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    A culture-centered exploration of India’s Community Health Workers’ meanings of the COVID-19 pandemic and the role of mobile technology in response strategies : a thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication and Journalism at Massey University, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE)
    (Massey University, 2025-01-20) Pattanaik, Samiksha
    During the COVID-19 pandemic, Community Health Workers (CHWs), particularly in developing countries such as India, played a crucial role in controlling the virus's spread (Niyati & Nelson Mandela, 2020). India imposed the world’s largest lockdown (Ghosh, 2020; Mathur, 2020), swiftly deploying its CHWs known as ASHA workers for community-level COVID-19 prevention and mitigation (Niyati & Nelson Mandela, 2020). Reports indicated that ASHAs in some states were required to purchase and use smartphones for COVID-19 tasks (Brar Singh, 2020; Hindustan Times, 2020b). This top-down approach to pandemic communication and mHealth initiatives (M. J. Dutta, S. Kaur-Gill, et al., 2018; Kumar & Anderson, 2015) sidelined ASHAs' their voices in mainstream discourse, despite their essential role. Furthermore, while existing research in this area has identified the structural challenges faced by ASHAs—such as overwhelming workloads and inadequate compensation—these studies often treat these challenges in a reductionist manner (Lazarus, 2020; Nichols et al., 2022; Srivastava, 2021), often from the perspective of the researcher. This marginalisation of ASHAs' voices is particularly concerning in the context of public health emergencies, where they are thrust into frontline roles without adequate infrastructural and policy support. This thesis addresses this significant gap in research by foregrounding their voices and lived experiences as frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the Culture Centered Approach (CCA), a meta-theoretical framework particularly suited for research in marginalised settings, this study uses semi-structured interviews to explore ASHAs’ narratives, shedding light on how they navigated the pandemic and engaged with mHealth initiatives. The study finds that ASHAs operate within intersecting layers of structural inequalities shaped by their socio-economic context and the neoliberal organisation of India’s healthcare system. This system reduces these marginalised female workers to ‘efficient’ subjects, using their labour to offload state responsibilities while offering minimal support and compensation. Through this analysis, the research advances the theoretical framework of the CCA by deepening the understanding of the layering of structures upon structures and their simultaneous interaction with culture. While existing CCA literature addresses the structure culture dynamic, this study uniquely highlights how these layered structures intersect, reinforce, and sometimes contradict each other, intensifying marginalisation. In the context of mHealth, the study uncovers the complex, multifaceted, and sometimes contradictory meanings of technology in marginalised spaces, ranging from the relevance of face-to-face communication and bottom-up uses of technology in rural healthcare, to issues surrounding data privacy, confidentiality, and digital burden in marginalised spaces. By placing these evolving and often contradictory meanings at the center of theorising, this research challenges techno-optimism and prompts a critical re-evaluation of the role of technology in healthcare delivery, with mHealth as a key example. Additionally, this study extends the concept of marginalised agency within the CCA by shifting away from binary understandings of resistance and submission, demonstrating how such agency is multidimensional and dynamic, shaped by an intricate web of cultural, social, religious, economic, and professional factors. This multilayered interaction forces ASHAs to continuously negotiate their positions, sometimes exercising their voices and demands, and at other times complying with top-down orders due to structural constraints, while drawing on cultural resources to navigate these structures. The thesis concludes with recommendations for a communicative framework that integrates ASHAs into decision-making processes, fostering resilience among CHWs and the communities they serve in future health crises.
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    Framing the COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria : an analysis of Nigerian media : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of a degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication and Journalism at Massey University, Wellington Campus, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024-11-27) Sadiq, Mohammed
    Vaccine hesitancy is one stumbling block in managing the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak globally. Documented evidence shows vaccine hesitancy has existed for more than 100 years, with unnecessary mortality from vaccine-preventable diseases than otherwise might have happened. This is true in Nigeria; where the COVID-19 vaccination campaign suffered major setbacks, due to misinformation, fake news, and a lack of trust and suspicion of the vaccine’s safety. Against this background, the influence of news framing came to the forefront as soon as the COVID-19 vaccination campaign was rolled out in Nigeria and the health authorities began urging citizens to get vaccinated. The media framing of the COVID-19 vaccine has arguably contributed to the rising COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and the 39% vaccination rate (as of March 2024). Stiff-anti-vaccination sentiment, building on prior assumptions among the lay publics, coalesced into hesitancy against the COVID-19 vaccination among many Nigerians. Therefore, this study seeks to examine how Nigerian media framed the COVID-19 vaccination rollout. Identifying the factors that shape/influence the media's framing of the COVID-19 vaccination discussion in Nigeria. Examine the reported barriers to the COVID-19 vaccination adoption in Nigeria. The study adopts mixed methods, content analysis and natural language processing using sentiment analysis to explore data from YouTube videos and Nigerian online newspapers. The research applies the theory of planned behaviour and framing theory as the theoretical foundations to understand how the media (YouTube and Online Newspapers) frame the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Nigeria.
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    Impacts of shocks and coping strategies of vegetable farm households in Sri Lanka during COVID-19 pandemic : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Agriculture and Rural Development at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2024-11-22) Rathnayake, Sanduni Anuththara Kumari
    Over time, smallholders in developing countries, including those in Sri Lanka, face a variety of shocks and develop coping strategies in response. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a novel shock to many farm households in developing countries, often negatively impacting their livelihoods. This exploratory qualitative case study provides a comprehensive study on the impact of the pandemic on Sri Lankan smallholder vegetable farm households and their coping strategies. Data were collected from vegetable farm households and key informants in Nuwaraeliya and Kandy districts, mainly using the interview method and data were analysed qualitatively. Vegetable farm households in Sri Lanka faced multiple, diverse shocks characterised by cumulative, consecutive, interrelated, and ongoing events during the pandemic. This mix of shocks resulted in various impacts on vegetable farm households, but the common outcome on all households was f inancial due, in the main, to increased household costs and decreased household income. Farm households that predominantly depended on income from vegetable selling and farm households that produced only specialised types of vegetables for specialised markets were more adversely affected than others. Smallholder vegetable farm households were diverse in circumstances, production and marketing systems, household capitals, reliance on vegetables as an income source and livelihood activity. At any point in time different strategies related to production, marketing and financial hardships were being used by farm households to respond to the impacts of shocks they experienced. However, there was no consistent mix of strategies. The poorest continued to borrow, while others relied on savings and assets and then started to borrow when resources were depleted. How similar strategies were implemented varied across households depending on the social networks of households. While acknowledging the benefit of diversification for farm households during shocks, this study also illustrates that diversification does not guarantee that it will support farm households in buffering the impacts during a wide-scale shock that extends over a long period. However, market diversification supports farm households to buffer the impacts of shocks with broad-scale impacts. This study also identified the significance of individual household members’ personal characteristics such as motivation and enthusiasm in developing strategies and argues for including this attribute in human capital in the sustainable livelihood framework. Research insights strongly suggest that interventions intended to support farm households in buffering the impacts of shocks need to focus on the household level, prioritising the poorest of the poor while remaining open to addressing the needs of other farm households who might be wealthier but adversely affected by shocks. Providing direct financial support and implementing different financial services to accommodate the varied circumstances of farm households will benefit them during shocks. Interventions to build household and local community resilience will safeguard farm households as it will exclude the risk of overreliance on external government support.