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Freshwater fishes of the genus Gobio are widely distributed in Eurasia, where they show great phenotypic similarity between different species, but also considerable intraspecific morphological variability. The genetic research so far showed that there is also a remarkable genetic diversity present within the genus, and that Gobio is genetically very diverse in the Danube River drainage. This research aimed at exploring the genetic diversity and phylogeography of Gobio in Croatia and Austria through DNA barcoding, and additionally investigating the diversity of ectoparasites of the genus Gyrodactylus which reside on Gobio, potentially enhancing our understanding of the host’s phylogeographic patterns through insights from the parasites’. The results of this research uncovered the presence of the new mitochondrial lineage of Gobio in Croatia, which is closely related to other southeast European Gobio species, and a distinct phylogeographic pattern within the genus in Austria and Croatia. The parasites of the genus Gyrodactylus also showed great diversity, with several new lineages uncovered, but without a clear phylogeographic structure. Furthermore, the phylogenetic analysis indicates that Gyrodactylus colonized fishes of the genus Gobio in the Danube River drainage twice independently. Slatkovodne ribe roda Gobio široko su rasprostranjene u Euroaziji, gdje pokazuju veliku fenotipsku sličnost među vrstama, ali također značajnu intraspecijsku morfološku varijabilnost. Genska istraživanja dosad provedena na ovim ribama pokazala su da unutar roda postoji velika genska raznolikost i da je ta raznolikost izražena kod pripadnika roda Gobio u dunavskom slijevu. Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je istražiti gensku raznolikost i filogeografiju roda Gobio u Hrvatskoj i Austriji primjenom DNA barkodiranja te istražiti raznolikost ektoparazita roda Gyrodactylus, koji se mogu pronaći na spomenutim ribama, s ciljem boljeg razumijevanja filogeografskih uzoraka domaćina uvidom u filogeografske uzorke parazita. Rezultati ovog istraživanja otkrivaju u Hrvatskoj dosad nepoznatu mitohondrijsku liniju riba roda Gobio, koja je u bliskom srodstvu s drugim vrstama roda Gobio iz jugoistočne Europe te da je prisutan filogeografski uzorak među pripadnicima ovog roda u Austriji i Hrvatskoj. Paraziti roda Gyrodactylus su također pokazali veliku gensku raznolikost te su otkrivene nove genske linije tog roda, međutim nije utvrđeno postojanje jasne filogeografske strukture. Ipak, filogenetska analiza ukazuje na to da su paraziti tog roda dvaput neovisno kolonizirali ribe roda Gobio u dunavskom slijevu.

Ecological crisis opens lots of questions, which require an answer from sociology such as the production, distribution and consumption of food, which is an increasingly important social topic. Veganism as an ethical philosophy, political practice, eating preference and lifestyle, moved in the past years from an invisible and marginalised position to become a more known and accepted worldview and a consumption option. Because of the rise of veganism, its critics are labelling it as a fashion trend promoted by celebrities and social media and despite a rising number of individuals embracing veganism, this form of lifestyle is still stigmatised and discriminated against in different ways, which is pointing towards an anthropocentric culture of meat consumption and deeply embedded social, institutional and psychological barriers against veganism. We are conducting a comparative, qualitative study on subjective definitions of sustainability and experiences of practising veganism in the UK and Croatia from the position of urban women of diverse age, class and political backgrounds. The research is ongoing, but preliminary findings will be ready for presentation at the BSA conference.

This paper analyses online user comments on two mainstream Croatian portals, Index.hr and 24sata.hr regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, global conspiracies, and fake news in the context of decreasing media trust. Three-tier coding was conducted on 12.910 comments (2.194 from the portal 24 sata and 10.716 from the portal index.hr) and a thematic analysis was carried out. The findings showed that the main themes capture global conspiracy theories, including fascism as one of the main themes, as well as a lack of belief in the reality of the pandemic and negative views of the mainstream media seen as intertwined with the Government and as promoting one-sided views. Since the findings were unexpected, particularly regarding the extensive criticism of the media, and due to a large amount of conspiracy-related content on two portals neither of which is normally associated with the far right, an abductive analysis was conducted. The results revealed that the majority of content in the user comments regarding fascism and slavery as features of the COVID-19 policy in Croatia was posted either by a far-right political party (on Index.hr) or two unidentified users (on 24sata.hr) (likely far-right activists), and in both cases, comments were copy-pasted, including grammar mistakes. This signals an attempt of the far right in Croatia to not just contribute to but also manipulate public opinion and debates as well as give a false impression to an inattentive reader of the views of the Croatian public regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Creative industries and fashion are an important sector of the new economy. Since the appearance of the pandemic caused by the coronavirus, it is evident that, 1) the dialogue between culture and fashion never ends ; 2) fashion should be viewed as an “ongoing challenge of negotiating and navigating through multiple ambiguities and contradiction” (Kaiser 2015: 1) ; 3) fashion innovation is (often) associated with utilitarianism (Rabimov 2020). The focus of the cultural analysis is a protective face mask that became a cultural norm during the pandemic period (Kiggins 2020). Just as we cannot speak of coronavirus as an “independent and fully autonomous actor”, so we cannot think of the mask as a cultural object outside the historical and cultural context (Inglis & Almila 2020: 5). Wearing a mask is not a new phenomenon and it should certainly be viewed in a layered intersectional way taking into account the socio-cultural context, cultural codes and meanings, functions and social categories. During the current pandemic situation, the face mask as a cultural object by official medical and public health authorities becomes a marker of public health (Scott 2020). Of course, the mask as a protective object in the recent pandemic conditions has become an object imbued with many ambivalent and often contradictory meanings that call for interdisciplinary analysis (Martinelli et al. 2020 ; Schoepflin 2020). Viewed in the context of the fashion industry, creativity and authorial expression, the non-surgical face mask in a pandemic context has become a “design challenge” (Colorado Face Mask Challenge) transforming from protective equipment into an everyday clothing item and a normative fashion accessory that in the context of creative industries has the status of “a cultural and creative product” (Chen, Chen & Jan 2009).

Studies in agenda-setting have been demonstrating since 1962, that media influence attitude formation and what issues people perceive as relevant (McCombs and Shaw 1972 ; McCombs 2004, 2014). However, for decades, scholars have been warning about inequalities in the media system, especially with regards to the media coverage of issues such as politics and gender and racial equality, which have been seen as enforcing stereotypes and expected roles. For example, when it comes to ‘race’, Black Britons have become synonymous with knife crime and gang culture, and these images and dominant representations work to influence media consumers and perpetuate systemic oppression (Kilvington and Saeed 2014). Other work focused on British Asians and British Muslims and how their representation of being sociocultural pariahs has fuelled racialized hostility and violence (Poole and Richardson 2006).

The COVID 19 pandemic has affected the sphere of culture and cultural industries (UNESCO/ Culture & COVID-19: Impact and Response, 2020). Volkan Bozkir highlighted the “essential role” of cultural and creative industries during the pandemic and in the post-recovery period (UN News, 2021). The importance of culture and cultural industries was recently discussed by Audrey Azoulay (2021) who pointed out that in addition to the crisis caused by the coronavirus, a “cultural diversity crisis” was taking place in parallel. Recent crises have opened up another aspect of the debate that addresses important issues of culture, creativity, and official health communication. Health communication is a “a tool to influence individuals’ health behaviors, eliminate health disparities, and achieve public health safety” (Weberling McKeever & Choi, 2020). It has long been thought that the health sector suffers from a chronic lack of creativity, but in the current pandemic context, creativity is becoming a significant strategy when it comes to sensitizing the public, health communication and promoting ways to prevent the spread of coronavirus (Hudson 2020). Moreover, Hudson (2020) points out that COVID-19 set a new norm in the so-called healthcare marketing which addresses new audiences ; adapts to the political and social context ; adequately responds ; includes consumer´s emotional journey. In the focus of the analysis are the Croatian campaign Misli na druge – cijepi se! (Think of others – get vaccinated!) and the British campaign Let´s Not Go Back, with the main research questions: how the competent institutions in Croatia and the UK communicated the COVID-19 challenges and educated the public about vaccination as one of the prevention strategies ; whether campaigns as official health communication have adopted the principles of creativity and how creative industries can improve health communication in the future.

Organizacija studentskoga simpozija održanoga 22. i 23. svibnja 2021. na Kemijskomu odsjeku Prirodoslovno-matematičkoga fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu.