Super-Spreaders or Victims of Circumstance? Childhood in Canadian Media Reporting of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Critical Content Analysis

This qualitative research study, a critical content analysis, explores Canadian media reporting of childhood in Canada during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Popular media plays an important role in representing and perpetuating the dominant social discourse in highly literate societies. In Canadian media, the effects of the pandemic on children and adolescents’ health and wellbeing are overshadowed by discussions of the potential risk they pose to adults. The results of this empirical research highlight how young people in Canada have been uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Two dominant narratives emerged from the data: children were presented “as a risk” to vulnerable persons and older adults and “at risk” of adverse health outcomes from contracting COVID-19 and from pandemic lockdown restrictions. This reflects how childhood was constructed in Canadian society during the pandemic, particularly how children’s experiences are described in relation to adults. Throughout the pandemic, media reports emphasized the role of young people’s compliance with public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and save the lives of older persons.

Thermal Percolation Behavior in Thermal Conductivity of Polymer Nanocomposite with Lateral Size of Graphene Nanoplatelet

In this study, the thermal percolation behavior for the thermal conductivity of nanocomposites according to the lateral size of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) was studied. When the amount of GNPs reached the critical concentration, a rapid increase in thermal conductivity and thermal percolation behavior of the nanocomposites were induced by the GNP network. Interestingly, as the size of GNPs increased, higher thermal conductivity and a lower percolation threshold were observed. The in-plane thermal conductivity of the nanocomposite containing 30 wt.% M25 GNP (the largest size) was 8.094 W/m·K, and it was improved by 1518.8% compared to the polymer matrix. These experimentally obtained thermal conductivity results for below and above the critical content were theoretically explained by applying Nan’s model and the percolation model, respectively, in relation to the GNP size. The thermal percolation behavior according to the GNP size identified in this study can provide insight into the design of nanocomposite materials with excellent heat dissipation properties.

Critical Praxis Through a Social Media Ecosystem

The use of social media in language education is evident in the plethora of online content generated by education organizations. Teachers and learners alike have used platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram to access and disseminate learning content in the forms of text, images, podcasts, and videos. However, despite the prevalence of social media in the language-learning sector, its pedagogical use has been limited to learning language features. This chapter analyzes the potential use of an ecosystem of social media platforms to augment varied modes of TESOL instruction, namely live, online, and hybrid, through a critical lens in higher and adult education. The integration of critical content and critical thinking development in social media platforms, in which authentic content is directly consumed, co-created, and disseminated, enables TESOL teachers to help learners become aware of how power shapes information, how to resist coercion, and challenge the status quo.

Comprehensive Sex Education Addressing Gender and Power: A Systematic Review to Investigate Implementation and Mechanisms of Impact

Background Delivered globally to promote adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health, comprehensive sex education (CSE) is rights-based, holistic, and seeks to enhance young people’s skills to foster respectful and healthy relationships. Previous research has demonstrated that CSE programmes that incorporate critical content on gender and power in relationships are more effective in achieving positive sexual and reproductive health outcomes than programmes without this content. However, it is not well understood how these programmes ultimately affect behavioural and biological outcomes. We therefore sought to investigate underlying mechanisms of impact and factors affecting implementation and undertook a systematic review of process evaluation studies reporting on school-based sex education programmes with a gender and power component. Methods We searched six scientific databases in June 2019 and screened 9375 titles and abstracts and 261 full-text articles. Two distinct analyses and syntheses were conducted: a narrative review of implementation studies and a thematic synthesis of qualitative studies that examined programme characteristics and mechanisms of impact. Results Nineteen articles met the inclusion criteria of which eleven were implementation studies. These studies highlighted the critical role of the skill and training of the facilitator, flexibility to adapt programmes to students’ needs, and a supportive school/community environment in which to deliver CSE to aid successful implementation. In the second set of studies (n = 8), student participation, student-facilitator relationship-building, and open discussions integrating student reflection and experience-sharing with critical content on gender and power were identified as important programme characteristics. These were linked to empowerment, transformation of gender norms, and meaningful contextualisation of students’ experiences as underlying mechanisms of impact. Conclusion and policy implications Our findings emphasise the need for CSE programming addressing gender and power that engages students in a meaningful, relatable manner. Our findings can inform theories of change and intervention development for such programmes.

The involvement of Western Balkan terrorist-fighters in armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq

The primary purpose of this article is to explain the meaning and consequences of foreign fighters’ participation from Western Balkan countries (WB6) in armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq. In the first part, the issue of foreign fighters is discussed in historical terms. The author focuses on the examples of the Soviet inva-sion of Afghanistan and the ethno-religious conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the second part of the text, the definition framework of foreign fighters’ concept and its evolution towards foreign terrorist-fighters is dis-cussed. Then, a detailed analysis of the main problem is conducted, and several research questions are an-swered: 1) What is the scale of the phenomenon of Balkan volunteers (e.g., their number, the structure of origin, and others) in comparison to fighters from other regions? 2) What are their motivations and goals, and what are their recruitment process and ways of moving into the war zone? 3) What is the threat posed by returning fight-ers to the security of the Western Balkans, and how do individual states counteract this phenomenon? The au-thor uses mainly the following research methods: critical content analysis (literature, scientific articles, docu-ments, reports, press materials), and historical and comparative analysis. The author’s visits to this country in 2018-2020 constituted an essential contribution to the part concerning the case of Kosovo.

Race Without Gender? Trends and Limitations in the Higher Education Scholarship Regarding Men of Color

The underrepresentation and underperformance of men of color relative to women of color within institutions of higher education have been extensively studied the past 20 years. The purpose of this study is to understand trends in how this research has been conducted rather than understand “best practices” to support this student population. To achieve this, we reviewed 153 pieces of scholarship from 1999 to 2019 using an intersectional and critical content analysis approach. Findings revealed that the bulk of scholarship involved onetime interviews for its empirical foundations, and the overwhelming majority centered the racial experiences of Black and Latinx men. In contrast, few analyses critically explored gender, sexual orientation, or social class. Additionally, scholarship that centered Asian American, Indigenous, multiracial, and trans* men of color was scant or nonexistent. Given these large gaps in the knowledge base, we offer guidance for the next generation of men of color in higher education scholarship in terms of analytical foci, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies.

Tara in Vajrayana Buddhism: A Critical Content Analysis

Tara is both a Buddhist and Hindu deity. She is widely worshipped in the esoteric branch of Buddhism: Vajrayana. Even in the exile, Tibetan refugees follow the practice and rituals associated with Tara. Lamentably, she has been given an auxiliary and secondary role in comparison to male deities. Various feminist scholars have begun to look at aspects of society through the lens of gender. They have been at the forefront of studying gender roles and its psychological consequences for those who try to abide by them. In religious studies, especially in Asian context, many of these discourses are difficult to perceive because they were unconsciously appropriated as truth by the people of the society in which they circulated as an inviolable aspect of the worlds or as nature. This study is an attempt to examine the representation of Goddess in various ancient texts as essential to the study of the divine feminine. This hybrid study merges traditional Indology with feminist studies, and is intended for specialists in the field, for readers with interest in Buddhist, and for scholars of Gender studies, cultural historians, and sociologists.

AESTHETIC INSTRUMENTATION FOR FORMING IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: THE PHENOMENON OF THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

The article is devoted to the study of the experience of using aesthetic tools in the formation of national groups. The object of the research is the state anthems, as a concentrated manifestation of the self-interpretation of the political community. The methodology of this article is based on constructivism, which interprets nations as imaginary communities and focuses the attention of the researcher on the practice of using soft technologies of collective integration. It`s addressed to the problem of using literary texts in the processes of collective integration made it possible to include not only representatives of political, but also creative elites in the list of subjects of social engineering. It has been proved that the political significance of the national anthem is manifested through "texts` violence". It`s the ability of the ruling circles to transmit group values to the subordinate array, which is achieved due to the legislative consolidation of a generally binding status for a certain text and due to the aesthetic impact on the consciousness of members of the community. The research methodology is presented by the using the procedures of the comparative method. It was carried out in such clusters as: justification of the right to exist (source of legitimation), "We are the image" of the commonality, common heroes, imaginary geography. It was achieved the identification of statistical patterns and features of the studied text arrays with analytical procedures for critical content analysis of the national anthems of European states. The results of the study confirmed the effectiveness of the procedures and tools of social engineering as one of the scenarios for the creation of national collectives in the European cultural area, substantiated the expediency of using the approved methodology to identify the cultural means of the nation-building process within the borders of Europe, and revealed the prospects of its application in relation to countries of the non-European cultural area.

A Pragma-Stylistic Approach to Analysing Proverbs: A Review of Some Selected Proverbs in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God

African artworks, to be specific, literature has for quite a long time now demonstrated African tradition and culture. One major African literary tool that has maintained its efficacy in the African cultural heritage is the use of proverbs. Proverbs have been diversely used to perform several functions in the African traditional setting. Among such functions are: confirming opinions, warning, showing regrets, doubts, justifications and many more. This paper seeks to examine some selected proverbs from Chinua Achebe’s novels – Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. Significantly, one can conclude that the style of a writer can go a long way in determining the reception and authenticity of his works. Chinua Achebe has extensively employed proverbs in his works as a tool for setting out or revealing his characters, themes and many others. This study is a pragma-stylistic approach to the analysis of proverbs used by Achebe in the selected novels. The researchers focus primarily on the style, meaning and function of the proverbs used in the selected texts. A critical content analysis method is employed for this study to determine the functions of the proverbs within the context of the novel. This study brings to the fore the very nature of African proverbs, specifically the Igbo of Nigeria and reveals the various functions ascribed to these proverbs. This will provide readers with the necessary knowledge on the very reasons why some proverbs are used and will ignite the research impetus of some researchers to further investigate other approaches to proverbs. This study has contributed immensely to the existing literature on pragma-stylistic studies and the understanding of a pragma-stylistic approach as a theoretical concept with a unique focus on analysing African proverbs. Keywords: Achebe, Proverbs, Pragmatics, Pragma-stylistics, Stylistics