Power, Media and Development: A Study of the Solomon Islands

<p>Development donors spend millions of dollars a year on Media Development. Supporting the growth of a free and pluralistic media is being heralded as an integral part of working towards good governance and democracy in developing countries. It is seen as a technology transfer, apolitical and worthy. This research seeks to explore development donors’ use of Media Development as part of an overall stateVbuilding strategy. It has investigated this by looking at the history and contemporary experience of the growing Media Development sector. It has uncovered growing unease around the priorities of the programmes used in this area. There are charges that its religious adherence to the commercialised neoliberal model of media threatens to marginalise the poor. There are concerns that Media Development is seen by donors as a way of training the ‘watchdog’ to oversee the funds that they no longer have control over in the new aid modality. This research is grounded in the Solomon Islands where a relatively new local media is the subject of a Media Development programme. This is a country that wears the labels of a ‘least developed nation’ and, in the recent past, a ‘postVconflict country’ and a ‘failed state’. The thesis is an attempt to get a snapshot of the Solomon Islands’ media and its relationship with aid donors by exploring these ideas with journalists, civil society, the main media assistance programme, commentators, and villagers living outside of the capital of Honiara. While the majority of the contributors see a Western model of media as inevitable with globalisation, there would appear to be an appetite for conversations around a more indigenised media that engages more fully with the local reality. There is an identifiable gap in research in this area of Media Development as a donor tool.</p>

Power, Media and Development: A Study of the Solomon Islands

<p>Development donors spend millions of dollars a year on Media Development. Supporting the growth of a free and pluralistic media is being heralded as an integral part of working towards good governance and democracy in developing countries. It is seen as a technology transfer, apolitical and worthy. This research seeks to explore development donors’ use of Media Development as part of an overall stateVbuilding strategy. It has investigated this by looking at the history and contemporary experience of the growing Media Development sector. It has uncovered growing unease around the priorities of the programmes used in this area. There are charges that its religious adherence to the commercialised neoliberal model of media threatens to marginalise the poor. There are concerns that Media Development is seen by donors as a way of training the ‘watchdog’ to oversee the funds that they no longer have control over in the new aid modality. This research is grounded in the Solomon Islands where a relatively new local media is the subject of a Media Development programme. This is a country that wears the labels of a ‘least developed nation’ and, in the recent past, a ‘postVconflict country’ and a ‘failed state’. The thesis is an attempt to get a snapshot of the Solomon Islands’ media and its relationship with aid donors by exploring these ideas with journalists, civil society, the main media assistance programme, commentators, and villagers living outside of the capital of Honiara. While the majority of the contributors see a Western model of media as inevitable with globalisation, there would appear to be an appetite for conversations around a more indigenised media that engages more fully with the local reality. There is an identifiable gap in research in this area of Media Development as a donor tool.</p>

Oral Health Care of Older Adults in Hong Kong

The older adult population is increasing both in number and in proportion worldwide. In Hong Kong, the number of people aged 65 or above is expected to reach 2.5 million in 2039, thus becoming one-third of the population. With this growing population, the need for dental care among older adults is expected to surge. Oral health care is one of the government’s core policy agendas and the Department of Health has emphasised its importance. It has implemented a number of policies, such as increasing the number of dental training places, setting up an expert group for oral health care policy planning, and conducting regular oral health surveys of the population. It is subsidizing several programmes, including the Elderly Health Care Voucher Scheme, Community Care Fund Elderly Dental Assistance Programme, Outreach Dental Care Programme, and Comprehensive Social Security Assistance Programme, in order to promote oral health care in older adults. These programmes have received support and positive feedback from both the public and dental service providers. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the oral health care of older adults in Hong Kong and recommendations to enhance their effectiveness.

The impact of COVID-19 on an employee assistance programme in a multinational insurance organisation: Considerations for the future

Orientation: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has led to an increased focus on the effectiveness of employee assistance programmes (EAPs).Research purpose: To evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the value, utilisation and scope of an EAP within the South African insurance sector.Motivation for the study: Higher levels of stress and anxiety experienced by employees because of COVID-19 has necessitated the need to better understand the reasons for EAPs utilisation and its effectiveness within organisations.Research approach/design and method: The study provided an overview of employee well-being and an overview of the origins and evolution of EAPs. The study utilised thematic analysis to analyse 1002 cases with a sample of n = 907, pre-and post-onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.Main findings: The utilisation of EAPs increased because of COVID-19, yet the reasons for accessing these programmes remained largely consistent before and during COVID-19. At a sub-theme level, the priority of themes differed across the time periods influenced by external context and circumstance.Practical/managerial implications: The study found a need to clearly define employee well-being and reposition the role of EAPs within the organisation. Organisations need to broaden the scope of EAPs and through continuous education and awareness create an environment where employees feel like they can safely access these services.Contribution/value-add: The study contributes towards the current literature on employee well-being and providing a perspective on the relevance, value and utilisation of EAPs before and during a pandemic.

The Importance of Considering Debt and Young Children in Activation: A Survival Analysis of Return to Welfare

While there has been much research on welfare exit and entry into employment, less research has looked at return to government assistance. Applying survival analysis on data from a national government assistance programme in Singapore, we found two important factors of welfare return to which activation programmes need to pay greater attention. First, return was more likely if former beneficiaries accumulated a higher number of types of arrears rather than higher dollar values of arrears. This new finding contributes to the emerging literature on bandwidth tax, and suggests the importance of designing programmes that relieve mental accounting due to debt and poverty. Second, return was more likely if respondents had an infant or toddler child. This points to the importance of a range of support policies including affordable and accessible childcare, exemption from work requirement in receipt of welfare, and family leave for low-wage workers.

Biden blamed as federal assistance programme ends

Headline UNITED STATES: Unemployment assistance programme ends

The technological obstructions of asylum: Asylum seekers as forced techno-users and governing through disorientation

This article deals with the technologies and apps that asylum seekers need to navigate as forced hindered techno-users in order to get access to asylum and financial support. With a focus on the Greek refugee system, it discusses the multiple technological intermediations that asylum seekers face when dealing with the cash assistance programme and how asylum seekers are obstructed in accessing asylum and financial support. It explores the widespread disorientation that asylum seekers experience as they navigate un-legible techno-scripts that change over time. The article critically engages with the literature on the securitization and victimization of refugees, and it argues that asylum seekers are not treated exclusively as potential threats or as victims, but also as forced hindered subjects; that is, they are kept in a condition of protracted uncertainty during which they must find out the multiple technological and bureaucratic steps they are requested to comply with. In the final section, the article illustrates how forced technological mediations actually reinforce asylum seekers’ dependence on humanitarian actors and enhance socio-legal precarity.

SURVIVAL CAUSAL PATTERNS OF SOCIAL AND COMMERCIAL ENTREPRENEURIAL INITIATIVES IN SPAIN

This research aims at analysing the influence of a holistic configuration of factors related to industry and the characteristics of the entrepreneur and the business, on the survival of social and commercial entrepreneurial initiatives in both, new and consolidated companies. The sample ranges from 2,851 to 2,109 firms, according to the period considered, and has been obtained from the reports of the projects submitted to the Assistance Programme to Young Entrepreneurs, promoted by the Valencian Institute of Youth. Other sources of information have been the Institute’s own reports and the Chambers of Commerce. A configurational analysis is performed using the Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The results obtained show that there is no necessary condition by itself and that there are several sufficient solutions that explain a considerable percentage of survival cases. They also show how the solutions vary significantly and, consequently, the relevance of the different causal antecedents, when the company acquires greater maturity.

Analysis of the problem of preservation and development of psychological health of a pedagogue in Russian educational organisations

The review examines the problem of psychological health of pedagogues in Russian educational organisations – schools, colleges, universities, boarding schools. The analysed and structured modern literature data on psychological studies of pedagogues' health in various educational institutions of Russia noted their specificity and similarities. The work will raise the issue of the importance of monitoring the current state of pedagogues; such indicators of psychological ill health as emotional burnout, mental maladjustment, depersonalisation are considered. There has been a steady growth and disappointing dynamics of an increase in the number of pedagogues experiencing professional burnout. The options for providing psychological support to pedagogues of schools and universities were considered (individual and group trainings; self-reflection sessions; study of special literature); the result of approbation of the psychological assistance programme was evaluated. Possible prospects for the development of the Medical University of Nizhny Novgorod in the context of the problems of preserving and developing the psychological health of a pedagogue are noted. It has been established that the targeted use of a complex of psychological measures that preserve and develop the health of pedagogic workers not only affects the state of the participants in the educational process, but also guarantees the effectiveness of their activities, thereby determining the success of the education system as a whole.