Importance of Big Data and Hadoop in E-Servicing

Consumers are spending more and more time on the web to search information and receive e-services. E-commerce, e-government, e-business, e-learning, e-science, etc. reflect the growing importance of the web in all aspects of our lives. Along with the tremendous growth of online information, the use of big data has become a vital force in growing revenues. Consumers are today shopping multiple products across multiple channels online. This transformation is substantial and many of the e-commerce companies have now turned to big data analytics for focused customer group targeting using opinion mining for evaluating campaign strategies and maintaining a competitive advantage, especially during the festive shopping season. So, the role of intelligent techniques in e-servicing is massive. This chapter focuses on the importance of big data (since there is a large volume of data online) and big data analytics in the field of e-servicing and explains the various applications, platforms to implement the big data applications, and security issues in the era of big data and e-servicing.

Will Live Streaming Platforms and Influencers Consolidate or Disrupt Democracy?

New communication technologies have enabled politicians to interact and engage with their constituents constantly and unmitigated by mainstream media. Among them, emerging live streaming platforms rise as an essential political communication tool. However, in consolidating politicians' base, these technologies similarly run the risk of polarizing the society, resulting in disruption and healthy development of democracy. This case study describes and examines the role of live streaming platforms and influencers in generating political participation to account for the success of President Tsai Ing-wen's 2020 re-election campaign in Taiwan. This study focuses on the roles of live streaming platforms and influencers in contributing to the growing and alarming global phenomenon of populism and polarization associated with politicians' campaign strategies. This study also discusses whether the employment of live streaming influencers as a viable political communication tool in this campaign may ultimately contribute to the democratic deepening in Taiwan.

Strategi Kampanye Joko Widodo dan Ma'ruf Amin dalam Debat Calon Presiden pada Tahun 2019

This article aims to describe the political campaign strategy of Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin in the presidential candidate debate in the 2019 presidential election. The problem is focused on the campaign strategy carried out by the PDI-P party to support the political debate agenda against the presidential candidates Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin. In order to approach this problem, Nursal's theoretical reference is used to use the theory of political campaign strategy. The selection of this theory in this study is because it is more suitable to describe the findings of political campaign strategies for the candidate pairs Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin in the 2019 presidential candidate debate that can attract sympathy or gain support as described in the preliminary study. The data were collected through interviews and analyzed qualitatively. This study concludes that in the implementation of the presidential candidate debate in the 2019 presidential election, the political campaign strategy applied by PDI Perjungan to support Joko Widodo and Ma'ruf Amin, one of which is the marketing of political products through the mass media. First, strengthen the material. Second, observing the target and determining the target for the political debate. Third, approach the media throughout the media, including media that are affiliated and unaffiliated.

John Lewis and the Durability of Transcendent Race Politics

John Lewis's civil rights activism in the 1960s often obscures the fact that he won elective office as a racially moderate politician. Scholars have long noted the efficacy of using deracialized, or racially transcendent, campaign strategies to get elected, despite normative concerns. These strategies were critical to electing Black governors, senators, and even President Obama. However, in the age of Black Lives Matter, some have questioned the continued usefulness of the strategy. Using Rep. Lewis's life as a guide, I examine the ways that some Black politicians continue to use deracialization, even in this racially charged social and political moment, and I explain how younger cohorts of Black politicians challenge this approach. Ultimately, I argue that while deracialization is a contested strategy, its efficacy has not diminished. Rather, Black politicians have expanded the boundaries of what constitutes racially transcendent politics to include consensus issues like voting rights, which while highly racialized, are not likely to induce an erosion of support among non-Black Democratic voters.

COVID-19 Vaccine Early Skepticism, Misinformation and Informational Needs among Essential Workers in the USA

This study presents the results of a survey of 1591 hesitant U.S. essential workers, conducted over Pollfish in December 2020 when they were the only group eligible for the vaccine, aiming to describe their concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccine safety, effectiveness and distribution policies. We computed frequencies using the SAS software for each answer, using chi-squared statistics and Cochran–Armitage trend tests to determine how informational needs differ by age, gender, level of education, race, source of COVID-19 information and levels of vaccine acceptance. The results of this study show that freedom of choice, equal access to the vaccine and being able to live a life with no restrictions once vaccinated were important concerns since the early days of the distribution campaign, with 53% (836/1591), 42% (669/1591) and 35% (559/1591) of hesitant respondents, respectively, indicating they would be more likely to receive the COVID-19 vaccine if they felt these issues were satisfactorily addressed. Early risk communication and immunization campaign strategies should address not only the reported efficacy and safety of new vaccines, but, as equally important, the population’s perceptions and beliefs regarding personal choice, effectiveness and adverse consequences.

Advancing the agenda for people-centred accountability of the private healthcare sector

The thematic track on accountability of the private and corporate healthcare sectors during the Community of Practitioners for Accountability and Social Action in Health (COPASAH) Global Symposium aimed to analyse the emergence of the global trend of commercialisation of health systems, and the transition of healthcare from being a public good to a marketable commodity, at the cost of publicly funded healthcare in developing countries. It examined the implications of the lack of state regulation and oversight which has enabled the profit driven private healthcare sector to exploit vulnerable people through overcharging, malpractices and violations of patient’s rights. Finally, the session addressed challenges in advocacy of patients’ rights and showcased effective campaign strategies used by health activists in different countries to promote accountability of the private healthcare sector. Putting together learnings and insights from this track will help in contributing towards a powerful global counter-narrative, while providing activists with the tools to create awareness and engage with this critical issue.

Covid-19 #Takeresponsibility: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Select NCDC’s Online Public Health Advertising Campaign

This article examines the Nigerian Center for Disease Control’s (henceforth, NCDC) Covid-19 #TakeResponsibility online public health advertising campaign. This is with a view to exploring how the representational, interactive and compositional resources are realized in these advertising visuals as well as their communicative functions. Forty purposively selected data samples, which were subjected to qualitative analysis, are examined from a multimodal discourse analytical approach. The analysis reveals that the narrative, transactive, action, offer, and the frontal resources, among others, are realized in the adverts. These resources interactively perform the directive, informative, reinforcing, preventive, cautionary and collective functions. Thus, the representational, interactive and compositional resources deployed in the NCDC’s Covid-19 #TakeResponsibility online visuals discursively cohere as multimodal public health campaign strategies geared towards sensitizing the Nigerian populace on the safety guidelines to adhere to in containing the spread of Covid-19 in Nigeria.

Euroscepticism and the use of negative, uncivil and emotional campaigns in the 2019 European Parliament election: A winning combination

Are Eurosceptic parties more likely to run negative, uncivil and emotional campaigns, as it is often intuitively argued? And with what consequences? In this article, we shed light on the effectiveness of these campaign strategies for Eurosceptic parties during the 2019 European elections. We argue that ‘harsher’ campaigns are ‘in character’ for Eurosceptic parties, and are as such more likely to be electorally successful for them. We use data from the 2019 European Parliament Elections Expert Survey, covering 191 unique parties, and show that, indeed, Eurosceptic parties are more likely to campaign in a harsh way, and more likely than Europhile parties to benefit electorally from it. All data and materials are openly available for replication.

Gender differences in politicians’ Facebook campaigns: Campaign practices, campaign issues and voter engagement

The study pursues a line of inquiry into male and female candidates’ political campaign strategies on Facebook, drawing a sample from the 2019 National elections in Greece. The findings suggest that both genders disseminate one-way campaign information and address a wider palette of political issues than the ones typically associated with their gender. Some stereotypical patterns regarding traits and issue expertise seem to persist; females are more expressive in terms of visual content and use of emoticons, choose personalization and dialogic communication more frequently and emphasize culture and women’s issues. Men are more often associated with negative campaigning, prioritize “masculine” issues such as employment and foreign affairs, and generate a greater level of user engagement. The results indicate that social media do not constitute an alternative communication channel that equalizes existing power structures. Instead, they seem to reflect the status quo and may hinder women candidates’ efforts to gain visibility and communicate with the public.

An Array of Influential Factors for Analyzing Policy Advocacy

This article presents an analytic approach to assessing the relationship between policy advocacy activities and outcomes for discrete episodes of advocacy, using a holistic array of factors that affect the relationship between advocacy and policy change. The factors pertain to not only advocacy organizational structure and strategies, but also the policy environment, the policy issue and available options to address it, and technical assistance that advocates receive. By focusing on the entire context in which advocates operate, this approach can be used to assess both advocacy campaign strategies and the broader contextual factors that contribute to advocacy outcomes. The array of factors also facilitates analytic generalizability across advocacy episodes, as evaluators can compare the role of similar factors across advocacy efforts. This analytic approach is illustrated by its application to a multiple case study evaluation of Voices for Healthy Kids.