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La regió més oriental d’Ucraïna, el Donbass, viu des de fa vuit anys una sagnant guerra en què Rússia s’ha vist directament involucrada. A més, la regió ha estat objecte de la propaganda russa, que l’ha utilitzat com un dels principals motius per justificar la seva intervenció militar sobre Ucraïna, el febrer de 2022. Tots els bàndols implicats en aquest conflicte argumenten que estan protegint els interessos i els desitjos dels seus habitants. Però aquests interessos i desitjos, a més de ser sovint manipulats, han sofert moltes modificacions i pressions després d’una guerra tan llarga, que entre altres coses ha fet que prop de la meitat dels habitants hagin abandonat la regió, i la resta es vegi sota una pressió militar, política i mediàtica constant. Aquest article intenta ser una anàlisi i una reflexió sobre l’autèntica voluntat dels habitants del Donbass, com també de la manipulació que estan sofrint.

Though books are often considered “old media” in the digital age, their production in this period in fact has been continually reimagined and redefined through new technologies of printing, especially paper and ink manufacturing. This paper explores how three specific recent printed books demonstrate this point in both form and content: David Brower’s Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run (1995), William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle (2002), and the 2008 Harper-Collins Green Bible. Brower’s book was printed on paper made from kenaf, a sustainable alternative to wood-based paper. Cradle to Cradle was printed on a synthetic polymer that could be endlessly remade into other products. The Green Bible was printed on recycled paper and used soy-based ink, and all verses with environmental content were printed in green. In each case, in form these printed books were meant to model innovative industrial information production while also through their content to motivate enhanced environmental consciousness.

Prior to the advent of digital film technology, analogue film was not analogue, it was simply film. The introduction of digital, thus also marks the introduction of the analogue version. The idea of old media persisting – is dependent on celluloid film being transformed into “analogue” and being classed as an old form of media. In this paper, using the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and Wake in Fright as case studies, I introduce the concept of the film-version. Moreover, my paper challenges the relegation of celluloid film as old media, and instead argues that the creation of a distinction between digital and analogue versions gives rise to a new kind of mediatised coexistence. I argue that rather than forming a hierarchy, the analogue and digital form a parallel and dialogical relationship allowing both the new restored version, and the older celluloid version to not only persist, but evolve into the present.

This paper aims to analyze former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s thirty speeches on COVID-19 delivered between February 2, 2020 and April 27, 2020. We apply Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of discourse analysis to investigate and analyze Rouhani’s rhetorical and discursive strategies in making meaning of COVID-19. Findings showed that COVID-19 discourse in Rouhani’s speeches has mainly revolved around three nodal points: “the country”, “the enemy”, and “the state of exception”. Thus, the structural articulation of COVID-19 discourse resembles the hegemonic discourse in Iran. Our results also explain how Rouhani used COVID-19 as an empty signifier to reinforce the hegemonic discourse in Iran while trying to redefine his relations with the state-leaning organizations. Furthermore, we analyzed the rhetorical practices that Rouhani employed to articulate the COVID-19 discourse. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature into discursive aspects and implications of a global pandemic by providing empirical evidence form an understudied context: Iran.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The research investigates how young boys progress in life after the loss of their fathers. It explores the adjustments they make, the coping mechanisms they develop to navigate life, and the male roles they assume in the family. Additionally, it examines how family can aid and support their coping and adjustment process. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: This study utilises a case study methodology focused on gaining an understanding of the lives of two adolescent boys who experienced the death of their fathers in the early formative years of their lives. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The paper focuses on five themes- family dynamics, life transitions with and without their fathers, post-loss reassignment of family roles, present circumstances, and future goals. RESEARCH RESULTS: A qualitative analysis of the data revealed that participants’ belief systems, family support, and striving toward future goals helped them to be resilient in this event. CONCLUSIONS RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: While most research typically emphasises the negative impacts of death on people, this study demonstrates how individuals’ can be resilient, dependent on both person-related factors and environmental factors. To help adolescents who are grieving become resilient, the paper offers intervention and coping strategies through counselling, the availability of support networks, and combined efforts by the state and educational institutions.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Governments across the world were forced to impose social distancing and lockdown measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19, caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in December 2019. Following the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic, the disruptions, including restrictive measures such as school closures had severe impacts on the physical, emotional and mental health of all people, especially children with special needs. There was also scant data, particularly in low-to-middle-income countries. Existing literature stems mostly from western countries, thus the need to perform a comprehensive review on this topic. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The primary objective of the systematic review is to understand the impact of COVID-19 and restrictive measures such as school closures on the educational outcomes and physical and mental health of school-going children with special needs. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: This systematic review used the PRISMA 2020 checklist where four databases and grey literature were searched for full text articles, peer reviewed publications in the English language that were published during January 2019–December 2021. RESEARCH RESULTS: The literature search identified 1294 publications, of which 25 key papers were selected. These studies investigate the impact on children with special needs across the globe, with a majority of papers from Europe. We found that COVID-19 and the digitalization of schooling had severe impacts on the physical and mental health of children with special needs and their parents/caregivers. CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: These studies highlight the need for an inclusive school environment to ensure that the learning outcomes for children everywhere are achieved. Further, a hybrid model that includes classroom learning with novel inventive methods would be beneficial for children with special needs.

This paper aims to analyze the effects on German literature of the renewed interest in Nazi past. In order to do that, it considers Adorno’s and Mitscherlichs’ studies, in which they try – from a psychoanalytic point of view – to understand the mechanisms which made Germans support the leader and then made them remove their guilt. Then, the article focuses on some author of the early Sixties, in order to verify how they try to begin the Germans’ Vergangenheitsbewältigung. As far as possible, the paper examines the reception of these texts, trying to understand how and to what extent they give a contribution to overcome this collective amnesia.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of the paper was to discuss a function of passion in professional personal lives of eminent Cracow musicians. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The paper raises the problem of the role of passion in the process of shaping musical eminence, answers the question of the scope of experiencing it as well as it manifesting in activities of outstanding individuals. In conducted research and interpretations, the qualitative perspective and biographical method were applied. The leading technique was problem-concentrated qualitative interview, partially structured, carried out with ten eminent instrumentalists. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The theoretical basis for this reading of the experience of educational biographies was provided by the Model of Authentic Vocation of J. Weller and the Dualistic Model of Passion of A. Bonneville-Roussy, G. Lavigne and R. Vallerand. The interpretations of the research material described the topography of experiencing passion. RESEARCH RESULTS: The article describes autonomous passion associated with musical mastery, instrumental motivation to practice, as well as distinguishes important factors that determine the experience of passion, persistence or burnout (tenacity, ambition, community transfer, conflict of motives, work overload), and concretizes the qualities of musical passion of outstanding musicians: professionalization, love of music, integrity, creativity, strength and determination in pursuit of goals, as well as humility in the face of challenges. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Deciphering the senses and meanings that prominent Cracow musicians attributed to passion suggests that it was autonomous, harmonious and instrumental, motivated by the pursuit of mastery, and that the trajectories of the musicians’ professional biographies were a manifestation of a “professionalization of passion,” which formed the core of their educational experience and constituted and defined their life creed.

This paper considers the 1934 experimental radio work In Linea by Livio Castiglioni and Renato Castellani. A sound-collage characterized by an abstract approach to combining music and noise, In Linea nevertheless offered listeners a clear metaphor for fascist political education. The play’s three sections move from a dark, noisy chaos, within which arises an anxious, belligerent crowd that can be calmed only by a clear, authoritative voice offering a new path forward. At the heart of In Linea is a fervent belief in the power of the authoritative radiophonic voice. This paper examines the nature of this voice on the radio, asking what it meant to represent the most controversial and powerful radio voice of all – the voice of Mussolini himself. The stakes of such a representation cannot be overstated, given that radio broadcasts of the Duce’s speeches were the primary way that most Italians listened to and engaged with their heroic leader. This paper argues that the persistent focus on Mussolini’s image has led scholars to disregard the symbolic power held by the dictator’s voice, a voice that was both magnified and transformed through its transmission over the radio.

This contribution seeks to explore the potential of museum audio description (AD) – a sub-genre of general screen AD – as an instance of intersemiotic translation for non-sighted and sighted alike by drawing on a systematic review of museum AD guidelines and on extensive bibliography from Museum Studies (MS), Translation Studies (TS) and, within the latter, Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and Media Accessibility (MA). The paper will first discuss the social mission of museums and the intrinsic diversity characterising their communication and translation practices, with a special focus on museum AD. It will then move on to the wider value of screen AD; although the latter is primarily intended as an access tool to help blind and visually impaired individuals construct a mental image of what they cannot partially or totally see, its recognised benefits for other groups (Perego 2017) will be addressed. Similarly, the paper will discuss the potential of museum AD for a wider audience by presenting insights from museum-specific AD guidelines. Museum AD may arguably be revisited as a form of museum translation for everybody, which could truly foster social inclusion.

This paper examines China’s claim to the South China Sea, focusing on how to maintain peace in a region with competing claims through codified law or external mechanisms. The first part of the paper examines the different levels of China’s claim to ninety percent of the South China Sea, starting from its historical claim to its territorial claim. Additionally, an in-depth look is given to the provisions of the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Seas, and how China’s claim conflicts with these provisions. The second part of the paper goes through the section of the dispute settlement provisions of the Convention, addressing the general provisions, procedures, and limitations concerning dispute resolution. The critiques of the dispute settlement provisions are addressed, alongside the lack of an enforcing body. Lastly, the external mechanisms that State parties can take to maintain peace with the region are analyzed, from other conventions to commercial responses.

The relative neglect of the immediate social environment is one of the best-known criticisms of the Spiral of Silence Theory (SoS). Due to massive changes in communication technology, especially the advent of social media, the immediate social environment has become even more relevant which has amplified this gap. This paper integrates the immediate social environment into the SoS. The immediate social environment is the aggregate of individual actors whom one interacts with – a mix of strong and weak ties. The immediate social environment is conceptualized as part of a larger ego-centric network of various sources or observers which also includes the mass media. Based on this concept, this paper examines the entire chain of effects – from monitoring the environment via different sources to the willingness to express one’s opinion in public in front of different observers. Particular attention is directed to the crosslinks between the immediate social environment and the larger realm of society and mass media. The integration of the immediate social environment serves the goal of further refining the conditions of a relevant social context under which people fear different types of social isolation from different groups and subsequently do or do not express their opinions.

Social media has become a central part of the modern-day broadcasting of women’s sports, and it is argued to be of great importance to the development of women’s sports (Vann, 2014; Thorpe, Toffoletti & Bruce, 2017). However, the relationship between digital and social media and the development of women’s sports is complex (Sherwood, 2020). In this paper, we explore social media narratives in competitive women’s road cycling. Digital and social media are a central communication center in cycling, and self-tracking technologies and associated media are imperative to cyclists’ socializing and cycling practices and identities (Duggan, 2020; Lamont & Ross, 2019). Few studies have focused on social media and its narratives in a competitive road cycling field. The paper considers an autoethnographic account of the first author in the local bike racing scene of Melbourne, Australia. The paper reflects on the role of social media in gaining access to road cycling, bypassing structural and social barriers, and community building in the field of women’s racing.

By extending Andersen’s (2003) propositions, the current paper formalizes Luhmann’s four fundamental analytical frameworks and proposes a model that delineates the relations among them. That is, with the form analysis as the base framework, observation analysis is considered the social extension of form analysis as it involves the distinction observer / observed or ego / alter. Differentiation analysis is described as the factual extension of form as it distinguishes a system (this) and everything else (in its environment). Finally, semantic analysis is considered the temporal extension of form analysis as it focuses on the condensation of meaning over time. In addition, to overcome the abstractness of descriptions in the existing literature, this paper suggests the workable definitions that operationalize the analytical frames. Rich research examples are also presented to demonstrate the broad applicability of the four frameworks in communication research and their analytical gains. These theory-driven analytical frameworks are expected to provide meaningful connections between empirical data and theories, thereby enriching the field of communication research. In turn, more empirical applications will contribute to Luhmann’s systems theory by bringing in productive insights.

This paper analyzes two dystopias belonging to different worlds and eras: one from the 20th century, We, by Russian writer E. Zamjatin and the other from the 21st century, Notre vie dans les forêts, by the French M. Darrieussecq. This literary journey of a century allows us to focus on themes dear to the dystopian genre but especially related to the lives of today’s readers, in the spirit of engaged literature. In particular, readers will be prompted to reflect, with the help of some critical insights, primarily on the disasters of the Anthropocene and on the depersonalization experienced by humans in a world that changes too quickly and in which the boundaries between human and nonhuman seem to have been obliterated. Starting from this last element, the article considers a new model of inclusion of the different, the posthuman, through the studies of Rosi Braidotti and Donna Haraway.

The global entertainment world has recently seen an increase in post-apocalyptic products, clearly reflecting a public demand for catastrophe-related narratives. This ‘catastrophilia’ finds a relevant example in the dystopian works by Komatsu Sakyō, one of Japan's most celebrated science fiction authors, beginning with the first novel Nihon chinbotsu (1973). Having become a transmedia product thanks to film, manga, and anime adaptations, the story portrays a fictional version of “The Big One” able to sink the entire Japanese archipelago in an unknown future. What is the reason behind such success? By adopting an interdisciplinary perspective intertwining psychological, philosophical and media studies, this paper examines the popularity achieved by Japan Sinks and its mediascape to unveil the addiction to the apocalyptic narratives that goes beyond the ecotopic purpose of re-establishing a symbiotic contact between humans and the environment. Instead, it results from a pathological desire for violence and death and an atavistic tendency for morbid curiosity.

In the 20th century, it is common to find some rewritings of classical myths set in post-apocalyptic scenarios. The aim of this paper is to propose an innovative research field that combine the study of dystopian literature and myth criticism. The new myth-critical approach considers three social innovations: informatization, which is essential in dystopian literature as well; migration and postcolonial literature, which is linked to the concept of the otherness science fiction thrives on; and finally, consumerism, which leads to eternal technical reproducibility, also presented in the dystopian works, especially in the concept of cloning. A concrete example are the dystopian adaptations of the myth of Antigone: the movie I Cannibali by Liliana Cavani, the epistolary novel In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster, and the play Antígona Gelada by the portuguese author Armando Nascimento Rosa.

Reflections on the collective traumas that have shaped Japan’s more recent history (primarily the triple disaster of Fukushima) have ignited a new boom in dystopian productions that have achieved an unprecedented success. These narratives explore themes that deal with the erosion of the ecosystem in which humans live – but also of the human body itself. However, it is not only human beings who play a part in some of these dystopias: the city of Tokyo also plays a key role within them. The purpose of this paper is to explore this peculiar role of Tokyo in three selected case studies: namely, Adou (2021-) by Amano Jaku, Soundtrack (2003) by Furukawa Hideo, and The Emissary (2013) by Tawada Yōko. Destroyed and rebuilt in multiple media productions over the last seventy years and at the center of psychedelic futuristic visions, Tokyo becomes either a swarming center of human life or an abandoned wasteland, an urban skeleton that stands as a reminder of the impending or preceding catastrophe, forcing the reader to think about the actual future of our urban spaces – and whether it will include us humans or not.

The present paper aims at analyzing two works of contemporary Irish fiction, namely, Notes from a Coma (2005) by Mike McCormack and The Fjord of Killary (2012) by Kevin Barry. I argue that both works not only mirror what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls the ‘global’ and the ‘planetary’, but also reflect the non-human space and time scales that Timothy Morton identifies as one of the properties of hyperobjects. Moreover, the two novels are deeply rooted in the history of Ireland, and especially in the semi-peripheral position occupied by the country within the capitalist world system. The intermingling of various narrative layers together with speculative and realistic tropes conveys the epiphenomenality of our lived experience, characterized by the not-yet predictable consequences of planetary climate crisis and the ever-shifting demands of global capitalism.

This paper investigates the representation of bodies in two contemporary Japanese works, namely Murata Sayaka’s Seimeishiki (生命式 , Life Ceremony, 2013) and Ono Miyuki’s Karada o uru koto (身体を売ること “Selling the Body,” 2020). Both novellas are set in the future and share the trope of the ‘uncanny,’ heightened through the transgression of boundaries thanks to the presence of what I refer to as ‘consumed bodies,’ and female protagonists as an ‘unhinged woman,’ the anti-heroine interpreted as a feminist icon recently emblazoned in social networks. In Life Ceremony, the Japanese government has approved anthropophagy as a social practice; in “Selling the Body,” healthy flesh bodies are sold to survive in polluted environments and replaced by robotic ones. Present anxieties concerning the control over bodies and their reproductivity, as well as the fear of objectification are expressed through the practices of cannibalism and cyberization. Consequently, readers are forced to rethink the human nature and ethics in a posthuman dialectic within a hyper-capitalistic society.

The territory of Lima, Peru, is the result of thousands of years of history of prehispanic cultures. A strategic management of ecological and social resources disrupted by colonization and modernity. Nowadays, the South American metropolis struggles with inefficient public policy enforcement to manage its territory, and close to 256 archaeological sites (called by the quechua word huacas) are located in peri-urban areas of the valleys, most of them neglected by local governments, lacking a proper assessment of their significance, and characterization of their context. The landscape of the southeastern side of San Juan de Lurigancho is a testimony of the past relationship between the agricultural economy of the lower Rimac Valley; and hunting-gathering activities and ranching in the surrounding mountains of the present peri-urban interface of Lima. Here, the participation of grassroots organizations, in the conservation of ancient monuments and their landscape, has been crucial for over a decade. The objective of this paper is to trace a biography of the landscape in the south east of San Juan de Lurigancho, and to highlight the role of community involvement in its present conservation. The results show the need to include this type of community action into urban planning and to empower grassroots organizations, to bridge the gap between current policy making and its implementation in the conservation of prehispanic landscapes in urban interstices.

The paper investigates the relationship between liminal, interstitial spaces with displacement and makeshift inhabitation from people on the move across the outskirts of Paris’ municipality. By providing the example of the camps settled along the interstices of the Boulevard Phériphérique, we aim to shed light on the paradoxically relational nature of voids and liminalities, testified by the multifaceted urban fragments that they generate, as well as the resistive strategies employed by marginalised populations to navigate the exclusive mechanisms of neoliberal power and negligence. The case of Delphine Seyrig serves to highlight the tensions that emerge from a space in which dynamics of exclusion and inclusion converge, where resistance and vulnerability, “us and them”, coexist, yet are made visibly distant. By framing the interstitial opacity that characterizes both the materiality of liminal lands and the condition of the migrant, we have called them “spaces of holding”, where people on the move’s inhabitation remains a perpetual negotiation of suspended existence. Based on participant observation in Greater Paris between September 2021 and August 2022, we draw on interstices’ ambivalent nature of in-between, no-longer-there-but-not-there-yet empty spaces that allow the ongoing reproducibility of a variety of forms, functions, and identities. Despite taking a distance from considering such spaces as “solutions” or countermeasures of reception, we look at these fragments as topographical constructs for scrutinizing spatial tensions and conceptual proposals and building a renewed politics of visibility in architecture and urban planning.

Macro-paintings have become a popular tool used by various actors to uplift marginalized communities in cities of the global South by transforming their physical environments. These actors operate under the assumption that improving the material conditions of these communities will lead to their overall transformation. As a result, communities serve as a focal point in this process, upon which macro-paintings are intended to have a significant impact. In this brief paper, we aim to illuminate the phenomenon of macro-painting by considering them within and beyond the context of a single community. In doing so, we shift our focus away from the traditional interpretations of paintings and instead emphasize their capacity to redefine socio-material boundaries on various scales within the city. Drawing on interviews with artists and actors from different Latin American countries, we analyze the boundaries across different scales of macro-paintings—individual houses, neighborhoods/districts, and the city. Our argument centers on the idea that macro-paintings create a unique ecology, influencing meanings, material aspects, and lives throughout the entire city. This perspective holds broader significance for urban studies, highlighting that seemingly invisible, ostensibly uniform urban surfaces are not passive but exert wider spatial effects. Consequently, scholars must acknowledge and investigate these outcomes.

Launched in 2019 by Francesca Ceccarelli, Frisson. Oltre il piacere describes itself as a “feminist magazine” dedicated to sexuality, pleasure, rights and intersectionality. The magazine places special emphasis on its visual dimension through resolutely pop art graphic design and the choice of striking photographs. In the age of social networks, Frisson chooses to publish on paper, but also makes extensive use of the internet to disseminate its publications and discuss its ideas. This article shows how the magazine forms part of a double tradition, that of the feminist press and the women’s press, and at the same time subverts their codes by placing the question of the body and sexuality at the centre of its reflections. With its multimedia approach, Frisson is a modern quarterly in its aesthetics, is politically engaged, and showcases on its glossy paper a “fourth-wave” feminism, which is international, inclusive and intersectional.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The paper is an attempt to articulate the defining features of Ignatian Leadership and to clarify what might distinguish it from other brands of leadership without lapsing into motherhood statements and worn-out clichés. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The Ignatian leadership style that is presented is grounded in Ignatian spirituality, which is a source of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola. Hence, the research problem was formulated: how can Ignatian leadership be implemented in everyday practice? The method of critical analysis of sources was applied. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The paper argues that Ignatian Leadership is, in fact, a radical form of servant leadership, since the Ignatian Leader is at the service not only of the Community, but also–and for Ignatius of Loyola, even more fundamentally–of the Mission entrusted to that Community. RESEARCH RESULTS: Concretely, it proposes a conception of Ignatian Leadership as a threeway relationship among the Leader, the Community, and the Mission, in the process, illustrating what magis and cura personalis might mean in one’s exercise of leadership, but also, spelling out, in light of these relationships, the key functions of the Ignatian Leader. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Ignatian leadership is a form of servant leadership insofar as Ignatian Leaders ought to prioritize serving the Community that they lead over their own interests. However, what distinguishes Ignatian Leadership from servant leadership is its explicit and non-negotiable prioritization of service of the Mission as well.

This paper investigates the use of a semiotic macrostructure called a pending account as an interpretive metatext to configure strategy texts’ motivational affordances and lend authority to deontic claims. Interpretive metatexts tell us what another text means; if they use a pending account to do so, they tell us what it means by telling us what we should do; and they tell us what we should do by telling us what inclines us to act in a certain way, either by verbalizing habits or convoking scripts and passions. Pending accounting is a speech genre oriented towards inducing action. Peircean and Greimasian semiotics suggest two different ways in which emotion is coupled to other sensemaking registers to set up these inducements. If Peirce teaches us how feelings set off an effortful inquiry oriented towards the fixing of belief, Greimas explains how passions (as well as scripts) play an important part in sanctioning and thereby (de)commissioning action. The paper shows how the two semioticians can be combined to explain how emotion is used to articulate and authorize pending accounts, based on an illustrative analysis of four interpretations of the 2020 Brexit withdrawal agreement.

This paper questions archaeology as a practice that, by unearthing and interpreting the signs of the past, leaves its own traces on the present of a site, a district, a community. Archaeology can be used to do so by different stakeholders, through the creation of discontinuity both in a region’s landscape – i.e. by choosing to attract visitors towards an archaeological site/museum rather than towards others – and in the history of a community – by implicitly (but also explicitly) giving the status of historical apex of a civilization to a specific period/event/monument according to which every other age is adjusted. This creates an unbalanced picture made of centres and peripheries. The few key archaeological ‘centres’ spread around the world and the uncountable neglected ‘peripheries’ that derive from this practice have an impact on our understanding of humanity. Bearing in mind this inevitable capacity of archaeology to leave material and cultural traces on us, this paper asks if and how archaeology can be used to have a positive impact on present societies answering current social questions. Does such practice just generate an indiscriminate accumulation of objects that will never be either studied by specialists or exhibited to the public tending to make museums’ storages collapse? Or does it help local and global communities to reflect upon themselves bearing an historically deeper viewpoint on humanity? Is archaeology used to justify actions taken in the present, to look for signs of prestigious ancestry, or as a medium towards accepting and dignifying otherness? Answers to such questions vary sensibly depending on the semiotic stand that specific archaeologists, as actors within the discipline, take on archaeology as a practice, whether they see it, in synthesis, as a discipline of things or as a discipline of traces. Reflecting on a few case studies such as Koudelka’s “Walking Through Outdoors Ruins” project for Magnum, the archaeology or Bronze Age Sardinia, and the dominant paradigm of communicating archaeology to the public, this paper exposes the social roles that archaeological interpretation has had so far, attempting a prediction of its future paths until some of its possible extreme – Funes el-memorioso driven – consequences.

This paper reflects on the stadium as a symbolic place. The “ethnographic” study of stadiums allows us to understand how these structures reflect the social, economic, and cultural processes of cities and nations. Starting from Andrea Ferreri’s book, the paper analyses the role of stadiums in defining the sense of belonging to a community, through the sports stories that take place there. Sporting legends, therefore, are a decisive part of these processes of narration and self-narration, through which individuals and groups recognise themselves as elements of the same shared destiny. This socialising function of stadiums, linked to the multiplicity of experiences, stories, and legends that they “host”, also concerns the rituality of football. As a kind of “universal secular religion” (Boff, 2014), football can connect a community in the name of a (sporting) faith, which consecrates its temples - the stadiums - according to a codified set of ritual gestures, movements, songs, and choruses.

Qualitative reception studies have shown that new media neither radically change people’s media repertoires, nor do they replace the old. Established media practices remain relevant, and users actively persist on old media (technologies). To show why and how this persistence is embedded by its users, the paper at hand addresses old media persistence from a user’s and appropriation perspective. Thus, following the mediatization approach, we enfold the concept of the interplay of dynamics and persistence and transfer its theoretical ideas to two studies that deal with (1) the persistence of the TV in everyday media repertoires and (2) the persisting usage of vinyl records in the face of digital streaming services in everyday life. Our aim is to illuminate why and how users, on the one hand, persist on established media practices, but on the other hand, simultaneously combine them meaningfully with new media (practices) within their respective everyday lives.

Almost 50 years after the VCR’s (Video Cassette Recorder) worldwide penetration in the international entertainment market, this paper will explore VCR-use-related and VCR-viewing-related activities, and the cultural practices of the Greek video cultures, particularly videotape collectors, in the 21st century. Rooted in various disciplines, the article aims to illuminate the persistent nature of VHS collectors’ previous entertainment routines. From owning a VCR device and maintaining their videotape collections to enriching them with new acquisitions from video libraries and online buys, Greek videotape aficionados’ practices show continuities and discontinuities from the past. Furthermore, it will explore how these practices have influenced their perception of current uses and gratifications of VHS technologies, revealing a perspective rooted in (tech) nostalgia. Moreover, the article will argue that the enduring presence and resilience of VHS technologies can be regarded as a testament to collective memory, a resistance to the digitalization of entertainment, and a longing for simpler ways of life, particularly in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial recession and the rise of new technologies.

This paper argues that the corporate annual report is not only a document comprising retrospective accounts of financial position and performance, but also a text that points to the future by means of presenting dreams, aspirations and fantasies. However, these dreams are not to be seen as irrational deviations from the rationalistically oriented discourse of accounting. Quite to the contrary, the three corporate dreams identified in this study – the colonial dream, the evolutionary dream and the efficiency dream – are part of the ongoing self-narration of the company, in which it tries to display an allegiance to a set of appropriate aspirations that are considered legitimate in contemporary global capitalism. Drawing upon ideas from narrative theory, annual reports from 2005 to 2010 collected from NASDAQ OMX Stockholm have been analyzed with the purpose of understanding how corporate dreams are used in financial communication. These corporate dreams contribute, the paper argues, to the construction of legitimacy and trust.

The paper examines the sociocultural transformations of cycling from the late nineteenth century to the 2000s. Retracing some stages of the analysis carried out by historian Stefano Pivato in his volume Storia sociale della bicicletta (2019), this paper aims to show how the analysis of cycling practices allows to monitor, describe and analyze the evolution of the political world, cultural values, social identities, daily practices, and lifestyles. From a symbol of modernization, to an icon of “slow” cultures, in over a century the bicycle constitutes a symbolic object still capable of activating memories and social discourses.

We bottle it, we flush it, we drink it, we defecate in it, we swim in it. We pay to have it delivered and pay to have it taken away. We can’t live without it but can’t abide it when we’ve used it. We demand our potable water to be pathologically pure, yet routinely douse it in chemicals marked as poisons. Our current relationship with water is complex, irrational, historically specific, ideologically shaped; a complex hydro-social configuration that defies logic. As a result, the potable water resources which continue to underpin political economies relationally bind together public and private domains. Water use is personal and political; material, corporeal, cultural, social and spiritual interconnections which shape ourselves as humans and our relations with others and our environments. Understanding how these tropes of hydro-social relationships remake themselves reveals the power dynamics which shape the control of capital. This paper explores one element of this relationship through exploring the monetisation of the concept of waste prevention within current neoliberal practices of water provision. Within the English water sector water efficiency initiatives are heralded as an essential component of demand lead water security. Those water companies within water stressed regions are required to promote water efficiency technologies and practises; including consumer mindfulness of water use. However, water bills are mostly disaggregated from consumption; instead they are predicated on how much the water companies invest and whether this capital is raised through equity or debt over a five year cycle. Water users are therefore asked to prevent water wastage on environmental justice grounds, but with no tangible monetary savings for them and significant investment in infrastructure networks. The water companies benefit by less resource ‘output’ coupled with an enhanced ‘corporate social responsibility’ profile; especially vital as the domestic UK water market opens to competition. This paper explores how the financialisation of the water sector consequentially distorts human-nature relationships even further, with ‘water efficiency’ as a synecdoche for continued profiteering.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The predominant goal of this article is to put emphasis on issues only children face in the modern world. The theoretical scope of the paper incorporates the specificity of the only child phenomenon, the familial situation of only children, as well as the possibility of maintaining social contacts and developing in the current pandemic-driven situation. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Research problems have the form of the following questions: What is the familial situation of children not having any siblings? How does the pandemic affect the upbringing of only children? What conditions for development and opportunities for establishing social contacts does the age of pandemic create for only children? The analytical and synthetic method of the literature approach to the subject has been applied. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Basing on scientific studies, the specificity of the only child phenomenon has been identified, most important features of the family-oriented educational environment have been distinguished, as well as the nature of functioning of a family having a single child only has been elaborated on. RESEARCH RESULTS: Consideration on the issues raised within the scope of this paper has indicated that the only child’s interactions with adults should have an appropriate form and nature. It is necessary to keep a healthy balance between the world of children and the world of adults. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: It has been noticed that the modern perception of only children is changing, which is the result of expanding interpersonal relations and the development of technology. Contemporary only children do not remain in absolute isolation from the environment.

This paper examines the ethical and political issues of gesture in Early Modern diplomacy, based on a discussion of the problems raised by the interpretation of the gestures that appear on the surface of the ambassador and his counterpart’s body. Our aim is to know how this semiotics of the body became a matter of debate in the literature on the ambassador that spread throughout Europe from the late Middle Ages onwards. The paper focuses in particular on Italian and French works. Some writings from diplomatic practice are also used to provide examples and a complement to our analysis.

In recent years, there has hardly been a conference in communication science without the buzzwords of digitization and transformation in its title. In an effort to stand out from the crowd, conference titles end up adorned with complementary buzzwords like “disruption,” “data fication,” “platformization,” and “artificial intelligence.” These conferences frequently follow the same pattern: Papers and presentations are packed into individual panels by way of abstracts and keywords. Researchers then present their more or less elaborate empirical analyses to one other – usually involving a great deal of statistics. Since these papers and presentations are based on a variety of theoretical foundations, methodologies, and statistical analyses, the level of mutual knowledge acquisition is often negligible. There are no common pillars – be they theoretical or empirical. The Three-Country Conference hosted by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft (DGPuK), Österreichische Gesellschaft für Kommunikationswissenschaft (ÖGK), and Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Kommunikations- und Medienwissenschaft (SGKM) in Zurich from 7 to 9 April 2021 made an effort to counterbalance that trend.

Teen clothier Abercrombie & Fitch’s mix of shirtless associates, nightclub-like stores and risqué photography by Bruce Weber helped propel the brand into icon status. The brand’s name entered the popular lexicon as a synonym for cool and even received a memorable call out in LFO’s pop song, “Summer Girls.” This paper explores the interplay in aesthetics between A &F Quarterly, the brand’s popular magazine-catalog hybrid, and popular music videos of the time. Specifically, this paper analyzes videos that appeared on MTV’s Total Request Live between September 1999 and April 2001. In total, 42 music videos were found to contain elements of the “Abercrombie” lifestyle, including clothing that was sold by the brand, and props and settings similar to those found in the A & F Quarterly. In sum, this suggests that music videos from the time were instrumental in spreading the brand’s aesthetic, and that the interplay between media popular culture and the aesthetics of fashion brands could yield productive future research.

The aim of this paper is to identify influencers and the way they affect the behavior of millennial buyers in the process of consuming fashion goods. The paper examines the literature on opinion leaders, ranging from the origins of the concept to its developments within the context of the Internet. The shift from influential to influencer and the different types of influencer are examined and certain hypotheses regarding the role of influencers (including all the influential players) regarding fashion-buying millennials are presented. The paper presents the results of qualitative and quantitative empirical research based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with 22 university students. Findings from this research and their implications regarding the different stages of the millennial buying process are discussed.

From a system-theory perspective, the form of address list based communication, as made possible by the Internet – often categorized under “social media” or “social networks” – is analyzed. Examples of address-list based communication are online dating services, online social networking sites such as Facebook, networking sites for the business community, travel networking sites, etc. The paper theorizes how address-lists as media represent a technologically supported possibility to cope with the problem of double contingency in terms of initiative and stabilization of interaction systems. The paper addresses, as a case example, the advantages (hopefulness) and the disadvantages (disappointments) of address-list based communication in the initiation of love or romantic relationships. Thus, it shows that the problem of initiative can be overcome, but address list communication creates problems for the continuity or stability of interaction systems within love as a symbolically generalized medium of communication. Last, but not least, it shows that address lists increase the importance of reputation-oriented communication.

Despite a general agreement on the narrative nature of news, the question of what it means for the journalists to tell a story is usually taken for granted, while the analysis of the actual narrative practices in the newsrooms often remains shallow. A way of overcoming this state of affairs is to have a look at the narrative practices and norms in the newsroom. On the one hand, one can track the sites of narrative engagement in the newsroom, where journalists are telling or handling stories in order to achieve their work of making news. On the other hand, one can track the metacommentaries that foreground a narrative orientation to news, when journalists evaluate storying choices or when they use a narrative-related lexicon. This paper explores the latter aspect by tracking the uses of the word « histoire » (story) in the newsroom of a Swiss Public Broadcasting Corporation. The paper identifies and analyses three different meanings of « histoire »: « histoire » as a genre, « histoire » as a set of information and « histoire » as a semiotic product. As a reflexive means, « histoire » enables the media practitioners to navigate the very practical tasks entailed by the production of the multimodal artefact that a television news item is.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this article is to show, based on UNICEF and UNHCR documents, the problems of migrant children that hinder/impede their inclusion in the education of the host community and to identify ways to deal with these problems. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Using document analysis, I will answer the following questions: What threats are children on the move exposed to? What are the priority areas for action? How can they be protected and integrated into the new education system? THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The paper presents the causes and risks associated with migration for children, important concepts for educational practice, recommendations and proposed solutions RESEARCH RESULTS: The documents show the risks faced by children on the move. Such children are often marginalized and stigmatized in host communities. Ensuring their well-being (meeting their psychological needs and respecting their rights) is a priority and a necessary condition for them to be able to start education. The discussion shows the importance of education in dealing with difficult conditions or in counteracting negative phenomena (discrimination, xenophobia). Education is treated as capital that is supposed to give these children a chance for a better future. CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND APPLICABLE VALUE OF RESEARCH: The following conclusions can be drawn for practice from UNICEF and UNHCR documents: children on the move should have the same rights and opportunities for education as their peers in host com- munities; they need friendly and safe places to live, play and learn; children have resources and experiences that should be considered when organizing educational environments.

Latvia is an ex-Soviet country with Latvian and ethnically Russian population and a history of uneasy relationship with Russia, including the love and hate relationship with Russian sports. Many athletes and trainers working in Latvia have competed and were trained in Russia, using Russian facilities, or, for the older generation, the Soviet Union. However, Russia and Russian-speaking Latvian residents, including the citizens of Latvia, have been long viewed with suspicion and have been the subject of discrimination at times of crisis. This paper examines the representation of the war in Ukraine in the sporting media of Latvia from February to early October 2022. The material is sourced from the main news portal of Latvia, Delfi, which has a Latvian-language and a Russian-language versions. It is found that the two versions have significant differences in the way they refer to the war in sport-related news items.

Surfers Paradise presents the findings of an anthropological inquiry into surfing culture. Through participant observation and interviews, Dario Nardini focuses on the collective fascination with surfing in the Australian Gold Coast, dissecting its historical, relational, symbolic, institutional, and sensorial dimensions, as well as its influence on national identity. This paper discusses Nardini’s ethnography as a brilliant “phenomenology of a passion” example. Integrating consolidated debates in social sciences, such as embodiment, the sociology of consumption, the anthropological study of people’s heritage, the anthropology of leisure and games, and the lifestyle studies, the book outlines the complex meaning of surfing in Australia. Above everything, the ethnographic approach provides a powerful lens to investigate sports and physical cultural practices, by examining the body-environment-society interconnections.

This paper is aimed to investigate the gender gap in sport as a main topic in sport studies, and doing it through different dimensions. Taking as a starting point the principle of equality as fundamental for access to sports, the paper tries to put out the main dimensions of gender inequality in sport, both as regards the level of access to sport as a right of widespread citizenship and about high competition sport. Gender gap in sport is analyzed through 4 dimensions: a dimension of access for doing active sport (gender play gap), a dimension of formal role attribution as professionals in sport (gender professional gap), a dimension of mediatization aimed to evaluate how differences are in presence and/or representation through media for female sport (gender media gap), and finally a dimension of economic gratification for sport performance (gender pay gap). This four-dimension implemented gap set up a situation to be named as “complex inequality”, a multi-level gap that is still producing a largely unfair situation in social and economic for female sport.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to evaluate usefulness of distance learning courses as a form of learning from participants’ perspective. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: To achieve the purpose, two research methods have been employed: literature review, including rules and regulations concerning distance learning courses, and analysis of the results of a survey conducted among students participating in distance learning course as well as own observations and experiences. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: In the paper it is analysed, how students perceive elearning courses comparing to traditional ones. First, selected Polish Minister of Higher Education and the Senate of Cracow University of Economics (CUE) regulations under which CUE teachers may conduct distance learning courses are presented. Second, the procedure for the preparation of elearning courses at CUE is described. The roles played by individual actors during the preparation of the course are discussed. Next, selected results of the survey conducted among course participants are presented. Finally, conclusions and observations are discussed. Results of the survey confirm that e-learning is a promising type of teaching supporting traditional lessons. RESEARCH RESULTS: Aconsiderable number of participants found this kind of didactic proces useful and attractive. However, an unexpectedly large number stated that they expected more traditional lessons. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The analysis allows to draw interesting conclusions concerning the necessity of selection of participants, problem of systematic work, methods of evaluation, personal contact with a teacher, preparation of teaching materials. All of them will be taken under consideration to improve the course for future participants.

We open this paper by reviewing the care paradigm in urban action and the centrality of the concept of interdependence to this work. We then move on to consider our approach to mapping caring— with practices in urban community-led initiatives. The work presented comes from a British Academy supported project, Caring—With Cities: Enacting more care-full urban approaches with community- led developments and policy-makers.1 We use caring—with, rather than —about or —for, to move beyond understandings of care as a provision from institutions to individuals, or from individual to individual, which positions the cared-for as passive recipients. Here, we illustrate how case studies on urban practices can unravel interdependencies of care by attending to long-term engagements, taking place across sites and scales – rather than being viewed as ‘bounded’ examples. We close with a set of thoughts on our mapping protocol in practice and speculate on future directions that re-situate critical urban action within wider relationalities and power dynamics.

Faced with an increasingly challenging environment, journalists and news organizations are looking to investigative journalism as a symbolic resource to assert their professionalism. However, while the literature recognizes a strong link between authority and professionalism on the one hand, and investigative journalism and professionalism on the other, it has overlooked how investigative journalism itself can be used to establish authority. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring how investigative pieces contribute to the legitimization of journalists in French-speaking Switzerland. To answer this question, we conducted a thematic and discursive qualitative analysis of 186 investigative pieces to examine identity markers that present journalists as particularly legitimate knowledge producers. Our findings show how print journalists perform an investigative identity throughout their texts. This includes playing a watchdog role, demonstrating an “investigative mindset,” claiming specialized skills, and / or highlighting their thorough verification procedure. By employing these strategies, investigative journalists seek recognition based on their social role, their individual traits, their specialized skills, and / or their incontrovertible knowledge claims. We analyze these four identity markers as strategic devices for claiming special authority within the journalistic profession.

The end of World War II and the trauma of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki mark a complete rupture in Japan’s recent history. Both Japanese and non-Japanese authors of children’s literature have addressed this traumatic memory in their works, aiming to pass it on to the next generations and thus contributing to the construction of a carefully curated postmemory (Hirsch 2012) that conveys specific messages and feelings. There are several perspectives from which the catastrophe is retold, shifting from those who are the “victims” to those who can be considered the “accomplices” and influencing the way this specific memory is passed on to young readers. Through the analysis and comparison of three works of children's literature, including Hiroshima no uta (1960) by Imanishi Sukeyuki, this paper sets out to explore a new way of looking at children's literature that deals with the trauma of the atomic bombing, exploring the role that these texts have played in the transmission of this historical memory to later generations.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the presented paper, which has empirical nature, is to obtain data on how the rights of refugees are perceived today. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The research problem of the paper is: How do youth in Germany and Poland evaluate refugee rights and what factors influence their attitude towards refugee rights? The survey method was used in the research. The data collection took place 2013/2014. In Germany, the survey included a total of 2157 students, in Poland 1211 respondents. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The study was based on the assumption that attitudes towards refugee rights are predicted by such factors as: human dignity, empathy, religious beliefs, and socio-political perceptions and convictions. Based on these determinants, a conceptual model was created and used in the research. RESEARCH RESULTS: The findings show that respondents differ regarding refugee rights. German youth show some support for refugee rights and Polish youth are ambivalent. The strongest predictor for support of refugee rights for both groups is the concept of multiculturalism. The capacity for empathy and an advocacy of a politically active Christianity are important predictors, but only for the German sample. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The fact that religious beliefs have hardly positive impact on the support of refugee rights is a desideratum for religious education.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the notion of identity from different angles: ethnography, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, anthropology, geography and urbanism. The aim of this article is not to list the aspects of identity exhaustively, but to give an overview of the main areas that have dealt with territorial identity and propose a typology ranging from personal identity to the territorial identity through the individual and the collective. At the genesis of this paper many questions: What does one mean by identity? What is the relation between identity and territory and can it be a lever of territorial attractiveness? The desire to develop this notion has been spiced up by the sense of urgency manifested by the majority of territories in the continuous search for the valorization of their suffering identity of the”disease" of the century: globalization.