Is the liberal media dead?: A critical analysis of Modi's Government and the performance of Indian Media

This paper presents a study of Indian media. Utilizing the Propaganda Model formulated by Herman and Chomsky in the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media (1988), the paper aims to critically assess the news patterns and media performance of the mainstream Indian media. The contribution of the paper will be the application of the propaganda model in the context of Indian media. For this study, we have analyzed the media coverage of two events – India's ban on Chinese apps and the Pulwama attack. We focus on how Indian Media has helped the Government to establish the propaganda of nationalism during both events, which is explained by Herman and Chomsky in the five filters of news production. We investigate how the anti-China sentiment and the Pulwama attack have been used by the Government to divert attention from their failure of governance, and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic. The corporate media is playing its part in the machinations of the ruling BJP party. We conclude that the plurality of voices amongst journalists is in decline. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of India Review is the property of Routledge 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 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 . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Human rights protection under the ICCPR: when can and should States derogate? A critical analysis in the context of New Zealand's COVID-19 response

Public emergencies like global pandemics subject human rights to extraordinary vulnerability. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) permits States to restrict rights by enacting permissible limitations on them at any time and by derogating from their protection in emergencies. This article argues that States should rely on the ICCPR's permissible limitations provisions rather than lodge formal derogations in times of crisis, unlike what many States have done during the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws upon New Zealand's highly successful public health response to support this proposition. The article argues that the accountability machinery for compliance with States' rights obligations is stronger when permissible limitations are enacted. Where States do rely on the right to derogate, the article suggests some improvements to existing international accountability mechanisms. These include enhancing the analysis to be contained in notices of derogation and advance capacity-building to enable States to better decide if derogation is necessary in the first place. Ultimately, the article argues that keeping States within the international human rights system is ideal. This can be achieved through reliance on the flexibility built into the ICCPR via its permissible limitations provisions rather than its right of derogation. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Journal of Human Rights is the property of Routledge 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 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 . (Copyright applies to all s.)

The Challenges of Psychological Adjustment for International Students: A Critical Analysis of Coping Mechanisms and Support Services

This paper critically analyzes the challenges of psychological adjustment faced by international students and explores coping mechanisms and support services that can help them overcome these challenges. The essay first introduces the background information on international students and highlights the importance of psychological adjustment for their well-being and academic success. The challenges of psychological adjustment, including cultural, academic, social adjustment, and language barrier, are discussed in detail. The essay then explores coping mechanisms, including problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, seeking social support, and cultural adjustment programs, and the support services, including counseling services and international student services, that can help international students adjust to their new environment. Finally, the essay evaluates the effectiveness of these coping mechanisms and support services, emphasizing the importance of cultural competence in providing effective support services. This essay has practical implications for higher education institutions in providing tailored support to international students and highlights the need for future research to explore the effectiveness of coping mechanisms and support services for different groups of international students and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their psychological adjustment. © 2023 NSP Natural Sciences Publishing Cor.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Labour Market in the Hotel Industry: Selected Conditions in Poland

Examining selected aspects of labour market performance in the Polish tourism sector can extend our knowledge of hotel company attitudes in connection with COVID-19. The aims of this article are to present selected determinants of labour market performance in the Polish tourism sector (with particular emphasis on the hotel industry) in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic and to address the following research question: how did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the functioning of hotel companies in the key tourist region of Poland—Zachodniopomorskie province? The research methods used in the study included critical analysis of source literature, survey method, correspondence analysis method, and analysis of primary and secondary data, mainly from official statistics. The survey was conducted in January 2022. Information was collected from 129 respondents using surveys. The results of the research presented in the article reveal that the observed long-term upward trend in the national labour market has been halted by the pandemic and that (among the various accommodation facilities) hotels are the most vulnerable to changes in the tourism labour market. The authors' contributions to the literature are the identification of the extent to which businesses from the hotel industry have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the determination of the impact of the pandemic on selected employment-related aspects of business operations in Zachodniopomorskie province. © 2023 by the authors.

Social policy: a critical and intersectional analysis

Positioning social struggles equally high as policy makers in shaping social policy, particularly following the intensified needs generated by the covid-19 lockdowns, is an imperative of Williams' way of combining intersectionality into critical social policy. In other words, Williams introduces an approach to social policy which is not only inclusive concerning activists conducting social struggles, but also inclusive for scholars applying critical social policy in all intersecting social positions. What social forces currently have the transformative power to challenge the neo-liberal managerialist forms of contemporary welfare policies?. [Extracted from the article]

The Political Response to the COVID-19 Crisis in Italy: A First Assessment for the National Food System

The objective of this paper is to explore the policies that have been implemented and planned in relation to the impacts that the COVID-19 health crisis has had on the Italian food system. This is an evaluation exercise useful to understand what the directions imprinted on the food system will be in relation to some frameworks of particular importance at the international level, such as the 2030 Agenda, the Farm to Fork Strategy, the Biodiversity Strategy, the UN Food Summit, and the agroecological perspective. The article is divided into multiple sections. In paragraph 1.1 and 1.2, the shocks generated by COVID-19 in the global context and in the Italian national context are examined. In both, attention is drawn to changes in GDP, employment, poverty, and the food system. In paragraph 3, the methodological approach, based on the DPSIR model, is explained, as well as the materials used for the drafting of the work. In paragraph 4, all of the components (Driving Forces, Pressures, States, Impacts) of the DPSIR model are analyzed. In paragraph 5, attention is focused on all policy responses implemented during COVID-19, both on the Italian and European side. In paragraph 6, a detailed analysis of the Italian responses is made in order to fully understand the degree of influence on the Italian economy and food system. The analysis carried out, therefore, highlights the socioeconomic threats faced by the Italian government and the main measures adopted to counter them. Through a critical analysis of policies, it was possible to identify their criticalities and propose possible integrations, starting from the concept of “syndemia”. This concept was introduced in the 1990s by Merril Singer, and in this paper, it plays an important role because it takes into account the negative effects of the pandemic at the economic, health, and social levels and the importance of the sustainability of the food chain. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Cultural tourism in cities post-COVID-19: A perspective and proposals for an alternative model

Tourism was a constantly growing industry until the halt brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. In cities, its negative impact was increasing, with significant cases of overcrowding. COVID-19 has emerged as an exceptional disruptive stage, yet it is also an opportunity to abandon the rush towards unsustainability. This study is a critical analysis of tourism, looking at the most appropriate post-pandemic perspective for urban cultural tourism, based on sustainability and leaving aside the search for profit as the ultimate goal. The main objective is to make proposals for an alternative paradigm. This is a theoretical paper that draws on a literature review of 180 works of scientific reference. Complementarily, information published by the media is accessed and direct observation is carried out as fieldwork. Proposals are made on limiting the number of visitors, improving guided visits, tourist routes, experiential tourism, and virtual tours. We also propose a new centralised tourism governance and regulation of private agents. Therefore, the present text is of interest for public representatives working in the field of urban tourism. © 2021 Asociacion de Geografos Espanoles. All rights reserved.

An Imperative for the National Public Health School in Burkina Faso to Promote the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Critical Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Several studies have reported the positive impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on academic performance and outcomes. Although some equipment is available, the ICTs for education at the National Public Health School (NPHS) of Burkina Faso have many shortcomings. These shortcomings were clearly revealed during the search for responses to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, to curb the spread of COVID-19, some measures were taken, such as closure of educational institutions. This resulted in a 2.5-month suspension of educational activities. Despite its willingness, the NPHS was unable to use ICTs to continue teaching during the closure period of educational institutions. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we aim to propose practical solutions to promote ICT use in teaching at the NPHS by analyzing the weaknesses and challenges related to its use. METHODS: We conducted a critical analysis based on information from the gray literature of NPHS. This critical analysis was preceded by a review of systematic reviews on barriers and facilitating factors to using ICTs in higher education and a systematic review of ICT use during the COVID-19 pandemic in higher education. An ICT integration model and a clustering of ICT integration factors guided the analysis. RESULTS: The weaknesses and challenges identified relate to the infrastructure and equipment for the use of ICTs in pedagogical situations in face-to-face and distance learning; training of actors, namely the teachers and students; availability of qualified resource persons and adequate and specific financial resources; motivation of teachers; and stage of use of ICTs. CONCLUSIONS: To promote the use of ICTs in teaching at the NPHS, actions must be performed to strengthen the infrastructure and equipment, human resources, the skills of actors and the motivation of teachers in the pedagogical use of ICTs.

Using a Secure, Continually Updating, Web Source Processing Pipeline to Support the Real-Time Data Synthesis and Analysis of Scientific Literature: Development and Validation Study.

BACKGROUND: The scale and quality of the global scientific response to the COVID-19 pandemic have unquestionably saved lives. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has also triggered an unprecedented "infodemic"; the velocity and volume of data production have overwhelmed many key stakeholders such as clinicians and policy makers, as they have been unable to process structured and unstructured data for evidence-based decision making. Solutions that aim to alleviate this data synthesis-related challenge are unable to capture heterogeneous web data in real time for the production of concomitant answers and are not based on the high-quality information in responses to a free-text query. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this project is to build a generic, real-time, continuously updating curation platform that can support the data synthesis and analysis of a scientific literature framework. Our secondary objective is to validate this platform and the curation methodology for COVID-19-related medical literature by expanding the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset via the addition of new, unstructured data. METHODS: To create an infrastructure that addresses our objectives, the PanSurg Collaborative at Imperial College London has developed a unique data pipeline based on a web crawler extraction methodology. This data pipeline uses a novel curation methodology that adopts a human-in-the-loop approach for the characterization of quality, relevance, and key evidence across a range of scientific literature sources. RESULTS: REDASA (Realtime Data Synthesis and Analysis) is now one of the world's largest and most up-to-date sources of COVID-19-related evidence; it consists of 104,000 documents. By capturing curators' critical appraisal methodologies through the discrete labeling and rating of information, REDASA rapidly developed a foundational, pooled, data science data set of over 1400 articles in under 2 weeks. These articles provide COVID-19-related information and represent around 10% of all papers about COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: This data set can act as ground truth for the future implementation of a live, automated systematic review. The three benefits of REDASA's design are as follows: (1) it adopts a user-friendly, human-in-the-loop methodology by embedding an efficient, user-friendly curation platform into a natural language processing search engine; (2) it provides a curated data set in the JavaScript Object Notation format for experienced academic reviewers' critical appraisal choices and decision-making methodologies; and (3) due to the wide scope and depth of its web crawling method, REDASA has already captured one of the world's largest COVID-19-related data corpora for searches and curation.

Digital Citizenship During a Global Pandemic: Moving Beyond Digital Literacy.

In this commentary, the authors move beyond digital literacy and take up the question of what digital citizenship means and looks like in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To engage with questions of ethical practice, the authors begin with the International Society for Technology in Education framework for digital citizenship. They expand on these standards to argue for an awareness of the ethical questions facing citizens online that are difficult to encompass as a set of skills or competencies. The authors then take these considerations into a set of practical steps for teachers to nurture participatory and social justice-oriented digital citizenship as part of the curriculum. The authors conclude by noting the digital divide and social inequities that have been highlighted by the current crisis.