When watchdogs fight back: resisting state surveillance in everyday investigative reporting practices among Zimbabwean journalists

The development of artificial intelligence has the potential to transform lives and work practices, raise efficiency, savings and safety levels, and provide enhanced levels of services. However, the current trend towards developing smart and autonomous machines with the capacity to be trained and make decisions independently holds not only economic advantages, but also a variety of concerns regarding their direct and indirect effects on society as a whole. This article examines some of these concerns, specifically in the areas of privacy and autonomy, state surveillance, and bias and algorithmic transparency. It concludes with an analysis of the challenges that the legal system faces in regulating the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

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Corporate Social Reporting Practices In India

Adhyayan A Journal of Management Sciences ◽

10.21567/adhyayan.v8i1.14503 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Dr Vipin Bihari Srivastava ◽

Dr Manoj Kumar Mishra ◽

Dr Wogari Negari

Keyword(s):

Public Sector ◽

Private Sector ◽

Social Information ◽

Social Reporting ◽

Annual Reports ◽

Public And Private ◽

Reporting Practices ◽

Corporate Social Reporting ◽

Public And Private Sector ◽

Corporate Social

"This paper aims to examine the extent of corporate social reporting practices in the annual reports of companies in India and to ascertain the differences if any, between public sector and private sector companies and to investigate what were the determinants of corporate social reporting . The study intends to answer the research questions which include: a) what variables could represent a Conceptual Model of Corporate Social Reporting consists of dependent variables and Independent variables? b) What are the factors of Corporate Social Reporting (COSOR) and how valid and reliable are these factors? c) What is the degree of COSOR by factors in public and private sector companies? d) What are the determinants of COSOR? What is the level of their influence on COSOR? A sample of 120 listed companies of National Stock Exchange of India was chosen and they were stratified in to public and private sector companies. A Corporate social reporting Index was constructed for data collection through content analysis from the annual reports. The results of the study revealed that social accounting information were disclosed in company’s annual reports, chairman’s speech, directors’ reports, notes to accounts, schedule to accounts and auditor’s report. The degree of corporate social reporting varies between public sector and private sector companies. The public sector companies have disclosed more corporate social reporting information than the private sector companies. The study found that higher the level of capital employed, earnings before depreciation and taxes, total assets and total sales higher was the level of corporate social reporting. However, the degree of influence of determinants on corporate social reporting was different among public and private sector companies. Most of the companies have disclosed corporate social information on voluntary basis. To improve the understandably, uniformity, and comparability of corporate social information, this study suggests making it mandatory. A standard format for disclosure of corporate social information shall be prescribed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs by amending the Indian Companies Act. The concept of social accounting is relatively new in India. This study suggests to include it in the commerce curriculum and also in the curriculum of CA/CWA/CS. Corporate Social Reporting is such a vast area of research that no single study can cover different dimensions related to it. Though some studies including the present study have been conducted on Corporate Social Reporting Practices in India, but still there is much potential of research in this area. Future research in this area will hopefully bring more brightening result measuring and analysing social costs and benefits data by manager as well as by other concerned. Since the subject is in the primary stage, an in-depth research is needed to be done in different sectors such as banking information technology, manufacturing etc. The results are specifically applicable to sample companies and generalisations can be made with caution. The results of the study are based on the data collected from published annual reports of sample companies using content analysis method. Corporate social reporting in company websites, brochures etc are not covered. Social cost and benefit analysis is not covered in this study.

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Impact of Sustainability Reporting on Firm Performance of Companies in India

International Journal of Marketing and Business Communication ◽

10.21863/ijmbc/2015.4.3.018 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Priyanka Garg

Keyword(s):

Environmental Sustainability ◽

Rural Livelihoods ◽

Sustainability Reporting ◽

Annual Reports ◽

Marginal Lands ◽

Great Ability ◽

Reporting Practices ◽

Long Run ◽

Short Run ◽

Core Idea

The core idea of sustainability is that current decisions should not impair the prospects for maintaining or improving future living standards (Repetto, 1986). GRI (2006) defined sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The challenges of sustainable development are many and it is widely accepted that organizations have not only a responsibility but also a great ability to exert positive change on the state of the worlds economy, and environmental and social conditions. Further, the issue of environmental sustainability is intertwined with that of poverty and inequity. The causative relationship runs both ways- increased poverty and loss of rural livelihoods accelerates environmental degradation as displaced people put greater pressure on forests, fisheries, and marginal lands. The present study has made an attempt to investigate the relationship between sustainability reporting and financial performance of companies in India. Data have been collected with the help of annual reports of selected companies and Prowess Database. Collected data have been analyzed with the help of SPSS 16.0. The study shows that sustainability reporting practices of companies has improved over the time. Further, research reveals that sustainability reporting practices of a firm impact its performance negatively in short run while positively in long run.

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One Last Word

10.1093/oso/9780198754794.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Pascale Chapdelaine

Keyword(s):

Cloud Computing ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

Copyright Law ◽

Privacy Law ◽

State Surveillance

‘One last word’ offers by way of conclusion, a reflection on the challenges that copyright law will continue to face in regulating older forms together with newer forms of works and methods of dissemination, and by inviting the reader to consider other areas of law (cloud computing, privacy law, state surveillance, taxation) where the analytical framework presented in the book may find application.

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Influence of the ICCPR in the Middle East

10.1093/oso/9780198825890.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Başak Çali

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Legal Status ◽

Political Rights ◽

Reporting Practices ◽

Rights Protection ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

East Region ◽

Civil And Political Rights ◽

State Responses

This chapter surveys the legal influence of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) on the domestic laws of States in the Middle East region. It analyses ratification, reservation, and reporting practices, the domestic legal status of the ICCPR, and State responses to the Human Rights Committee’s concluding observations. The chapter argues that the ICCPR’s legal influence in the region is structurally hampered due to its lack of authoritative legal status and the dominance of defensive domestic legalism. A significant gap remains between the HRC’s vision of civil and political rights protection grounded in the entrenchment of liberal, democratic, and multicultural laws and the region’s authoritarian or majoritarian political structures that foreground security and treat non-majority identities as threats. The influence of the ICCPR on domestic laws in the Middle East remains a long-term battle, whereby small gains under limited legal opportunity structures remain the overarching norm.

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Accuracy of State-Level Surveillance during Emerging Outbreaks of Respiratory Viruses: A Model-Based Assessment

Medical Decision Making ◽

10.1177/0272989x211022276 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 0272989X2110222

Author(s):

Yuwen Gu ◽

Elise DeDoncker ◽

Richard VanEnk ◽

Rajib Paul ◽

Susan Peters ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Growth Rate ◽

Data Collection ◽

Disease Progression ◽

Health Care Providers ◽

Growth Rates ◽

State Level ◽

Future Research ◽

Care Providers ◽

State Surveillance ◽

First Come First Serve

It is long perceived that the more data collection, the more knowledge emerges about the real disease progression. During emergencies like the H1N1 and the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemics, public health surveillance requested increased testing to address the exacerbated demand. However, it is currently unknown how accurately surveillance portrays disease progression through incidence and confirmed case trends. State surveillance, unlike commercial testing, can process specimens based on the upcoming demand (e.g., with testing restrictions). Hence, proper assessment of accuracy may lead to improvements for a robust infrastructure. Using the H1N1 pandemic experience, we developed a simulation that models the true unobserved influenza incidence trend in the State of Michigan, as well as trends observed at different data collection points of the surveillance system. We calculated the growth rate, or speed at which each trend increases during the pandemic growth phase, and we performed statistical experiments to assess the biases (or differences) between growth rates of unobserved and observed trends. We highlight the following results: 1) emergency-driven high-risk perception increases reporting, which leads to reduction of biases in the growth rates; 2) the best predicted growth rates are those estimated from the trend of specimens submitted to the surveillance point that receives reports from a variety of health care providers; and 3) under several criteria to queue specimens for viral subtyping with limited capacity, the best-performing criterion was to queue first-come, first-serve restricted to specimens with higher hospitalization risk. Under this criterion, the lab released capacity to subtype specimens for each day in the trend, which reduced the growth rate bias the most compared to other queuing criteria. Future research should investigate additional restrictions to the queue.

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