire industries, from restaurants to air travel, on standby, paused at the flick of a switch. But the drug market is often more resilient than its legitimate counterparts. Where there’s demand there’s supply. Source: The Guardian
11. Firearm Sales and the COVID-19 Pandemic
    A record 3.7 million firearm background checks were completed in March 2020, the month that the United States began responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using monthly state-level data, we show that the pandemic is associated with a 40 percent increase in the firearm background check rate. The COVID-19 effect is significantly greater than the increases in firearm sales associated with gun-buying events in the past, including the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. Source: Tomorrows Research Today
12. A Rapid Analysis of Domestic Violence Case Differences During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Stay-at-Home Orders
    This study explored the COVID-19 pandemic's impacts on domestic violence (DV) with the following research questions: 1) Did DV occurring during the pandemic differ on certain variables from cases occurring on a typical day the previous year? 2) Did DV occurring after the implementation of shelter-in-place orders differ (on these same variables) from cases occurring prior to shelter-in-place orders? Source: MedRxiv
     

Please find more information and news about the interlinkages between the Coronavirus, Crime and Violence in German published every Tuesday on our German News Service Tägliche Präventions News.