![Around the Bloc: Koran Burned at a Rally in Czech Republic](/api/image/getissuecoverimage?id=picture_2016_26019.jpg)
Around the Bloc: Koran Burned at a Rally in Czech Republic
The summer season has done little to slow down one of the country’s most prominent, anti-Muslim activists.
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The summer season has done little to slow down one of the country’s most prominent, anti-Muslim activists.
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The article explores the situation of the Romanian youth, offering an overview on the young people’s economic and social inclusion perspectives. The article argues that the high levels of unemployment, lack of access to education and poor living standards are the reason for young people’s dissatisfaction with the country’s situation and, more broadly, with the performance of democratic institutions in Romania.The lack of economic perspectives generates a high migration rate to other EU countries, a solution that many young Romanians prefer for better living standards and more opportunities.The article claims that the dissatisfaction with the current situation creates a rejection of the traditional, institutionalized politics and elections and the pursuit of new, alternative forms of political participation, but it also feeds potentially dangerous authoritarian attitudes.
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The evolutionary development of political parties in modern political form is linked to the emergence of electoral and parliamentary systems in Europe and the United States during the 19th century. The focus of this work is the historical development and the essence of action of the first form of party political organizations that are aimed at the realization of full or partial power, or the exercise of power.In the early stage (pre-revolutionary, aristocratic and monarchic regimes), the political life took place in limited circles in which small groups or individuals were gathered around certain royalty and influential figures. Only later, the establishment of the parliamentary regime in the European and American soil political organization begins to change its shape to the 20th century, the presence of political parties was characteristic of most developed countries in the world.
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The aim of the article is to present the public discourse on the presence of a cross in the Polish parliament, which began after the parliamentary elections in 2011. At this time a group of the party Ruch Poparcia Palikota (RPP) submitted to the Marshal of the Sejm a request for its removal from the chamber. The article presents selected topics from the debate, focusing mainly on the arguments presented in the proposal and expertise of the Parliamentary Research Bureau and the arguments formulated in “Gazeta Wyborcza” newspaper, where they are presented as a continuation of the debate only initiated in the parliament, and then transferred to the media. Parliamentary debate took place only in one area – the political rivalry between the parties – while in the media appeared topics initiated by other institutions than the parties, i.e. educational institutions, public administration institutions and private individuals.
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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between locals’ xenophobic sentiment and behavior and their negative attitudes toward tourists at the end of a global health crisis. After reviewing the literature, the authors developed a research model. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed to measure the assumed model and assess hypotheses. The sample size is 513 people from various countries who participated in an online survey. The collected data was analyzed using SmartPLS 3. The findings revealed that even after the decline in the public’s concern about COVID-19, fear and risk perception have a positive and direct effect on precautions. Also, fear has a positive and direct effect on xenophobia, while risk perception negatively affects it, contrary to expectations. Furthermore, the findings showed the positive and direct effect of xenophobia on their negative attitude toward domestic and international tourists. In the next similar conditions, once international destinations are gradually recovering and returning to pre-pandemic normal conditions, the findings of this study can help destination management organizations (DMOs) by providing a realized perception of global locals’ attitudes toward tourists. In addition, the developed model is capable of being examined for individualdestinations. The present study contributes to knowledge by developing a model that reflects locals’ xenophobic sentiment and behavior and their negative attitudes toward tourists in the aftermath of a global health crisis. Also, the participation of respondents from various countries presents a reliable insight into the global post-pandemic situation facing the tourism industry.
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This study was conducted between October 2022 and January 2023, aiming to elucidate and highlight changes in the political perceptions, concerns, assessments, and aspirations of Armenia’s youth. The main objectives of the study were to discover the concerns of Armenia’s youth regarding the expansion of the war in Ukraine, to find out the potential effects of the Russian‑Ukrainian conflict and the war in Ukraine on the region of South Caucasus, and on Armenia’s security, and to assess the changes that the war has brought about in the lives of Armenia’s youth and society. Armenia’s youth holds two distinct perspectives on the Russian‑Ukrainian conflict. The first group perceives the conflict primarily as a geographical issue, representing another historical phase of global division and a struggle for dominance among superpowers and alliances. This viewpoint considers certain post‑Soviet countries, including Ukraine and Armenia, and some Arab nations like Syria, to be undergoing a modern geographic transformation. In this context, the 2020 Karabakh War has also been viewed. Russia, the West (NATO, EU, USA), and Turkey compete to exert influence over these countries. From this standpoint, the war in Ukraine is viewed as a battleground, showcasing the broader Russia‑West conflict. Conversely, the second group attributes the Russian‑Ukrainian conflict and war to the personal qualities, aspirations, approaches, and issues of the leaders of Russia and Ukraine.
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The world will only progress partially if half its population performs at total capacity. That means that women and men should contribute equally to every aspect of life, including science and innovation. Only 30% of females who finish higher education choose Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields worldwide. Likewise, women exceed men in the programs of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, still in doctorate studies, which are the initial bases for a career in science and innovation; the contrary happens. The Albanian Gender Index 2020 showed that the country is rated 7 points down (60.4) compared with the EU (67.4) average. This paper is about the underrepresentation of women in STEM in Albania and aims to bring an overall perspective to the problem, from the policymakers to the women involved in science and innovation. Therefore, after reviewing international awareness, national policies and strategies, we will explore the policymaker’s and scientific women’s perspectives through the qualitative method. The discussion will follow with cases of good practices in other countries in order to answer the research question: is AlbaniaKeywords: Women, STEM, Albania, policy-making
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In 2022, Poland experienced a migration crisis on two borders – Belarusian and Ukrainian. In both cases, this triggered a strong public reaction. This article presents the results of field research conducted in selected communities located on the Polish–Belarusian and Polish–Ukrainian borders. The first part presents the context, the methodology of the research and the definition of the concept of crisis, which is crucial for further analysis. The second part describes how the crisis is perceived by local social actors providing humanitarian aid to migrants in the surveyed communities. The last part focuses on the characteristics of those social actors and particularly on their motivations.
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At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, scientists became interested in the media as a subject of research, and there was also a concrete practical implementation of the technologies of mass media influence in political life. The defining feature of this period was the limitless power of the mass media to influence human behavior through persuasion, and the impetus for such conclusions was given by the successes of the Entente states in the First World War. Also, the targeted influence of the media on the public and the development of the PR system helped not only the American presidents to influence the domestic audience in the USA and beyond, but also the largescale propaganda influence helped A. Hitler comes to power. At the first stage of the study of mass communications and the theory of propaganda, two scientific directions are distinguished: the Chicago school of pragmatism, represented by American researchers, and the Frankfurt school, which was developed by European scientists. Analysis of their research demonstrated the superiority of one-way communication, and the means of mass-communication influence was the power of persuasion, with the help of which the audience was deprived of critical thinking and turned into passive participants in communication. This laid the foundation for the first theories of propaganda, which were effectively used to achieve foreign policy goals by the then leaders.
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The paper deals with public (media) representations of medical workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, using the example of Dubrava University Hospital in Zagreb. The authors analyse medical workers’ protests and their media representations, which featured a competition between two public discourses – the heroic discourse, which often uses war metaphors, and the discourse on working and material conditions. Further, we analyse media reporting on the “party” in Dubrava University Hospital as a moment of the hero’s fall and the dissolution of the heroic discourse. The analysis showed that the media reporting, with its focus on the heroisation of workers and a focus on patients as victims of medical workers’ carelessness, ignores the discourse that takes a critical look at the working and material conditions of medical workers in the COVID-19 pandemic, but also in the health system in general. The theoretical and methodological starting points of the paper are online diachronic ethnography and critical discourse analysis, as well as media anthropology and heroism studies.
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The present article, by analyzing the documentary material, substantiates that: 1) the completion of the construction of Roki Tunnel (on November 5, 1981) and the opening of Tskhinvali-Java-Roki Road between Georgia and Russia was a factor that strengthened the offensive Ossetian separatism, in particular: a) to give the struggle for the unification of two Ossetias (South and North Ossetia) a new impetus; b) to gradually expel the Georgian population, who hampered the “Ossetian idea”, from Tskhinvali-Java-Roki Road section and subsequent settlement of the vacated areas with the Ossetian population as soon as the favorable situation was created by Ossetian separatists; 2) giving immeasurable rights to governing circles of the Autonomous District of South Ossetia by the government of Soviet Georgia, under the guise of internationalism, created an opportunity for Ossetian separatists to gradually “swallow” Georgian villages of Tskhinvali Region; 3) the documentary material evidences that Ossetian separatists activated by order of the Russian government, by distorting the historical reality, used several forms of ideological and political influence on Ossetian population: a) by using the map drawn by Alan Chochiev, the leader of “Adamon Nihas”, depicting the “settlement” of the Alans, Tskhinvali Region in the South Caucasus was intentionally declared as a historical homeland of the Alans; b) the support of a significant part of Ossetian intelligentsia from Tskhinvali Region of the idea of Chochiev’s idea of unification of “two Ossetias” aimed at creating “evidence that Georgians conquered” Ossetian territory and increased hatred of Ossetians towards them; 4) by the joint efforts of Georgian public opinion representatives and Ossetian intelligentsia (scientists, writers, cultural workers, and students) defending the truth, the following facts were fundamentally justified in printed media: a) it was possible to preserve the cultural and national identity of the Ossetian people through the coexistence of the Ossetians and Georgians within Georgian state; b) strong propaganda to annex “South Ossetia” to North Ossetia aimed at realizing the “hypothesis” of A. Sakharov to demolish Georgia as a “small empire” and contained actions against the territorial integrity of the country.
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The aim of this article is to present the European Union’s legislative actions regarding media and digital platforms, whose aim is to organize the digital services market and enhance their level of accountability and transparency. A challenge of the current decade is also the necessity to adopt regulatory frameworks in the common market area for artifi cial intelligence technologies. Research method: The text employs a desk research method and legal document analysis. Results and conclusions: In the European Union’s broad media policy, there has been a clear reorientation of actions, marked by media freedom and pluralism, and their role in democracy. The Union also has the opportunity to remain a global creator of regulatory standards for companies in the digital service provider sector. Cognitive value: The article presents current legal solutions in the fi eld of media and digital services, highlighting aspects of transparency, pluralism, and the importance of protecting fundamental rights and democratic values in the context of their activities
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The article attempts to present ways of communicating the war crisis from a contrastive perspective. It aims to analyze the front covers of German and Polish weekly opinion magazines published from February/March to the end of 2022, related to the outbreak and enfolding of the war in Ukraine. The study is based on the assumptions of linguistic discourse analysis developed by Walde- mar Czachur (2020). The subject of the analysis are verbal and visual elements of semiotically diverse media texts from comparable institutional broadcasters in Germany and Poland (weekly magazines “Der Spiegel” and “Polityka”) that co-create the war discourse. The analysis is designed to answer the question of how the covers of weekly magazines communicate the war crisis in Ukraine. In the conclusions, similarities and differences between German and Polish media discourse are presented, in which a specific construction of reality takes place, reflecting the content typical of a given culture and the patterns of action and knowledge of a specific community.
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When there were only traditional media such as press, radio or television, communication was structured and predictable. The emergence of social media has not only changed us as users, but has provided completely new opportunities for communication. At the same time, unfortunately, there were threats resulting from the lack of content control, its rapid growth and the impact on the creation and distribution process, which increased the amount of disinformation. These factors have created fertile ground for trolls carrying out disinformation attacks in the form of entertainment publications or hate speech publications. Their role is to ridicule or insult, and their goal is to destabilize the discussion, mislead their interlocutors, and thus damage the good name of a person or group. The article describes the phenomenon of trolling and its relationship with disinformation, focusing on the features, behaviors and effects of such activities.
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The role of the media in the context of the crisis is significant: the informational, opinion-forming, educational, conciliatory aspect and potential of the media is known. The media’s exploitation of the crisis is also known: financial exploitation or social polarization. The media as organizations, however, are themselves operating in a permanent crisis and are looking for a strategic response,which they can – and often must – provide. Because no digital-media organization, understood as an organizational entity engaged in the production and distribution of content in the digital space, operates in a vacuum. They operate in a business environment that is nowadays described as turbulent, hostile, hyper-competitive and high-potential. Therefore, there is a need to analyze the environment, which makes it possible, among other things, to identify trends and build a strategic response based on their instrumentalization and prioritization. Trends in the growth phase were analyzed using infuture.institute’s proposed maps and trend cards for 2022 and 2023, relating them to selected digital-media companies: Tinder, Twitch and TikTok. A mapping of selected trends was carried out based on a modified Eisenhower matrix: the urgent-strategic matrix. As a result of the analysis, observations were made observations on the specificity and importance of the strategic response. Some recommendations for long-term action were also formulated. The purpose of the article is to sustain interest in the discussion of the importance of strategic thinking with strategic foresight and anticipation of the future in relation to digital-media organizations.
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Copypasta as a genre of an internet texts was born in the first decade of the 21st century in the societies of internet imageboards. Then it expanded the scope of its functioning to social news and social media portals. Due to the fact that copypasta is a heterogeneous genre in aspect of form and content, it’s still evolutioning and it’s located in the borderland of literature, rhetorical forms and other forms of communication, it hasn’t received a scientific operational definition yet. The author of the article, using the research tools of literary studies, rhetoric, netnography and cyber media studies, attempted to characterize copypaste as a separate genre of internet texts, with an emphasis on the determinants of its literariness and rhetoric, and its subordination to communication functions. Usage definitions emphasize two trends which copypasta has evolved into, taking the form of funny stories or simulating a provocative statement in an online discussion as an internet trolling manifestation. The results of the analyzes of texts representing, that the genre indicate its genre similarity to literary forms, e.g. a story, a tale, a blemish; colloquial speech genres, i.e. conversation, gossip and others, as well as rhetorical ones: speeches, appeals, etc. The overriding feature that binds all texts belonging to this genre is their functioning in the virtual web 2.0 space as a kind of verbal meme.
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Hate speech, verbal violence, hate and trolling are increasingly common issues that almost every user of the Internet and social media have to deal – often as an observer, sometimes as a victim, and sometimes as a hater indeed. In order to understand the increasingly common verbal aggression in online debates in terms of communication, the authors analyzed a fragmentary, targeted social diagnosis regarding the level of awareness of the phenomenon of hate on the Internet and the effects caused by hate speech that directly affect people. The purpose of the research undertaken is to characterize the phenomenon of hate speech in the consciousness of the online community.
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On Sunday, July 16, in Poznań, a 31-year-old perpetrator murdered a 30-year-old man in front of his fiancée. Immediately after the event, short videos and photos from the scene began to be shared on social media, followed by comments from Internet users. The subject of the analysis undertaken by the author are comments that were placed under video materials illustrating crimes posted on Internet portal Sadistic.pl, and especially comments that concern the fiancée of the murdered person. She became a victim of secondary victimization. The trauma she experienced during her fiancé’s murder was prolonged on social media, where hateful comments against her appeared. The analysis undertaken by the author was qualitative and exploratory in nature and will refer to the concept of secondary/double victimization. The author is also in favour used elements of discourse analysis and quantitative content analysis, analyzing the frequency of epithets and types of argumentation used in entries. The author distinguished three types of comments among the videos showing this event: (1) indifferent to the matter, (2) with a negative attitude towards Julia (the murdered man’s fiancée), (3) empathetic –compassionate. The author also discovered that the film about the crime was probably most often shared on Twitter Sadistic.pl. Due to the lack of legal regulations and mechanisms protecting victims of secondary victimization against hate, the author proposed a number of activities involving state institutions and social organizations.
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The phenomenon of hate and hate speech on the Internet is affecting a growing population of people and causing serious social, psychological, as well as economic consequences. Public figures, celebrities, and influencers, that is online professionals, are particularly vulnerable to hate. The final professional group in particular is subjected to continuous evaluation by observers. Given the scale and nature of their activities, which are strongly dependent on the opinion of observers, it can be hypothesised that they experience hate and harassment speech to a greater extent than other social media participants. The perspective of determining the scale of hate among Polish influencers makes it possible to gain knowledge to effectively counteract and prevent negative social and psychological effects. The purpose of the article is to describe the effects and strategies of influencers coping with the phenomenon of online hate. The study of influencers used content analysis of media messages and individual in-depth interviews. The results of the survey showed that the majority (more than 94%) of influencers have experienced hate, which most often concerned their appearance and statements. More than 40% of the surveyed influencers have suffered the effects of hate. The cognitive value is the creation of a catalogue of the effects of hate and hate speech affecting a professional group such as influencers, which will significantly translate into knowledge of methods how to counteract the hate and hate speech experienced by Internet users. The development of a catalogue of consequences and strategies for dealing with hate and hate speech will also make it easier to identify the potential impact of internal and external factors that can amplify the phenomenon of hate on the Internet.
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The text considers several critical issues related to the role of false information in the COVID-19 pandemic. It mainly focuses on social media, which often resemble echo chambers responsible for disseminating disinformation. In these echo chambers, users close themselves off from arguments and justifications different from their own, often with a strong tendency towards polarization of views and attitudes. A particular case of echo chambers is the conspiracy mentality propagated in social media, promoting conspirational beliefs about COVID-19, which, besides offering an alternative understanding of reality, deepens distrust towards epistemic authorities and methods of producing scientific knowledge. This indicates an epistemic crisis as a consequence of the pandemic, which must be addressed in order to rebuild and protect epistemic trust. The authors conclude that the consequence of this crisis is a regression of cognitive abilities, which may, in a feedback loop, exacerbate the epistemic crisis.
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