Islam in the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2020 in Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The article is a monitoring of the main events concerning the Muslim community of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2020 based on content analysis of text materials from government reports, press releases, websites and social media pages of Islamic organizations. The pandemic that began at the end of 2019 and the lockdown introduced in Russia demanded that Islamic communities adapt to new conditions. The danger of the spread of COVID-19 has reduced the internal confl ict in the Islamic environment and the public’s attention to the problems of radicalism. The drop in mosques attendance was off set by the development and use of digital resources in religious activities. At the same time, limited contacts, reduced offl ine events and meetings contributed to strengthening the new course of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Republic of Bashkortostan towards decentralization and regionalisation. The activities of the Central Spiritual Administration of Russia, located in Ufa, remained without change on a national scale.

How IT Investments Help Hospitals Gain and Sustain Reputation in the Media: The Role of Signaling and Framing

Practice- and Policy-Oriented Abstract Understanding how IT investments help organizations to build and sustain reputation is of particular relevance for healthcare practitioners and policy makers because patients are often unable to assess the quality of care, relying instead on the reputation of health service providers in the media, such as newspapers. As information intermediaries, journalists detect, aggregate, and translate the weaker signals for quality, such as state-of-the-art IT, that a hospital emanates. Our analysis of 152 hospital organizations in England, complemented by interviews with healthcare journalists, shows that journalists write less negatively about hospitals when healthcare organizations’ IT equipment investments are high. This implies that investments in IT equipment can buffer hospitals from negative press, thereby helping them to gain and maintain a strong reputation in the media. Practitioners and policy makers may incorporate the reputational effect of IT when making investment decisions and further amplify such IT investment through press releases, corporate reports, and media interactions.

Industry updates from the field of stem cell research and regenerative medicine in October 2021

Latest developments in the field of stem cell research and regenerative medicine compiled from publicly available information and press releases from nonacademic institutions in October 2021.

Avoidance and engagement: Do societal problems fuel political parties’ issue attention?

An important part of political parties’ competition for votes is to what extent parties avoid or engage the issues that rival parties talk about. Despite a large literature on this topic, it remains largely unknown when parties engage. Drawing on research on political attention allocation and party behaviour, this study argues that societal problems are a central source of issue engagement: The engagement is due to a pressure to not ignore electorally important problems. The analysis shows that issue engagement emerges because parties address the same issues in a negative development. Moreover, and particularly important for the issue engagement, parties attend more to a negative development if other parties already attend to the development, particularly at elections. The argument is tested across 16 issue areas through the collection and coding of 5523 press releases from seven parties in Denmark at a quarterly level from 2004 to 2017.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Trends in Clinical Trials: A Multi-Region and Global Perspective

To evaluate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical development, the number of newly started clinical trials in each geographical region between January 2018 and December 2020 were calculated based on data from the ClinicalTrials.gov database. Data regarding new drug applications were obtained from European Medicines Agency monthly reports, pharmaceutical company press releases, and the archives of the Drugs.com database. The mean percentage change in newly started clinical trials for diseases other than COVID-19 between each month in 2019 and the corresponding month in 2020 was −7.5%, with the maximum of −57.3% observed between April 2019 and April 2020. Similarly, the mean percentage change of reported results for each month in 2019 and 2020 was −5.1%, with the maximum of −27.4% observed in July 2020. The activity of clinical trials was decreased as the number of COVID-19 patients was increased, and a statistically negative correlation was observed between the prevalence of COVID-19 and the percentage decrease in the number of clinical trials stared or reported results. As for new drug submissions, decreases were observed in the latter half of 2020 compared with the same period during the previous year, for each indicator. A considerable decline in non-COVID-19 activity for all indicators regarding clinical developments was suggested during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to recognize the situation and continue to make efforts to conduct clinical trials for both COVID-19 and no-COVID-19 for new medical developments in the future.

Analysis of Some Common Misconceptions Regarding the Profession of Liaison Interpreting

The aim of the article is to present some of the problems related to the professionalisation of interpreting from the perspective of the public misconceptions about this occupation. An analysis of three press releases published online shows, that the terms “interpreting” and “translation” are used quite often to describe any form of communication occurring between two languages, rather than a profession, even if no third, mediating party is present. This may suggest low social consciousness regarding liaison interpreting and a need to consider the public image during the professionalisation process of this occupation.

News Reporting: Substitution of Functions

The issue of journalistic functions fulfillment by the modern mass media is considered. The authors examined a number of news reports in socio-political online media and found some cases where the classic functions of journalism such as informing and controlling were substituted by PR functions. The content analysis revealed an alarmingly large number of pseudo journalistic reports, which mainly aimed to create and maintain a positive image. The reason why journalism is losing its value is the lack of professionals representing the public interest. The analysis shown a high number of publications, based on (practically unchanged) press releases, that is common to a number of media and clearly illustrates the unprofessionalism of the authors of pseudo news. The regional media have to monetize its activity, so the matter of finance wins over the matter of beliefs. However, the media and, in particular, journalism is quickly losing public credibility. In general, we are witnessing the undermining of classical journalistic creativity and the merging of this concept with other wider categories of public relations.