scholarly journals AN INSIGHT INTO POTENTIAL FISCAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE GREAT LOCKDOWN FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SMALL STATES

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Pevcin Primož

The Great Lockdown has caused severe economic distractions to the majority of world countries, and de-globalization trends have started to increase. Globalization was to an extent beneficial for smaller economies, and it was one of the factors contributing to the rise in the number of countries around the world during the last few decades. According to the perceived larger openness and vulnerability of smaller states, it is thus expected that those countries are hit much harder by the economic contraction, as their outputs are much more volatile in relation to the economic cycles. In this context, the paper intends to investigate the exposure of European states to the current lockdown, where the focus is particularly on assessing the fiscal impacts of the lockdown. The main research question is whether there are any differences regarding the fiscal functions of government between smaller and larger states. This is addressed through the cross-national comparative investigation based on data for 44 European countries; and we specifically assess how fiscal activities of government differentiate among smaller and larger states. The results of the study suggest that the effect of the size of the state does not affect the consumption spending of government, but the size variable matters for the transfer expenditures. This piece of research would like to add to the development of the discipline of small state studies, in particular to the issue of their vulnerability and changing global economic environment.

2021 ◽  
pp. 57-63
Author(s):  
Viana Hassan ◽  
Miloš Zrnić

Slow tourism is one of the new trending concepts that bring the concept of slowness into tourism practices in the way that tourists appreciate local food, culture, heritage, and sustainability. Destinations adopting principles of slow tourism tau reduce the financial leakage of the suppliers and generate more income and employment to the locals. Thus, the case of "Moonlight farm and Resort at Barouk" area, is the core topic for this study to understand the relation between slow tourism, sustainable development and ecology, which has the roots in interest for locality, community, and green travel. The main research question is ,,How can slow tourism be a tool of sustainable development?". In order to answer this, a mixed-method approach was conducted through the use of two questionnaires addressed to tourists visiting "Moonlight farm " and residents in Barouk area. Additionally, an interview with the owner provided significant insight into the topic. The analysis of the results was beneficial in understanding the perceptions and motivations of tourists and helping promote slow tourism in this area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariam Haghegh

The study explores the sociolinguistic phenomenon, Arabizi, from a new perspective by investigating the case of three Arabizi users coming from different generations: Azer (42 years old), Nada (29 years old), and Mira (21 years old). The main research question of the study is how generational differences between Arabizi users shape their experiences with Arabizi in terms of 1) how they learned it, 2) how they currently use it, 3) how they perceive its effect on the Arabic language, 4) their attitude towards its users, 5) and their expectations for its future use. Semi-structured interviews were employed to gain a deeper insight into participants’ experiences with Arabizi, taking into consideration their linguistic, educational, work, and social backgrounds. The significance of this case study lies in how Arabizi users’ surroundings and life experiences influence their linguistic choices and perceptions. Findings provide insight into how Arabizi is considered advantageous compared to using English language. It is also perceived to be a phase for youngsters that will subside in the future as technology develops. The study concludes with recommendations for future research on how Arabizi transforms as its users grow older.


Author(s):  
Mariam Haghegh

The study explores the sociolinguistic phenomenon, Arabizi, from a new perspective by investigating the case of three Arabizi users coming from different generations: Azer (42 years old), Nada (29 years old), and Mira (21 years old). The main research question of the study is how generational differences between Arabizi users shape their experiences with Arabizi in terms of 1) how they learned it, 2) how they currently use it, 3) how they perceive its effect on the Arabic language, 4) their attitude towards its users, 5) and their expectations for its future use. Semi-structured interviews were employed to gain a deeper insight into participants’ experiences with Arabizi, taking into consideration their linguistic, educational, work, and social backgrounds. The significance of this case study lies in how Arabizi users’ surroundings and life experiences influence their linguistic choices and perceptions. Findings provide insight into how Arabizi is considered advantageous compared to using English language. It is also perceived to be a phase for youngsters that will subside in the future as technology develops. The study concludes with recommendations for future research on how Arabizi transforms as its users grow older.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Súsanna Margrét Gestsdóttir ◽  
Jannet van Drie ◽  
Carla van Boxtel

This study aims to give an insight into the beliefs that shape history teachers’ orientations towards their subject and how they approach it. We take a closer look at the beliefs of a group of teachers to see if there is a connection between those beliefs and whether and how they teach historical thinking and reasoning (HTR). HTR has been considered an important component in history teaching in many countries for some decades. Different factors may influence whether teachers are willing or able to teach it. Our main research question is: Which beliefs about goals and strategies of teaching history play a role in teachers’ inclinations towards teaching historical thinking and reasoning?


Author(s):  
Vera Yakubson ◽  
Victor Zakharov

This paper deals with the specialized corpora building, specifically academic language corpus in the biotechnology field. Being a part of larger research devoted to creation and usage of specialized parallel corpus, this piece aims to analyze the initial step of corpus building. Our main research question was what procedures we need to implement to the texts before using them to develop the corpus. Analysis of previous research showed the significant quantity of papers devoted to corpora creation, including academic specialized corpora. Different sides of the process were analyzed in these researches, including the types of texts used, the principles of crawling, the recommended length of texts etc. As to the text processing for the needs of corpora creation, only the linguistic annotation issues were examined earlier. At the same time, the preliminary cleaning of texts before their usage in corpora may have significant influence on the corpus quality and its utility for the linguistic research. In this paper, we considered three small corpora derived from the same set of academic texts in the biotechnology field: “raw” corpus without any preliminary cleaning and two corpora with different level of cleaning. Using different Sketch Engine tools, we analyzed these corpora from the position of their future users, predominantly as sources for academic wordlists and specialized multi-word units. The conducted research showed very little difference between two cleaned corpora, meaning that only basic cleaning procedures such as removal of reference lists are can be useful in corpora design. At the same time, we found a significant difference between raw and cleaned corpora and argue that this difference can affect the quality of wordlists and multi-word terms extraction, therefore these cleaning procedures are meaningful. The main limitation of the study is that all texts were taken from the unique source, so the conclusions could be affected by this specific journal’s peculiarities. Therefore, the future work should be the verification of results on different text collections


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1/2020) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Olga Stevanovic

The subject of this paper encompasses US policy towards Poland and the Baltic States regarding energy security during Donald Trump’s presidency. It is discernible that vast domestic energy resources have created an opportunity for the US to project more power to these countries, and the surrounding region. We argue that Trump and his administration’s perceptions have served as an intervening variable in that opportunity assessment, in accordance with the neoclassical realist theory. The main research question addressed in this paper is whether US has used that opportunity to contribute to energy security in countries it has traditionally deemed as allies. Two aspects of US approach to energy security of the designated countries are taken into consideration: liquified natural gas exports and support for the Three Seas Initiative. The way Trump presented his policy and its results in his public statements has also been considered in this paper. The article will proceed as follows. The first subsection of the paper represents a summary of energy security challenges in Poland and the Baltic States. The second subsection is dedicated to the opportunity for the US to project energy power and to Trump’s perceptions relevant for the opportunity assessment. The third subsection deals with American LNG exports to these countries as a possible way for contributing to energy security in Poland and the Baltic States. The last part of the paper addresses the Three Seas Initiative and US approach to this platform.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fariba Mostajeran ◽  
Jessica Krzikawski ◽  
Frank Steinicke ◽  
Simone Kühn

AbstractA large number of studies have demonstrated the benefits of natural environments on people’s health and well-being. For people who have limited access to nature (e.g., elderly in nursing homes, hospital patients, or jail inmates), virtual representations may provide an alternative to benefit from the illusion of a natural environment. For this purpose and in most previous studies, conventional photos of nature have been used. Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments, however, can induce a higher sense of presence compared to conventional photos. Whether this higher sense of presence leads to increased positive impacts of virtual nature exposure is the main research question of this study. Therefore, we compared exposure to a forest and an urban virtual environment in terms of their respective impact on mood, stress, physiological reactions, and cognition. The environments were presented via a head-mounted display as (1) conventional photo slideshows or (2) 360$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ videos. The results show that the forest environment had a positive effect on cognition and the urban environment disturbed mood regardless of the mode of presentation. In addition, photos of either urban or forest environment were both more effective in reducing physiological arousal compared to immersive 360$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ videos.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 845-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Hawdon ◽  
James Hawdon ◽  
Atte Oksanen ◽  
James Hawdon ◽  
Atte Oksanen ◽  
...  

Abstract Although considerable research analyzes the media coverage of school shootings, there is a lack of cross-national comparative studies. Yet, a cross-national comparison of the media coverage of school shootings can provide insight into how this coverage can affect communities. Our research focuses on the reporting of the school shootings at Virginia Tech in the U.S. and Jokela and Kauhajoki in Finland. Using 491 articles from the New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat published within a month of each shooting we investigate how reports vary between the nations and among the tragedies. We investigate if one style of framing a tragedy, the use of a “tragic frame,” may contribute to differences in the communities’ response to the events.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7086
Author(s):  
Martina Maněnová ◽  
Janet Wolf ◽  
Martin Skutil ◽  
Jitka Vítová

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the issue of distance education in primary schools has become a much-discussed topic. It is therefore no surprise that the issues related to it have come to the forefront of many researchers. There is, however, at least one group that has stayed relatively unnoticed, and it is so-called small schools. Thus, we conducted a qualitative study based on the phenomenological approach, searching for answers to our research question: What has been the experience of the directors of small schools with distance education during the pandemic? Our findings offer an in-depth insight into the life of six schools through the eyes of their directors. Semi-structural interviews with school directors helped us reveal three key factors that, in our opinion, had the greatest influence on the form of distance education. These are (1) the factor of ICT competence of all actors, (2) the factor of organization of educational settings, and (3) the factor of the teaching methods and forms used in education. Furthermore, we conclude the result section with a subchapter that captures the positive aspects of distance education as perceived by the addressed school directors.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052198985
Author(s):  
Sally Marsden ◽  
Cathy Humphreys ◽  
Kelsey Hegarty

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a complex and multifaceted problem gaining increasing attention within mental health research and practice. IPV explanations focus on both individual and systemic levels; however, it is increasingly acknowledged that a single level explanation may not be sufficient. The practices of clinical disciplines may, however, still privilege an explanation at one level over another, which will influence how they work with clients. It is likely that one such clinical group, psychologists, may play a critical role in helping victim-survivors to understand and explain their experiences of IPV. However, we were unable to find any studies focusing on women’s perceptions of psychologists’ role in this. Additionally, we know little about women victim-survivors’ perceptions of why their partners use IPV. To address these gaps, the research question for this study was: What explanations resonate during counseling for women in understanding their partner’s abuse? To explore this question, 20 women who had seen psychologists after experiencing IPV participated in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis and three themes constructed from the data. The first two themes, narcissist description was helpful and not all bad all the time, showed that the women found it powerful in their healing processes when psychologists offered the opportunity to discuss their partners individual characteristics as explanations for their use of IPV. The third theme, structural explanations, showed that some of the women also reflected on wider structural contexts. Implications for clinical practice include the potential healing effect when practitioners can move along a continuum of explanation levels, covering both the inner and outer worlds. Implications for research into IPV perpetration are that women hold expertise and insight into individual perpetrators and could make valuable contributions to this field.


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