Materialistic Values and Impulsive Behavior in the Purchasing Process between Genders

The research investigates the relationship between gender, materialistic values, and impulsive behavior with fashion clothing involvement. Furthermore this study investigates different decision-making styles and the influence of the marketing mix to the purchasing process. A survey was conducted with a sample of 295 consumers. Factor analysis using principle components with varimax rotation was used. Also, the Kruscall-Wallis test was conducted in order to reveal interactions and relationship between different variables. According to research findings young adults have developed materialistic values and therefore material goods are used as symbols by them. The reinforcement of a person's self-image is probably a motivation that plays significant role in individuals purchasing decisions. Thus consumers are engaged in non-planned purchases, which are considered as impulsive. Moreover, men are those who are more involved with fashion clothing in order to bolster their self-image. However women are those who appear to be more impulsive in their purchasing decisions.

Before Smart Phones and Social Media

Using social media platforms to document excessive police force at times of social unrest has become common practice among protestors around the world, from Cairo, Egypt to Ferguson, USA. Smart phones and social media have become indispensable tools to demonstrators as they organize, communicate, express dissent, and document any police brutality aimed at them. This chapter discusses the function of mobile communication technology as tool of sousveillance through an analysis of camera phones and the user-generated images in the mid-to-late 2000s. It argues that camera phones facilitated lateral surveillance and sousveillance practices, enabling ordinary individuals to watch social peers or those in power positions, albeit in non-systematic, non-continuous and spontaneous ways.

Citizens, Policy Co-Production, Politics, and the Public Sphere

In this chapter the contextual, political and design features of policy co-production are assessed. Public consultations remain high-risk/high gain for governments, citizens and the administration. Successive Australian governments have encouraged the Australian Public Service (APS) to support citizen-centric policy formation. In 2011 under a progressive Labor government, two approaches to design of public consultations were successful: the Clean Energy Legislation Package, and the Digital Culture Public Sphere and Discussion Paper. In 2014, a newly elected conservative government made an unsuccessful attempt to consult on amending s18c of the Racial Discrimination Act (1975). Theoretically, the constructivist approach combines the literature on modes of e-government research, citizens as agents in policy, e-government success factors and participatory media, with evidence of institutional reform thinking, and the illustrations of practice and outcomes provided by the three case studies. Methodologically, the data is drawn from public domain materials.

Voicing the Subaltern in the Public Sphere

The voice of the subaltern is barely ever heard in the traditional historical-ethnological museum. Aiming to break the constraints and limitations of the traditional museum sphere, Alemu Eshetie, an Israeli based artist of Ethiopian origin, has created a museum dedicated to the Ethiopian Jewish community that functions as a traveling “public sphere”. Through these strategies the Museum wishes to establish a “dialogical methodology” that will voice the ‘Ethiopian' subaltern and thus foster his empowerment. By using ethnographic fieldwork that followed the activities held by the Museum in the 4th grade at a multiethnic and disadvantaged school in Israel, this chapter examined the ways in which students of Ethiopian origin chose to voice themselves in the public sphere created by the Museum, and the social and educational meanings attached to their voice. Hence findings suggest that the social construction of the subalterns' personal voice within the public sphere can expose racial and social inferior position and thus work against the aims it means to achieve.

Online Activism and the Arab Public Sphere

YouTube has enabled new forms of political dissent in Arab societies. This article examines the development and rise of YouTube in the Arab world. In particular, it looks at how this video exchange site is invigorating the online public sphere's vigorous demand for political reform and respect for human rights. Specifically, this investigation explores how social networking capabilities have made YouTube an effective asset in dissidents' arsenal among Arab activists. To examine the vibrancy of this fledgling online public sphere, the chapter scrutinizes how activists incorporated YouTube videos to shed light on human rights abuses, specifically police abuse, corruption, and brutality in two Arab countries, Egypt and Morocco. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the new campaigning modes that the Internet and YouTube have facilitated.

In Putin's Russia, Information Has You

This chapter outlines the practices of state control over Internet content in Russia and highlights their grounding in the information culture and media environment of the country. Building on existing data on freedom of the press and online censorship, the text explores the socio-cultural context of Kremlin's considerable influence on the Web. To this end, three relevant spheres of power relations are explored. The first one involves censorship and self-censorship routines embedded in the Russian information tradition. The second pertains to the state-controlled mainstream media where news goes through a political filter and the framing of Internet's role in the Russian social life is predominantly negative. The third domain concerns local legislative frameworks and their selective application. The analysis suggests that most of the tools used to control objectionable materials on the Russian Web are not Internet-specific. Rather, they can be seen as a natural extension of the censorship mechanisms used in traditional media.

The Four Paradigms of Archival History and the Challenges of the Future

In the multi-millennial history of archives four successive paradigms can be distinguished. In the archival systems that can be designated respectively as entitlement-attestation, national, public, and global ones, their primary or new objectives, key institutions, specialists and target audience as well as applied information technologies and characteristic problems show significant differences. Alongside enduring elements of continuity new key features, functions and impacts appear, which together fundamentally change the actual role and ideology of archives. With an information-centered approach, this study attempts to include the most important characteristics of these respective archival paradigms in one coherent system, with a brief overview of the challenges the archives of the future may face.

Israel's Higher Education Innovation Policy

Innovation in Higher Education systems has not been regarded as an important issue by policy makers, education stakeholders and leaders; it seems to be regarded as 'nice-to-have' rather than a necessity. Scientific outputs and research findings can be used as input in national-international policies only if researchers and policy-makers cooperate closely, ensure relevance of topics, and improve communication, dissemination, and implementation of research recommendations. The purpose of this study is to present a clear and systematic description of innovation policy statues in the reality of Higher Education systems in Israel. The research was guided by three principal questions: First, to what extent innovation policy exist in Higher Education and in interface policy systems. Secondly, how to inform policy makers of the vital importance of innovation as a key to economic growth, so they can benefit from a better understanding of the innovation process. Third, how to involve policy makers who are aware of the importance of innovation to push for a policy change.

When the History Turns Stronger than the Rhetoric

The 1990s brought radical changes to Sub-Saharan Africa. In the rhetoric, the ownership mode appeared as a crucial marker of freedom. However, the media mode, inherited from previous phases of social history, seems to change slowly. Old modes reproduce themselves in new media titles disregarding ownership mode. In exceptional cases such as pre-election reporting, ownership mode might have a role: government papers tend to give more support to the existing leadership. In this chapter, evidence is sought from Namibia and Tanzania. The analysis is based on two one-week samples (2007, 2010) of all four papers. In this material, a government paper and a private paper from one particular country resemble each other more than when ownership modes are compared. Bearers of the journalistic culture seem to be media professionals moving from one editorial office to another, but the most decisive factors are the ideals set for journalism.

The Study of Young People's Civic Participation on the Internet

This chapter reviews the body of academic literature about young people's online civic participation. It will first sketch how this literature has developed historically in the context of old and changing scholarly discussions about what civic participation and democratic citizenship more generally do or should envelop. The second section outlines how extant empirical studies on young people's civic participation online may be subdivided into four strands of research, each focusing on different questions and relying on different methods. The closing section provides a number of directions for further research, mostly calling for innovative and more pressing context-specific and people-centered research approaches.