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This ethnographic study explores how severely ill and dying persons participating in expressive forms of culture, such as art, blogging and talking, confront dying and death. Influenced by the increasing relevance of values such as expressivity and creativity and the mediatisation of everyday life, more and more people facing death in globalised Western culture seek their own expressive ways to deal with finitude in online and offline contexts. Framed by Tony Walter's sociology of death, which captures key features of death attitudes within Western societies, this study identifies commonalities in the different expressive endeavours at the end of life. The data for the analysis stem from encounters with 12 persons receiving palliative care in Switzerland. The study found that the performances of individualistic expressivity are informed by the idea of personal growth, prosumer and sharing culture, a quest for belonging and the wish for silence. The findings aim to contribute to further the understanding of current forms of mediated dying in networked society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mommy blog communities have been established by mothers who publish their stories online with the stated purpose to empower themselves and their peers by offering a seemingly unfiltered representation of motherhood. While this benefit has been felt by many readers, there are invisible governing discourses that have prevented such blogs from becoming authentic spaces of resistance to the hegemonic ideals of motherhood. To understand the governing forces placed upon mothers through “mommy blogs,” we explored the question: How is motherhood shaped through narratives (re)presented in mommy blogs? Critical discourse analysis, informed by a governmentality perspective, was used to analyze mommy blog entries to illuminate representations of power and knowledge within the blog entries. The findings suggest that a governmentality perspective is useful in understanding how mommy blogs enact power over mothers using mechanisms of governance through 1) sameness and imperfection, 2) perceived self-compassion, 3) advice and support, and 4) the scientification of motherhood. As more people turn to online communities for support with the experience of mothering, it is important to garner a critical understanding of how mommy blogs continue to influence contemporary experiences of motherhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the superior effects of semester- or year-long educational experiences abroad, the majority of students prefers short-term study abroad for which participation numbers are steadily rising. Due to the increased student interest in short-term study abroad options, investigations into how a short stay abroad can be designed to maximize learning outcomes for participants are important. While some studies suggest that technology can have negative impacts on language learning during study abroad, effective inclusion of technology can maximize learning. This article summarizes the results of three years of research investigating the effects of daily online journaling during an intensive German summer program on second language (L2) learners' writing skills during an intensive German summer program. The context of the program will be described along with the rationale for including online journaling assignments. The study investigates whether there is a relationship between the amount students wrote in their daily blogs and their writing development, and whether students' linguistic progress can be traced in their journal posts. Lastly, the article will provide a pedagogical evaluation of the benefits of incorporating journaling or blogging in short-term study abroad programs and present suggestions for successful projects. The terms journaling and blogging are used interchangeably in this manuscript; while a blog was used as the journal platform in this project, a different format than a blog can serve the same purpose of providing a space for reflective journaling for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of integrating blogging practices into children’s television programs is considered as one of the factors for popularizing the latter among the younger generation. It is noted that children prefer entertaining online resources. It is shown that parents are concerned about their children’s immersion in the virtual sphere, the difficulty of controlling the information received, and the influence of popular bloggers on shaping children’s worldview. It is pointed out that resources for children under 13 are widely available on the Internet and television, while there are no such specialized resources for teenagers, particularly on central television. Meanwhile, the government has adopted a program document for the development of education for children and adolescents, in which a television channel for the latter could provide certain assistance. The author of the article proposes a working concept for a children’s television channel for teenagers, which integrates blogging practices. It is concluded that the synthesis of educational, developmental, and entertainment functions, involving child bloggers and the target audience in program development and hosting, organizing active feedback with the audience, and other factors will contribute to the channel’s success, provided there is government interest.

Objectives: The research aims to study documentary archives from important departments, given that they contain important data, information and documents about events and general conditions. One of the countries that has been interested in archival work is Iraq because of the desire of many Iraqi historians to keep pace with those countries, as Iraq is the main homeland. For documentary archives, due to the ancient civilization and its cultural heritage since ancient times and in its contemporary history. Methodology: The research includes a brief historical study that gives a clear picture of the historical roots of archival work in Iraq by relying on Iraqi documents, sources, and newspapers that were considered the scientific sources of the research, then focusing on the role of Iraqi historians in collecting, classifying, and archiving documents and making them scientific material to draw from. Researchers and graduate students such as Abdul Razzaq Al-Hassani, Salem Al-Alusi, Saleh Ahmed Al-Ali, Yassin Abdul Karim, and others who later became founders and workers at the Iraqi Center for Document Preservation. Result: The archive constituted a source of various information related to the development of the features of political, social, intellectual, economic and cultural life, from the formation of the Iraqi state, and for this reason the state faced the problem of how to deal with the huge amount of these papers, records and files that are issued daily, but it did not receive any attention from anyone. In order to preserve documents and the necessity of securing them, or to establish an independent department to take care of their preservation and facilitate access to them by historians and researchers, until the destruction law was issued in 1942 AD, to which several amendments were made. Conclusion: A country that does not have an archive is like a patient who has lost his memory. Preserving documents goes back to the University of Baghdad and the urgent need for sources and references that they rely on in historical studies and research and their sense of the importance of documents in historical writings. They also drew attention to the necessity of making use of old papers. preserved in the state ministries and departments, and thus the responsible authorities at the University of Baghdad made unremitting efforts to contact government departments and institutions, urging them to pay attention to old records and files that contain various important information.

Study objectiveGiven the popularity of educational blogs and podcasts in medicine, learners and educators need tools to identify trusted and impactful sites. The Social Media Index was a multi-sourced formula to rank the effect of emergency medicine and critical care blogs. In 2022, a key data point for the Social Media Index became unavailable. This bibliometric study aimed to develop a new measure, the Digital Impact Factor, as a replacement.MethodsThe Digital Impact Factor incorporated modern measures of website authority and reach. This formula was applied to a cross-sectional study of active emergency medicine and critical care blogs and podcasts. For each website, we generated a Digital Impact Factor score based on Ahrefs Domain Rating and the follower count of the websites' pages from 8 social media platforms. A series of Spearman correlations provided evidence of association by comparing a rank-ordered list to rank lists derived from the Social Media Index over the last 5 years. The Bland-Altman analysis assessed for agreement.ResultsThe authors identified 88 relevant websites with a median Ahrefs Domain Rating of 28 (range 0 to 71, maximum 100) and total social media followership count across 8 platforms of 1,828,557. The Domain Rating and individual social media followership scores were normalized based on the highest recorded values to yield the Digital Impact Factor (median 4.57; range 0.02 to 9.50, maximum 10). The correlation between the 2022 Digital Impact Factor and the 2021 Social Media Index was 0.94 (95% confidence interval 0.89 to 0.97; p

Copyright of Bulletin of the L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. Journalism Series is the property of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Psychological resilience has been a topic of ongoing debate in the field of psychology, with a lack of consensus on its definition, operationalisation, and conceptualisation. Meanwhile, young people have been called upon to demonstrate resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LAMICs) where they have been disproportionately affected by the economic fallout. In response to this, this study aimed to explore the perception of resilience and blogging among young people from a LAMIC. Using in-depth interviews with 15 participants, the study identified three main themes: sources of resilience, role of resilience, and process of resilience. Additionally, five main themes related to blogging were identified: what is a blog, video bloggers, advantages, concerns, and experience. The study's findings highlight the importance of understanding resilience from a different demographic, which can influence the development of resilience interventions. This study also provides insights into the potential of using blogging as a tool for promoting resilience in young people. Overall, this study offers a valuable contribution to the understanding of resilience and its relation to digital mental health, particularly in diverse and underrepresented communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In wake of current digitalization of knowledge, the use of virtual tools and platforms is proliferating to cultivate English language skills. Despite the research conducted in this area, there is still room for further inquiry as little research is available in the context of Pakistan. With the intention to fill the gap, this study aimed at fathoming the impact of online writing articles on the language proficiency of English language learners/graduates. Primarily, the current research intended to investigate whether the language skills of learners improves by online writing and whether self-assessment has a positive impact. The study is a quantitative research. Consequently, a 15-item questionnaire was designed to collect data from English Graduates, currently working as content writers across Pakistan. 5-point Likert-scale was employed to measure the participants' perceptions. The findings show that online writing practices have a positive impact on overall language skills in general and lexico-grammatical competence in particular. Additionally, they admitted that online article writing can prove a better contributor than other traditional writing practices carried out in a language classroom to enhance their English language skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the official blogs of the Amores Expressos project from Brazilian publishing house, Companhia das Letras. In doing so, I argue that these webpages provide a digital glimpse into the project's evolution and some of its shortcomings. At the same time, these author-curated pages form part of the digital genealogy of Brazilian cultural production during its critical phase of internationalization in the onset of the 21st century.

Blogging has become very popular in different educational fields, including second language teaching. This article arises from the need to research the impact that the implementation of blogging has on the acquisition of certain language competences. The main objective of the study was to research the impact of the use of blogging on the development of writing skills in the foreign language (L2). Students, divided into four groups, were asked to write a number of descriptive essays in which they could reflect both on the theoretical and practical contents seen in class. Using statistical tools such as Coh-Metrix to establish the errors that Spanish engineering undergraduates make when writing in English, the metrics of their texts were compared to the metrics resulting from a set of reference texts. Findings revealed that the use of blogging was positive in the four different groups. The high correlation between the grades awarded to students' essays by the teachers and those given by the Coh-Metrix tool showed its effectiveness in the study of the linguistic and discursive indices of the English texts produced by students.

Contemporary literature suggests that music education is stuck in a cycle of cultural reproduction in which music teachers and curriculum writers value Western art music more than culturally-diverse and modern, technology-saturated musics, and train the next generation to hold similar views. A MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) was developed to challenge music teachers' worldviews and to develop critical thinking about the field. In this mixed-methods study, we analysed 18 months of qualitative and quantitative data provided by the more than 1,600 course participants in response to paedagogical 'provocations' to assess whether it was successful in prompting critical thinking and worldview change. We used three methods to interrogate three distinct datasets: basic content analysis of participants' publicly written reflections, statistical analysis of peer marking and context-network maps of peer comments. Between-methods triangulation crystallised our findings. We find that through required peer-review of public postings, an online community of practice formed, that it encouraged teachers to engage deeply with new ideas, and engage in Critical Thinking. We find that those who had a disposition towards critical thinking in the early assessments responded most positively to the pedagogy of provocation and were consistently prepared to question their own worldview and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on autistic individuals’ writing has long focused on weaknesses in structural complexity, organisation, and perspective-taking skills. More recently, awareness has grown that writing can be a strength, as suggested by research on autistic memoirs. To learn more about how well autistic individuals write when they use language for their own purposes, we turned to autistic-authored blogs. Online word usage patterns were analysed for 30 self-identified autistic bloggers and 30 age and gender-matched non-autistic bloggers, assumed to be neurotypical (NT). In addition, blog content was analysed for the range of topics discussed. Topics were categorised according to broad topics including common hobbies (e.g. sports, arts, crafts), preoccupations (e.g. people, vehicles, food, machines), and academic domains (e.g. belief systems, science, numbers, history). Compared to NT bloggers, autistic bloggers wrote in a more complex manner, as measured by word and sentence length and rare vocabulary. Autistic bloggers often wrote about science or other abstract topics rather than discussing daily life events. These findings suggest that one subset of autistic individuals, those who write blogs, are able to write in a more complex style than their NT peers. This may reflect having an intellectual orientation, or, autistic people with sophisticated writing skills are the ones who choose to author blogs. Raising awareness that some autistic individuals can be strong writers will be of broad help to diverse stakeholders, including educators, clinicians, families and autistic individuals themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Evangelical Christian communities, the responsibility for maintaining the home is taken up primarily by women (Bartkowski, 1999 ; Gallagher & Smith, 1999). The discursive construction of the home as a sacred space free from toxic influences emerged during the Cold War, when the global turmoil seemed to demand the delineation of a matriarchal safe space (Shively, 2017; Neumann, 2019 ; Anagnost 2013). More recently, restrictions concerning COVID-19 have initiated a further shift from the public to the private sphere. Women who were accustomed to conducting housework while their husbands were at work have abruptly come to the foreground as life primarily took place at home. This article explores the intersection of daily activities with religious beliefs as reflected in the practice of blogging. Central to this study is the assumption that ordinary, daily activities provide a unique lens into the way people 'in the pews' live their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains materials of a sociological study of public history sociocultural practices in social media. Based on the analysis of data from in-depth interviews with experts in the field of media history (N = 60) conducted in 2022-2023, a classification of the main risks that a historian faces on the Web has been compiled. The concept of digital capital was used as a theoretical framework, considering it as a relevant component of cultural, symbolic, and social types of capital. Digital transformation of society, including education system, is a factor in digitalization and democratization of knowledge. In this process, academic communities, commercial projects, initiative groups, and individual citizens face a number of risks associated with acquisition and realization of their capitals. The analysis of the research results allowed us to conclude that the relevant sources of risks are the communicative and financial side of activity. The issue of confrontation between academic community and digital popularizers of history remains debatable, as experts point out the danger of deprofessionalization in case of excessive audience orientation. Since riskiness goes hand in hand with societal instability, uncertainty, and hypervariability, political and corporate suppression of certain discourses and dynamic development of information and communication technologies have been highlighted as risks. The latter creates both risks and potential for public history development, historians mastering a new set of competences and obtaining differentiated sources of income. In this process, intangible capital is converted into material capital, actualizing the financial side of practices.

The article examines the political trust of Russian youth in the context of their representatives’ choice of channels for obtaining political information. The study contributes to the research of theoretical problems of political trust formation under the spread of modern communication means. The impact of the spread of new media on political trust of Russian youth is considered. The article is based on the results of two empirical studies conducted in the fall of 2022: a mass online survey of Russian youth and an expert survey. The mass online survey was based on the online questionnaire method, while conducting an expert survey, the method of non-standardized interview was used to collect information, and the method of discourse analysis was used for processing. The results of the study revealed the differentiation of communication strategies in different socio-demographic and status groups of generations x and z. It is confirmed that the choice of new media as the main information sources about politics is in line with the trend of political trust decreasing. Russian youth are characterized by very low levels of trust in public opinion leaders; by this, it was possible to identify significant intra-generational splits. The communication strategies of the representatives of Russian youth also testify to the crisis of the two-step flow of communication model.

Lay summaries are commonly written by researchers in many disciplines to translate technical scientific concepts into language that can be understood by general audiences. In our first-year introductory biology course, we employed a write-to-learn pedagogy by incorporating a lay summary-style writing assignment that encouraged students to explain the major results of a journal article in their own words, a format we referred to as “blog-style” for our students. We chose to use this format to allow students to focus on understanding, defining and explaining key scientific terminology, without regurgitating technical jargon. Students selected and read a scientific journal article connected to a biotechnology topic at the start of the semester and were given worksheets to complete throughout the semester that guided them in the reading of their article. We also offered in-class workshops that focused on best practices for reading journal articles, how to write for a general audience, and how to avoid plagiarism. Students then composed two-page, lay style summaries highlighting some of the key findings of the articles that they read. This assignment resulted in many students producing engaging, well-written papers that allowed them to demonstrate meaningful understanding of some of the technical terminology and concepts in their articles.

The biggest change in the purchasing behavior of Filipino employees nowadays is the power of blogging and social media. The most popular of these are YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and so many more upcoming platforms. The cited social media platforms greatly impact consumer behavior, specifically employees. Having all the necessary information is readily accessible in the palm of your hand. And this changes everything, including consumer behavior. Consumer decision-making is influenced by social media and blogging. According to UNCTAD, people will continue to shop online long after the epidemic has passed due to the crisis's repercussions. (Cerezo, 2020). This study will analyze the implications of blogging and social media in the buying behavior of Filipino employees observed for the post pandemic period utilizing the black box model. Quantitative information was collected and used for this study's purposes using descriptive and inferential statistics. The research is limited to a specific environmental consultancy firm in Manila. The findings indicate that social media influences Filipino employees' purchasing behavior by providing them with information that alters their perspective and sense of style, which leads to purchases of the products. Without a doubt, social media plays a large connection for both consumers and businesses, including Filipino employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blogs are considered to be a useful online tool for learning, teaching, training and education. Students and teachers can share their thoughts and ideas, and can express their feelings and opinions in an online environment (Deng & Yuen, 2011). No special technological skills are needed in order to post a blog entry. Blogging promotes creativity, critical thinking, reflection, collaboration, interaction and active participation. Blogs can help people to gain and share knowledge, as well as to increase the digital literacy of both students and teachers, and to change their attitudes towards information and communication technology (ICT; Goktas & Demirel, 2012). This study investigated the role of blogging in the development of the cognitive, social and self-directed learning skills of students, who were future EFL teachers, during a teaching methodology and teaching practicum course. The participants were 40 university students (third and fourth year). Their ages ranged from 18 to 25 years, their L1 was Cypriot Greek and they all resided in Cyprus. The students were asked to write online blog entries after each of their sessions. The analysis of the data, blog entries and questionnaires, showed that, overall, the students had positive attitudes towards blogging. They believed that blogs facilitated their development as teachers and practitioners via creating an online community in a user-friendly way. The students had the opportunity to interact more with their peers and the tutor, express their views, exchange ideas, gain new knowledge and experience, and increase the level of their digital competence, particularly considering the current COVID situation (Halic et al., 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposesto refine the periodisation of Russian and Russian-speaking immigration in Bulgaria. It examines the necessary context, describing changes in motivations and identity projects of these groups from (relatively) 2013 to 2023. The text outlines the specific tool - the blog, reinvented in a modern context – the text highlights the differences between it within the visual platform Instagram and its classical visual version. Thus, some of the main features of Russian-speaking users’ own online representations are brought to the fore through the implicit and (counterintuitively) explicit discourses of Russian-speaking users. They focus the analysis on their identifications and the specifics of adaptation and its dynamics, maintaining a sense of community but also accumulating social capital that directly reflects their plans and strategies for the present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence model capable of generating dialogues and providing responses, emerged in the year 2022. Its introduction into usage sparked various discussions within the realm of education. This study aims to explore and analyze discussions surrounding the utilization of ChatGPT in pages that allow online content publication, such as blogs and forums, facilitating idea exchange on the same subject. Employing a netnographic approach with the inclusion of thematic analysis method ensures the comprehensiveness and reliability of the study. A total of 59 blogs and forums were gathered from Google searches, Facebook, and Twitter searches, forming the basis of this study. Among these, four blogs pertaining to the early childhood education domain were identified and subjected to an in-depth examination. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. In the findings of the research, positive expressions regarding the use of ChatGPT in education have been identified in blogs and forums. These expressions emphasize that ChatGPT can assist students in understanding the subjects and that they can gain in-depth knowledge about topics through questions directed to ChatGPT. In the findings related to the use of ChatGPT in early childhood education, it is noted that ChatGPT can be used to generate age-appropriate content for children. It is also highlighted that ChatGPT can support children's creative thinking and that it is important to ensure supervision in the use of ChatGPT for educational purposes related to storytelling prompts for children. Additionally, there are expressions regarding how adults can use ChatGPT for their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of new information and communication technologies, social media platforms, and the called WEB 2.0, has led to a new digital revolution. This cyber-era has witnessed profound social transformations. Blog and blogging today extend beyond just writing with limited influence. Individuals from diverse social backgrounds, institutions, affiliations, and ideologies have their own or shared spaces to talk about various topics such as daily life, economics, politics, religion, leisure, sports, and others. Intellectuals are not the exception, as they have been seamlessly integrated into these digital spaces. In the Arab world, many social movements and revolutions have gained great momentum using social media platforms and technologies and through the presence of intellectuals, policy / decision-makers as well as ordinary citizens. This paper aims to provide a modest exposition about the reality of the intellectual participation of actors (intellectuals) in the field of blogging in the context of social media platforms and technologies. It also addresses some of the challenges that intellectuals faced in these dynamic, rapidly spreading and developing digital environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the specifics of the blogosphere of the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet, as well as the changes that have occurred in this area after the ban of certain social platforms and their recognition as extremist on the territory of the Russian Federation. The study was carried out using a comparative method and is based on the analysis of the content of blogs in the social networks VKontakte, Dzen, Telegram, selected by a continuous sampling method for the period from February 2022 to October 2022. The blogosphere today is a dynamically and actively developing environment, and blogs are no longer just a channel for broadcasting relevant information, but also a social and communicative phenomenon existing at the intersection of journalism, marketing and political technologies.The recognition of some popular social networks as extremist on the territory of the Russian Federation has led to a reduction in the income of bloggers associated with a sharp decrease in the coverage of their accounts, as well as the departure of a number of major foreign advertisers from the Russian market. There was a transition of the main bloggers to alternative blogging platforms, as well as the search for suitable forms of content submission for them and attempts to increase the audience. These changes affected not only bloggers, but also the accounts of various state budget organizations operating within the framework of the electronic state presented on the Internet.Social networks today are turning from platforms for communication and file sharing into digital ecosystems that include many services. Bloggers develop their accounts, increasing the number of subscribers and building up a regular audience and become influencers — opinion leaders, which is actively used by businesses in influencer marketing. To optimize cooperation with media personalities who have their own blogs, representatives of companies turn to influencer agencies, which today provide a full range of digital services, from the idea to its final implementation. The growth of the older audience leads to the fact that the content is “maturing” — more and more serious topics are being raised, the requirements for the quality of content are increasing. The trends of personalization of content and fragmentation of the blog audience are also increasing.

This article explores the phenomenon of online political activism, specifically political blogging, from the perspective of the author's concept of prosumer activity. It focuses on the multimodal texts of websites that convey political messages using a range of semiotic codes. The study aims to demonstrate how the political identity of the addresser is encoded and expressed in the information product. The analysis results in a typology of multimodal texts, classified into three types based on their political identity and intended purpose. The first type comprises blogs that have a clear ideological basis that marks the political identity of the producer, with a ‘concentrated’ multimodal text. The second type includes blogs that do not reflect the author's political identity, with an ‘amorphous’ multimodal text intended for political consumption and entertainment. The third type encompasses blogs that transmit ‘disperse’ multimodal text, which presents an ideological basis but is focused on political consumption rather than identity manifestation in communication and action. The proposed typology is confirmed through a comparative study of politically oriented blogs and those that address political topics occasionally. The study also identifies mechanisms that increase the communicative potential and persuasive power of the ideological and semantic content, using semiotic and discourse analysis.

What lives amongst loss? This study employs spectral reading practice to thematically analyze the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) produced within the Canadian blogosphere during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the extent of loss that the pandemic brought, the findings of this study reveal that SoTL practitioners continued to embrace positive affectivities and “what works” in their reflective research about the experience of teaching and learning during crisis times. The four revealed themes—endless possibilities, teaching as care, care ethics, and community awe—point towards a hardening disciplinary and methodological characterization of SoTL (or what I refer to as a “SoTL attitude”) that is rooted in qualities of appreciation, generosity, and reparation. Overall, this work contributes to examinations of SoTL as an evolving disciplinary area, providing unique insights into its surprisingly cohesive response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shifts in the Higher Education sector over the past decade have seen greater numbers of applicants than ever before entering university. As undergraduate cohorts have expanded, a diverse student body has emerged, with a rich and complex array of learning needs, desires and expectations. At the same time, public discourse around higher education has changed significantly, and particularly following the introduction and increase of tuition fees, this has led to an emphasis on programmes being seen to provide value for money; a value for money that is being increasingly measured via the metric of graduate employment outcomes. As a result, universities are being pushed to find new ways to ensure that students leave their degree programmes with the kinds of transferable skills necessary to succeed in a contemporary job market that, following shifts in working patterns introduced during the Covid 19 pandemic, values flexibility, and adaptation. This case study – using blogging as a summative assessment at Level 6 of an ‘Events’ Management programme – illustrates that engagement, criticality, and relevance can be successfully incorporated, providing students with a key skill directly relevant to industry.

Capitalism in its contemporary, late form does not break away from its constitutive principles - that is the actions aimed at accumulating resources - but significantly changes nature of the key capital. No longer land or labour, but knowledge, information or technology become the elements determining the position of a person on the market. Under these circumstances, the notion of "non-work" emerges, which includes activities seemingly unrelated to capitalist priorities, but still not in the direct opposition to them. One of the areas of such non-work phenomena was the Polish cultural blogosphere. Its representatives are an example of how people operating in the field of culture - especially on the Internet - combined instrumental and existential values in their activities. For this combination to be effective, it requires the collection and interpretation of relevant data that enables us to measure the achievement level of the goals set. In the case of the surveyed bloggers - also due to the specificity of their work - these measures were often not used properly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND:The development of technology, novel communication, and social networking can positively or negatively affect the therapeutic alliance between patients and psychiatrists. We conducted this study to identify Internet use patterns of psychiatrists and psychiatry residents in South Korea and to provide basic data for developing e-professionalism. METHODS:In this questionnaire survey included a total of 250 participants, of which 195 (78%) completed the questionnaire. Questions included demographics, use of email, web searches, personal and professional use of websites and social networking, and negative and positive experiences of electronic communication and social networking. We confirmed the correlation between experience and use patterns of psychiatrists' electronic communication and social networking. RESULTS:A total of 129 participants (66.2%) reported that they posted their personal or professional content online, 112 (57.9%) had received patients' requests through electronic communication or social networking, and 120 (61.4%) had communicated with patients via electronic communication or social networking. In total, 170 participants (87.2%) reported that they were worried about the negative consequences of using electronic communication and social networking, and 180 (92.3%) indicated they were not educated about electronic communication or social networking. CONCLUSION:In order to reduce the negative effects of electronic communication and social networking, we need guidelines that are appropriate for the situation in South Korea. Furthermore, future research will need to identify and suggest solutions for negative experiences of electronic communication and social networking that may affect the relationship between patients and physicians.

Identifying critical thinking and learners’ characteristics is very important in an online learning environment. This study investigated the extent of critical thinking between field-dependent and field-independent students’ critical thinking and blogging. It is a quasi-experimental in which a quantitative method was employed on an intact class of the students to develop their CT skills in their argumentative blog posts. Different aspects of CT skills, such as observation, inference, reasoning, assumption, and credibility were explained to the students. The GEFT developed by Witkin et al. (1971) was applied to evaluate the students' field dependency. Moreover, Newman et al. model (1996) was applied to analyze students’ CT in their blog posts. No significant difference was found in the number of positive and negative CT indicators used by FD and FI students. Therefore, educators who wish to improve the students’ learning may train the students in CT skills by using a pre-planned and systematic procedure without worrying about learners’ cognitive styles, particularly their field dependency.

Copyright of Croatian Journal of Education / Hrvatski Časopis za Odgoj i Obrazovanje is the property of Uciteljski Fakultet u Zagrebu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Technology has become an inevitable part of learning these days and the popularity of blogs and web forums is increasing exponentially. The purpose of blogging is to encourage discussions on a particular topic or concept, thereby throwing more light on the point of discussion. These discussions generally focus on knowledge sharing and acquiring, but in a way, they help the participants and the readers to enhance their language skills like listening, reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary both directly and indirectly. The present study consolidates the opinions of the researcher about the use of blogs as educational technology and the opinions of the learners about the role of blogs in their language learning aspects. The result shows that blogs have a considerable impact on one’s language proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the rise of TikTok, a relatively young but extremely popular Chinese social network for sharing short-form original videos (mostly entertaining). By the end of 2021, TikTok had surpassed the American search engine Google as the most visited website on the Internet. With its billion unique visitors each month, it is the only top 10 website whose parent company (ByteDance) is located outside the U.S. In the article, I analyze the specifics of TikTok’s presence in the Russian segment of the Internet, its gradual politicization, and the problems the platform has faced over the last two years. In 2021, TikTok surpassed VKontakte, the most popular social network in Russia, in terms of time spent using the app. And, although the service had some friction with the Russian authorities, there is still no full-fledged replacement for it. So far, Yappy—the Russian analog for TikTok—does not look like its serious competitor at all. The article covers what concerns the authorities of other countries have about this social network, and how TikTok in general affects Internet culture. I look into the values propagated by TikTok among young people. In the conclusion, I put forward a hypothesis, which requires further study, that TikTok is now a super effective world-scale soft power tool of the People’s Republic of China. В статье рассматривается возвышение популярной социальной сети китайского происхождения ТикТок. Эта относительно молодая соцсеть, позволяющая пользователям делиться небольшими авторскими видео (в основном развлекательного характера), к концу 2021 года обогнала по посещаемости американский поисковик Google и стала самым посещаемым сайтом в Интернете. Ежемесячно ТикТок набирает миллиард уникальных посетителей, являясь при этом единственным сайтом топ-10, чья материнская компания (ByteDance) находится не в США. Анализируются специфика присутствия ТикТока в российском сегменте Интернета, постепенная политизация ресурса и то, с какими проблемами сервис столкнулся в последние два года. Важно, что в 2021 году ТикТок обошел популярнейшую в Россию соцсеть ВКонтакте по времени пользования сервисом. И, хотя у сервиса возникли определенные трения с российскими властями, никакой полноценной замены ему так и не появилось: отечественное приложение Yappy серьезным конкурентом ТикТока пока что не выглядит. Рассказано, какие претензии к этой соцсети предъявляют власти других стран, и как ТикТок в целом влияет на интернет-культуру. Предпринимается попытка понять ценности, распространяемые ТикТоком среди молодежи. В заключении выдвигается гипотеза, требующая дальнейшего изучения, о том, что ТикТок сегодня является суперэффективным инструментом «мягкой силы» Китайской народной республики в мире.

Copyright of Mülkiye Dergisi is the property of Mulkiye Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What lives amongst loss? This study employs spectral reading practice to thematically analyze the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) produced within the Canadian blogosphere during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the extent of loss that the pandemic brought, the findings of this study reveal that SoTL practitioners continued to embrace positive affectivities and "what works" in their reflective research about the experience of teaching and learning during crisis times. The four revealed themes--endless possibilities, teaching as care, care ethics, and community awe--point towards a hardening disciplinary and methodological characterization of SoTL (or what I refer to as a "SoTL attitude") that is rooted in qualities of appreciation, generosity, and reparation. Overall, this work contributes to examinations of SoTL as an evolving disciplinary area, providing unique insights into its surprisingly cohesive response to the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Public Administration & Civil Service / Memlekettìk Basķaru Ža̋ne Memlekettìk Ķyzmet is the property of Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan / Akademiya Gosun and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigated how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at a university in Pakistan experienced blogging on their smartphones as a means to gain more extensive autonomous practice writing in English. The blogging was done as a stand-alone activity, independent of the students' university EFL programme. Using a mixed-methods case study design, data were collected from 23 undergraduate students through interviews, surveys, and reflective written accounts. This paper foregrounded the students' voices to reveal their attitudes to blogging, their experiences using smartphones for that purpose, and perceived changes in their English writing skills. The findings indicated that many of the participants developed a virtuous cycle, in which their interest and enjoyment of blogging, along with perceived improvements in their ability to communicate in English, contributed to increase both confidence and motivation to write more. The findings also pointed to other worthwhile social and educational outcomes that could be fostered through this type of activity. As a result, the study has implications for teachers and learners in a wide range of EFL contexts, i.e., offering further insights into strategies for harnessing existing digital tools in order to extend students' opportunities to use the target language, within and beyond formal educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]