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Populism has become a widely used concept in both academia and the media. The term's popularity has encouraged scholars to question how it is applied and to theorize on the consequences of its use. However, there is little empirical research on the temporal and cross-country changes in the use of the term in the public sphere. This article analyses the significations given to the terms 'populism' and 'populist' in six countries' daily newspapers over a period of nearly two decades. It presents the results of a quantitative content analysis of texts (N = 3252) published in legacy daily papers in Finland, Sweden, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Turkey in the years 2000–2018. The article shows how the salience, meanings and perceived repercussions of 'populism' change over time and vary between the countries. The study reveals how, towards the end of the 2010s, the term is increasingly used in the context of right-wing populism and as a reference to political ideas that are detrimental to democracy. The results are examined in the context of developing academic discussions regarding the effects of 'populism' becoming a ubiquitous signifier in the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents a comparative study that explores the governmental vaccine advertising campaigns that were authorised by two English-speaking and two German-speaking countries – namely Australia, Britain, Austria and Germany – within the context of the global SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The data set in question comprises 40 vaccination posters issued by each country's respective government between January 2021 and July 2022, all of which were displayed in public spaces. The study aims to explore how national governments use their ideological foothold to persuade their respective populations to take action against the virus by getting vaccinated, thus demonstrating how ideology and persuasion are interrelated in governmental vaccine campaigns across countries. In terms of methodology, this comparative study employs primarily methods of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA). The strategies identified in the four countries under investigation concentrate largely on two key strategies: (1) providing a sense of community and solidarity; (2) issuing warnings and eliciting a sense of fear. The discourses of the German-speaking countries gravitate towards the discursive strategy of community, with Austria constituting a notable exception. In contrast, the Anglophone discourse in Britain and Australia employs strategies involving fear and warning, although their campaigns differ in terms of the intensity of the discourse they employ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study is to (a) contribute to annotating an Altmetrics dataset across five disciplines, (b) undertake sentiment analysis using various machine learning and natural language processing--based algorithms, (c) identify the best-performing model and (d) provide a Python library for sentiment analysis of an Altmetrics dataset. First, the researchers gave a set of guidelines to two human annotators familiar with the task of related tweet annotation of scientific literature. They duly labelled the sentiments, achieving an inter-annotator agreement (IAA) of 0.80 (Cohen's Kappa). Then, the same experiments were run on two versions of the dataset: one with tweets in English and the other with tweets in 23 languages, including English. Using 6388 tweets about 300 papers indexed in Web of Science, the effectiveness of employed machine learning and natural language processing models was measured by comparing with well-known sentiment analysis models, that is, Senti-Strength and Sentiment140, as the baseline. It was proved that Support Vector Machine with uni-gram outperformed all the other classifiers and baseline methods employed, with an accuracy of over 85%, followed by Logistic Regression at 83% accuracy and Naı¨ve Bayes at 80%. The precision, recall and F1 scores for Support Vector Machine, Logistic Regression and Naı¨ve Bayes were (0.89, 0.86, 0.86), (0.86, 0.83, 0.80) and (0.85, 0.81, 0.76), respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of individual international organizations (IOs) has received considerable scholarly attention, not in the least because their importance for global governance. This paper adds to this body of work by adopting genuine comparative lenses. Based on a novel survey, it assesses the attributed performance of 49 IOs over two important dimensions: problem-solving effectiveness and legitimacy of outputs. This reveals variation between IOs with respect to both components. We derive hypotheses from international cooperation and IO design. The quantitative analysis reveals that except deliberative diplomatic practices many factors increasing attributed legitimacy differ from the ones increasing the attributed problem-solving effectiveness. Most notably, autonomous secretariats increase the problem-solving effectiveness attributed to IOs. Legitimacy attributions increase when IOs are regional instead of global in nature and when non-state actors have access to IO decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade India and Brazil implemented waste policy reforms to tackle the constraints of their waste management. This study compares those reforms using the methodological framework proposed by Wilson where waste policy evolves through a series of subsequent stages, depending on two aspects: local circumstances; and stakeholders' groups. The current research is exploratory in its scope, adopting this method to describe, compare and evaluate both Indian and Brazilian cases, and also verifying how the model performs when applied to developing countries. The paper confirms Wilson's conclusions, and adds a perception that in developing economies a special local circumstance is to be considered the point of departure, that is, the particular starting point of Wilson's evolution. In addition, the research concludes that participation of diverse stakeholder groups throughout the political process is fundamental, and could be key to overcoming the risks of policy setbacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses and medication use has increased over time around the world, but significant regional differences remain. This paper aims to determine and explain disparities in ADHD prevalence and medication use among school-aged children in two distinct school systems, in Flanders (Belgium) and Québec (Canada). We present detailed descriptive and comparative analyses of data from 35 schools, 114 teachers, and 1046 parents (children) that were collected as part of a comparative international project. The data concern teacher and parent suspicions, teachers' ratings of ADHD-related behaviors in children, teachers' views of medication use, and teachers' beliefs about ADHD. The results show that, compared with Flanders, Québec had significantly more children diagnosed with ADHD and more frequent suspicions of ADHD in children by teachers and parents. We refer to the conceptual, institutional, and interactional levels of medicalization to interpret our findings and conclude that social and cultural readings of children's behaviors differ greatly between regions. Medicalization of children's behaviors is more common in Québec than in Flanders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 created dangerous public health conditions which pressured governments and health systems to respond in a rapid and effective manner. However, this type of rapid response required many governments to bypass standing; bureaucratic structures of health sector administration and political governance to quickly take; essential measures against a rapidly evolving public health threat. Each government's particular; configuration of governmental and health system decision-making created specific structural and functional challenges to these necessary centrally developed and coordinated strategies. Most East Asian governments (except Japan) succeeded relatively quickly in centralizing essential disease control and treatment initiatives in a timely manner. In contrast, a number of European countries, especially those with predominantly tax-based financing and politically managed health delivery systems, had greater difficulty in escaping bureaucratic governance and management constraints. Drawing on data about these governments' early stage COVID-19 control experiences, this article suggests that structural changes will be necessary if low-performing governments are to better respond to a pandemic. This paper also summarizes other relatively successful strategies. By adopting such strategies, nations can help overcome structural bureaucratic and administrative obstacles in responding to further waves of COVID-19 or similar future pandemic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European countries have developed a range of long-term care (LTC) policy responses to support the increasing share of older people. However, little is known about the effectiveness of LTC services and benefits, particularly their impact on older peoples' quality of life (QoL). This paper investigates the role of personal, care service and environmental characteristics on the effects of home care services on QoL across England, Finland and Austria. We used data from surveys conducted in England, Finland and Austria. In total, 811 older adults were included in the analysis. OLS regression including main effects and country-specific interactions was used to explore variation in gains in long-term care service-related quality-of-life (LTC-QoL). Explanatory variables were derived from the production of welfare framework and comprised home care service user socio-demographics, needs indicators, social support and environmental variables and characteristics of home care service provision. In all three countries, LTC-QoL gains increased with needs, indicating that home care services perform well, with additional gains declining the higher the needs. Also, better process quality contributed to LTC-QoL improvements in all three countries. In addition, the availability of informal care, social contact, financial household situation and living alone, were associated with changes in LTC-QoL only in one or two of the countries. Home care services increased service users' QoL in all three European countries. The increase in QoL, however, varied across the countries. The results also provide insights into the benefits and limits of home care service provision and areas for future improvements. JEL: I31, I38, J14 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on observational data, individual interviews (N = 22) and focus groups (N = 8) with practitioners in Italy, Norway and Slovenia, this study applies a grounded theory approach in exploring frontline practitioners' experiences of supporting families involved with child welfare services. It was anticipated that there would be significant differences between the countries regarding practitioners' understandings of families' needs and problems, and approaches to help. However, the analysis showed considerable transnational similarities. This study, therefore, offers a new perspective to the welfare regime literature in suggesting that there are important similarities to be recognised across child welfare typologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a challenge that many public administrations face in promoting sustainable growth. Local governments, as the governmental tier closest to citizens, should deliberate upon strategies and actions attuned to achieving SDGs for the benefit of their communities. Through a comparative analysis of Italian and Spanish local governments, this research investigates the conditions that can support the achievement of SDGs. The results depict the political and financial levers that can stimulate politicians and policymakers in designing appropriate strategies and action plans towards the achievement of SDGs, while opening the path for further research that can support public administrations in their efforts at achieving sustainable growth. Points for practitioners: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are believed to play a vital role in our society. They represent the background of strategies and policies implemented at a local government level; accordingly, politicians and public managers are key actors in achieving SDGs. Our study shows that local governments tend to implement sustainable policies despite the political ideology; results also illustrate that governing in large coalitions could be a hindrance to implementing sustainable policies. Furthermore, favourable financial conditions support the achievement of SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the proposed artificial intelligence policies of the USA, UK, European Union, Canada, and China, and their implications for libraries. As artificial intelligence revolutionizes library operations, it presents complex challenges, such as ethical dilemmas, data privacy concerns, and equitable access issues. The article highlights key themes in these policies, including ethics, transparency, the balance between innovation and regulation, and data privacy. It also identifies areas for improvement, such as the need for specific guidelines on mitigating biases in artificial intelligence systems and navigating data privacy issues. The article further provides practical recommendations for libraries to engage with these policies and develop best practices for artificial intelligence use. The study underscores the need for libraries to not only adapt to these policies but also actively engage with them, contributing to the development of more comprehensive and effective artificial intelligence governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has produced contradictory results about the relationship between sex and perceived job insecurity (JI). The male-breadwinner ideology has been put forward to explain the fact that women often report less JI. In addition, previous research on JI has highlighted the importance of the national socioeconomic context, and gender studies have underlined the need to take gender dimensions into account when studying national socioeconomic contexts. This article contributes to those debates by measuring the effect of sex on JI and the moderating effect of breadwinner status in different groups of countries characterized by homogeneous socioeconomic and gender-related contexts. To do so, the authors use the 2015 EWCS survey, and add macro indicators for the national contexts. The results show that when controlling for breadwinner status, sex has no significant effect regardless of the national context; in addition, breadwinner status moderates the relationship between sex and perceived JI in some national contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its re-emergence in 2017, the #MeToo movement has been adopted across the globe. #MeToo has a transnational dimension, transcending its initial US context and placing international issues alongside national concerns. This article aims to contextualize and situate #MeToo, providing a critical review of the movement in two local contexts – Catalonia (Spain) and Portugal. The analysis is grounded on empirical observations on social media, drawing as well on previous scholarship on the topic produced both internationally and in the contexts of study, and on the engagement with relevant national media sources. By focusing on national expressions of #MeToo in Portugal and Catalonia, this article explores how #MeToo took shape in (and was shaped by) the local contexts and existing feminist practices. It presents the different temporalities and dynamics of the movement in these two contexts, exploring the roles of both social media and traditional press in the local developments of #MeToo, and also briefly exploring the local legislative implications of the movement. This article thus presents #MeToo as common and easily recognisable frame used in local contexts to approach different issues of sexual and gendered violence, yet flexible enough to allow for national specificities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principle of normalisation has gained more prominence in international prison law, with both the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules (UN SMR) and the European Prison Rules (EPR) promoting normalisation to the guiding principles. In general terms, normalisation refers to shaping life in prison in resemblance to life outside prison. However, it largely remains unclear what this principle entails for prison policy. The general formulation in the UN SMR and EPR leave much discretionary room to national prison authorities. By conducting a (comparative) policy analysis, this article aims to uncover the normative standards derived from the UN SMR and EPR and how the principle translates into national laws and policies of Norway and the Netherlands. The analysis shows that although the main provision is generally formulated, some detailed norms are provided in other provisions on how elements of life in prison should be shaped, including limits and restrictions. In Norway and the Netherlands, normalisation is not explicitly mentioned in law, but is (to a varied extent) incorporated in policy. It is shown that, in practice, normalisation is closely tied to reintegration, which has important implications for the principle itself and the norms that are taken as point of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and why do communities accept novel ideas as intuitively convincing? In this study, we make use of the socio-cultural fragmentation of Israeli society to expose the discursive processes shaping the culture-dependent resonance of ideas. Specifically, we trace how Israeli president Reuven Rivlin's interpretation of two lethal attacks by Jewish extremists on a Palestinian family and the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade was received across Israel's ultra-orthodox, settler, LGBT, and Palestinian communities, as well as the mainstream right, center, and left. In a comparative analysis of media coverage catering to these groups, we distinguish six discursive responses to proposed ideas, which depend on their perception as plausible and appropriate given prior community beliefs. Our findings suggest a distinction between two possible meanings of resonance: Some ideas 'click' and are seamlessly appropriated in passing by a community, while others 'strike a chord' and raise a salient and emotional public debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As global warming and other environmental threats intensify and become more visible, scientists are increasingly questioning the desirability of economic growth as an overarching national and global policy imperative. Several theories in environmental sociology and economics—degrowth, steady-state economy, and "agrowth"—offer compelling arguments that environmental sustainability and continuous economic growth are incompatible. However, there is a shortage of empirical evidence about public opinion on the growth versus environment dilemma, despite its great relevance for the social legitimacy of governments' approach to the issue. In this article, we aim to narrow this research gap by applying multilevel models to data from the 2017 European Values Study (EVS). We find that the idea of sacrificing a certain level of growth for the sake of the environment receives high levels of support in most European countries. Nevertheless, within countries, we find clear indications of social divides in opinions regarding the growth versus environment dilemma: post-materialists, politically left-leaning people, the better-off, and the higher-educated are in favor of reduced growth, whereas materialists, right-wing individuals, and disadvantaged groups prioritize the economy over ecological concerns. At the country level, economic affluence is associated with greater support for reduced growth, irrespective of the differences in post-materialist values and the ecological situation. In practical terms, our results suggest that politicians can be bolder in promoting substantive environmental measures, even those that reduce growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Declines in the scores of Australian 15-year-old students from the Programme for International Student Assessment are a matter of policy interest. Some of the declines may have resulted from shifts in the age-grade distributions of students in the Programme for International Student Assessment samples. We use multiple regression methods to model the student-level effects of grade for each Programme for International Student Assessment cycle allowing for the effects of student characteristics (e.g. socioeconomic background and gender) and jurisdiction. We estimate an average net effect of grade over the Programme for International Student Assessment cycles since 2006 as 42 scale points with no difference between reading and mathematics. We explore the extent to which differences between grades in achievement and changes in the grade distributions of students contributed to changes in average Programme for International Student Assessment achievement scores. We conclude that the relatively greater decline in Grade 11, compared to Grade 10 achievement, contributed to the overall decline and that shifts in distributions may have also contributed a little to those declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the issue of political polarization on social media. It shows that the intensity of polarization on Twitter varies greatly from one country to another. The analysis is performed using network-analytic audience duplication approach and is based on the data about the followers of the political parties' Twitter accounts in 16 democratic countries. Based on the topology of the audience duplication graphs, the political Twitterspheres of the countries are classified as perfectly integrated, integrated, mixed, polarized and perfectly polarized. Explorative analysis shows that polarization is the highest in two-party systems with plurality electoral rules and the lowest in multi-party systems with proportional voting. The findings help explain the discrepancies in the results of previous studies into polarization on social media. The results of the study indicate that extrapolation of the findings from single-case studies on the topic is impossible in most cases, suggesting that more comparative studies on the matter are necessary to better understand the subject and get generalizable results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have shown the operational potential in political discourse analysis from the proximization perspective. This study adopts a cross-disciplinary approach to analyze political communication across transcultural contexts, especially in the cyber discourse space. Based on the spatial–temporal–axiological (STA) model, we compare the journalistic discourses on two social media platforms by China Xinhua News Agency (CXNA), an official speaker for China worldwide. The corpuses are constructed with microblogs on Weibo in Chinese and Twitter in English containing key words of Sino–US trade war. It is found that the speaker has shaped different realities of discourse in accordance with the cultural contexts and proximized from corresponding dimensions to increase political legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses childcare services in six countries, assessing this policy instrument's potential to facilitate parents' capabilities for arranging childcare in a way they have reason to value. It draws on Sen's capability approach to conceptualize and assess childcare policy design across five key aspects of childcare provision (accessibility, availability, affordability, quality and flexibility) in a country-comparative perspective. The conceptualization of the multifaceted nature of childcare provides compelling insights into the complexity of comparing childcare services across countries. The ensuing analysis and comprehensive overview of national policies challenges the idea of a defamilialization policy cluster, which masks key distinctions between public and market service provision. The more nuanced conceptualization and operationalization of childcare policy design through the capability approach reveals parents' real opportunities for arranging childcare and the varying effects of policy design across gender and class. In addition, it goes beyond implicit commodification assumptions and opens up space for parents' potential desire for multiple care arrangement possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a large number of studies focus on childcare facilities for preschool children, attention for out-of-school facilities is limited. The implicit assumption seems to be that facilities to combine work and care activities are less relevant once children reach the schoolgoing age. Yet, in most countries school hours are only part-time and not compatible with a full-time working week. This study adds to the literature by providing the first overview of the availability and quality of out-of-school childcare in 27 European Union (EU) member states. The results show that only a few EU countries have a well-developed infrastructure of out-of-school care services. In addition, the (structural) quality of out-of-school care varies across the member states. Given the importance of a supportive infrastructure, a further investment in comprehensive out-of-school care system remains important, both from the perspective of the (female) participation rate and the well-being of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on seven different sports broadcasting markets (Australia, Brazil, Italy, India, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States), this article provides a comparative analysis of the regulation of television sports broadcasting. The article examines how contrasting perspectives on television and sport - economic and sociocultural - have been reflected in two main approaches to the regulation of sports broadcasting, namely competition law and major events legislation. The results of this analysis suggest that in many cases, the balance between commerce and culture in sports broadcasting has shifted too far in favour of the commercial interests of dominant pay-TV operators and sports organisations. Here, the case is made for the pursuit of an approach to sports broadcasting regulation that seeks to balance the commercial priorities of broadcasters and sports organisations with the wider sociocultural benefits citizens gain from free-to-air sports broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 1 January 2013, Germany and Finland made the switch from the traditional broadcasting licence fee tied to television-set ownership to a compulsory excise duty collected from all citizens, households and places of business. This article compares the changes in these countries’ public service media funding arrangements on the basis of John Kingdon’s ‘multiple streams’ framework of public policy-making which, to date, has been rather neglected in studies of media policy-making processes. Drawing on the analysis of policy documents and interviews with policymakers and other stakeholders involved in the respective processes, we investigate how the actual reforms materialized, which other possibilities were neglected and why this has been the case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]