Tolerating Ambiguity: Reflections on the Schrems II Ruling

This paper considers the European Court of Justice’s Schrems II ruling from a variety of angles. From a strictly legal point of view, considering the GDPR, the CJEU came to a logical conclusion. In this paper, I nevertheless try to think about other ways of understanding the dispute and the ruling. In addition to data protection law, the case is about surveillance, platform power, resistance, global politics, data territoriality and the Court’s competence. These sensitive issues come forth when the strict data protection issues are set aside and a slightly more open analysis undertaken. In the end, however, the ruling does bring about real-life problems that pertain to data protection law. Transfers of data to third countries are a pressing problem that no one seems to know how to solve.

Russia-China Partnership 2021: Global, Regional and Bilateral Dimensions

The article is dedicated to the global, regional and bilateral aspects of the current Russian-Chinese strategic partnership, including its strengths and existing weaknesses. The author analyses potentialities of the Treaty on Good Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, as well as the Russian-Chinese dimensions in Greater Eurasia, including the complexities and problems of the conjugation processes and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The author describes positive and constraining factors for the further development of the Organization. The article describes the problems of Russia-China cooperation with regard to Siberia and the Far East, including some difficulties of investment and infrastructure projects. It is being noted that the Chinese vision of the Russian Far Eastern regions does not always coincide with the Russian one. It is important, relying on political will and mutual trust, to frankly and objectively discuss all sensitive issues and contradictions.

Some evidences and applications of the randomized response crossed model in a survey of sensitive population behaviors

Surveying human behaviors, especially in demographic, social, medical and public health research, often involves sensitive issues. Posing direct inquiries about stigmatizing or threatening topics may lead survey participants to refuse to answer or to give untruthful responses. Nonresponse and misreporting denote measurement errors that are difficult to treat and are likely to yield unreliable analyses of the surveyed topics. This problem can be mitigated by adopting survey methods that enhance anonymity and respondent cooperation. One possibility is to create a trustful and confidential relationship between the interviewer and the survey participants. Alternatively, it is possible to fully protect privacy by adopting indirect questioning procedures that elicit information without posing sensitive questions directly. We consider both above-mentioned possibilities showing the results of a real study which explores the effectiveness of the randomized response crossed model proposed by Lee et al. (2013) to produce prevalence estimates for two sensitive traits, cannabis use and its legalization.

Markers of emotionality in Russian news coverage of the 75-th anniversary of WWII Victory

The article explores how emotionality is manifested in the news texts covering politically sensitive topics, using as the case study coverage of the 75th anniversary of WWII Victory in news programmes of the Russian TV Channel One, Russia TV and RT. Proceeding from the key theoretical assumption of medialinguistics defining media texts as an integral unity of verbal and media components, the author singles out and analyzes markers of emotionality at both - language and media levels, paying special attention to lexis and the way it is supplemented by illustrations and video footing. The analysis of the news flow is based on the information model, which allows to structure the process of news formation according to the following stages - selection of events for news coverage, interpretation of facts, shaping images, forming stereotypes and cultural-ideological context. The goal of the study was to identify markers of emotionality and analyze how emotionality affects the interpretation and the perception of facts, paying special attention to realization of the category of broadcasting style defined as the tone of voice, or tonality news media use when addressing their audience. Conceiving emotionality as both explicitly manifested and implicitly present quality, the study singles out its three types as represented in the analyzed media texts - 1) specific pretentious style, used by newsreaders and commentators to stress the dignity and solemnity of the event; 2) deliberate affectation disguised as emotionality on the part of news anchors while presenting topically sensitive news items; 3) emotionality as spontaneous display of sincere emotions observed in interviews, dispatches of correspondents and commentaries of the participants of the events. The results of the study could serve as a basis for further analysis of emotionality markers in different types of media discourse, including news, commentary and debate on politically sensitive issues in traditional media and social networks.

Estonia will secularise faster than the other Baltics

Significance Lithuania is the most religious: the predominant Roman Catholic Church’s socio-political influence has been increasing regarding the still-sensitive issues of LGBT+ and women’s rights. Patriarchal values are helping traditional religious entities regain influence in Latvia. Estonia is the most successful in separating religion and politics. Impacts In Latvia and Lithuania, religious and social conservatism will together hinder gender equality. The outlook for gender equality and human rights is better in Estonia. The president’s Catholicism will align Lithuania’s EU stance more towards Poland, its larger Catholic neighbour. Vilnius’s Jewish heritage -- culture, festivals, food and drink, and the surviving synagogue-- will attract West European tourists.

The Relationship Between Social Media Digitalization and Coronavirus Disease 2019 Fear Among Service Sector Employees

In the age of digitalization, social media has played a significant role in quickly spreading the news about current affairs. From December 2019 to now, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), with its several mutated shapes, has more transmissible potential catastrophe and has become a severe phenomenon issue worldwide. The international spread of the epidemic has created fear among people, especially employees working physically in different organizations. The present research aimed to measure the impact of social media on its users in the China. The social media users more often were influenced by shocking news instructively and destructively. The research analysis was based on service sector employees and data collected from 630 respondents via a structured questionnaire. This research was confirmed the negative impact of fear on social media on the performance of employees. This research was also confirmed the moderation impact of the COVID-19 vaccine on the relationship between social media fear and employee performance. This research recommends that the China Censor Board checked the news and its validity to reduce the fear of COVID-19 among employees. This research will become a roadmap for organizations and media controllers to understand the impact of social media during an intense situation. The telecommunication sector will reduce psychological disease and enhance the work capability of employees by controlling unnecessary and unapproved material about sensitive issues.

The art episteme of national self-identification in the context of postcolonial cultural trauma

At the turn of the millennia, the narrative of the art sciences was enriched by an extensive analytical polylogue: from eschatological forecasts of the end of the crisis of theories and practices to the multicultural utopias of “global art”. A solid sector in this context is made up of trans-disciplinary studies of the problems of national self-identification and the revision of regional art epistemes in the new geocultural realities, in particular, those refracted in the field of postcolonial trauma of national consciousness discourse. This aspect is especially relevant for the countries of the post-Soviet space, because their cultural and artistic development is under the pressure of two equally traumatic paradigms: the Russification one belonging to the past, and the Westernization paradigm that declares itself to be the manifestation of democratic freedoms. However, each of them leads to amnesia in the historical and cultural memory of nations, threatening to collapse. Only a careful study of the causes and consequences of this civilizational phenomenon, as well as the study of the negative impact of the market ideology of the culture industry, will help to avoid depersonalization of national arts and cultures, while preserving the possibility of indigenous flourishing in the future. The article pinpoints the pain points identifies the sensitive issues in solving this problem by contemporary artists and critics from different countries, including Ukraine, leaving open the final effective fixation of the situation, which increases the catastrophic bifurcation by unstable development

Rapport Management in Online Racial Humor

The present paper aims to investigate how racial humor, posted on Twitter affects rapport between interlocutors at both the interpersonal and intercommoned levels. Thus, the main problem this thesis attempt to address is English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) users' potential lack of awareness of the racially sensitive issues and how to deal with them in (online) intercultural communication. The paper aims to advance the understanding as to how the social and technological affordances of the medium (Herring, 2007) can shape the contexts in which racial humor is morally perceived and attitudinally assessed (in terms of politeness and impoliteness) by the audience on Twitter. After in-depth reading and a systematic coding process, a dataset totaling (312) racial jokes and (956) responses from various users, racial jokes circulated online were found to orient rapport either towards challenge or enhancement. These two rapport orientations were found to be (im)politeness-implicative on two different levels; the interpersonal level between the account administrator and his/her followers, and the societal level between social groups targeted by racial humor and the dominant social group in the society.

Assessing Deception in Questionnaire Surveys With Eye-Tracking

Deceit often occurs in questionnaire surveys, which leads to the misreporting of data and poor reliability. The purpose of this study is to explore whether eye-tracking could contribute to the detection of deception in questionnaire surveys, and whether the eye behaviors that appeared in instructed lying still exist in spontaneous lying. Two studies were conducted to explore eye movement behaviors in instructed and spontaneous lying conditions. The results showed that pupil size and fixation behaviors are both reliable indicators to detect lies in questionnaire surveys. Blink and saccade behaviors do not seem to predict deception. Deception resulted in increased pupil size, fixation count and duration. Meanwhile, respondents focused on different areas of the questionnaire when lying versus telling the truth. Furthermore, in the actual deception situation, the linear support vector machine (SVM) deception classifier achieved an accuracy of 74.09%. In sum, this study indicates the eye-tracking signatures of lying are not restricted to instructed deception, demonstrates the potential of using eye-tracking to detect deception in questionnaire surveys, and contributes to the questionnaire surveys of sensitive issues.

Area, Extent, and Restriction of Fundamental Rights During the Special Legal Order, with Exceptional Regard to the Epidemiological Situation in the Territory of the Slovak Republic

The Slovak Republic, as other countries around the world, was affected by the coronavirus pandemic in the first half of 2020. This epidemiological situation has had a substantial social impact on the basis of which it was necessary to take measures that affected the daily lives of individuals. To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, states have often been forced to apply restrictions that were on the verge of acceptance in terms of respect for fundamental rights. Interference with such sensitive issues as fundamental rights and the adaptation of urgent and immediate measures to minimise the spread of the coronavirus had to be effective and conform to the requirements of balance and mutual proportionality. In 2020, the Slovak Republic, as many countries, faced difficulties in the fight against the coronavirus. This paper focuses on this global problem, the steps taken by government officials in the Slovak Republic, and the theoretical basis for respecting and exercising fundamental rights in this area. The aim of the introduction of this professional article is to present the anchoring of fundamental rights and freedoms in the context of revolutionary events. The purpose of the remaining portions of this expert article is to explain and analyse the related and most discussed legal facts that have had a social impact following the discovery of the coronavirus in the Slovak Republic. An additional intention is to elucidate and generalise the solutions that have been introduced in the fight against the pandemic while noting the actual steps taken by the government over time.