On the Methodological Basis of Storytelling as a Mechanism of Collective Consciousness Manipulation

This Thematic Special Issue on Policy Change and Policy Dynamics has as its main objective to present and discuss agenda setting, one of the most important issues for the study of public policies and the policy process. The agenda setting approach proposes an analytical approach on pre-decision processes to understand broader developments in public policy. To achieve that, it places the attention at the center of political action and relies on the fact that it is the change in attention that would cause, consequently, change in public policy. One of the most relevant aspects on the studies of policy agendas and policy change considers the diffusion occurred in the years 2000 with the application of its theoretical and methodological approaches to different societies and political systems beyond the United States. Consequently, another important achievement in the studies of agenda setting and policy change must be highlighted: studies of public policies in comparative perspective. Although agenda-setting studies have grown significantly in the international academic community, there are still some important points to be better explored. The intent of this Themed Special Issue of RAP is to contribute with the growing agenda-setting studies by highlighting the processes of policy changes and policy dynamics.

This Thematic Special Issue on Policy Change and Policy Dynamics has as its main objective to present and discuss agenda setting, one of the most important issues for the study of public policies and the policy process. The agenda setting approach proposes an analytical approach on pre-decision processes to understand broader developments in public policy. To achieve that, it places the attention at the center of political action and relies on the fact that it is the change in attention that would cause, consequently, change in public policy. One of the most relevant aspects on the studies of policy agendas and policy change considers the diffusion occurred in the years 2000 with the application of its theoretical and methodological approaches to different societies and political systems beyond the United States. Consequently, another important achievement in the studies of agenda setting and policy change must be highlighted: studies of public policies in comparative perspective. Although agenda-setting studies have grown significantly in the international academic community, there are still some important points to be better explored. The intent of this Themed Special Issue of RAP is to contribute with the growing agenda-setting studies by highlighting the processes of policy changes and policy dynamics.

The dangers of a post-truth world

Зроблено спробу актуалізувати увагу на еволюції публічної політики як системі заходів реалізації інтересів держави і суспільства шляхом використання значного потенціалу громадських організацій. Застосування даного виду об’єднань громадян як організації суспільно корисної дії, на нашу думку, сприятиме синергічному ефекту сучасного українського державотворення. Наголошено, що завдяки вдосконаленню демократичної практики відносини держави і громадянського суспільства набувають нової якості з метою реалізації синергічних цілей усіх зацікавлених у розвитку держави суб’єктів. Автор дійшов висновку, що практика використання якісних ознак публічної політики сприяє реалізації інтересів усіх громадян, зокрема і шляхом ефективного залучення до співпраці громадських організацій.

Managing public policy issues

In the Brown decision of 1954, the United States Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.1 In this and in succeeding decisions, the Court called for a qualitative change in public policy from dual or racially segregated school systems to unitary or desegregated systems. While these decisions resulted in a dismantling of the legal foundations of segregated education, they often failed to alter significantly the actual racial balance of students attending public schools. Racial isolation continued with the vast majority of black and white students attending schools primarily with members of their own race.3 In time, Federal Courts began to require quantitative changes in the racial balance of schools as a test of qualitative change.4 In its attempts to enforce school desegregation, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare has similarly focused on quantitative indicators of change in the racial composition of schools.5 Despite the fact that legal and administrative decisions concerning school desegregation have rested increasingly on quantitative concepts, little attention has been directed toward the development of a uniform and rigorous method for measuring school desegregation. The purpose of the present article is to suggest such a measure.

This project documents the traditional practice of chin tattooing in California, as seen through Indigenous eyes and told through Indigenous voices. As a descendant of two California tribes, the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians Acjachemen Nation and the Mutsun Ohlone tribes, I acknowledge that there is a lack of information on the subject from an Indigenous point of view. To remedy this, I have developed a web-based product which includes digital stories of tattooed California Indians and is a centralized location to access educational material on the practice of traditional tattooing in California, as well as California Indian history. I have conducted personal interviews with California Indians throughout the State to illustrate the range of this cultural tradition. I then edited ten of the oral stories, to include photos of these individuals, into digital storytelling videos that illustrate the traditional knowledge (TK) that is involved in earning the right to bear these distinguished tribal markings. TK methodologies, Indigenous methodologies, as well as decolonizing methodologies are employed to establish an educational product based on Indigenous place-based philosophy. Comparisons with other Indigenous communities that are revitalizing these traditional forms of identity are also highlighted. The practice of cultural tattooing is a practice that was common among most of, if not all the tribes in California prior to colonization (Rose 1979). The chin tattoo is an important marker of identity and coming of age within the Indigenous communities of California. The application of this indelible identity marker came with ceremony, song, ritual practices, Protocols , and responsibility as a wearer. During the multiple phases of colonization of California, whether it be Christianity, the Gold Rush, assimilation or any other period that affected California Indian culture, this practice was banned and nearly lost. Prior to it being banned, only sparse ethnographic information was collected on the topic of chin tattooing. The limited amount of ethnographic information and the fact that the Indigenous people passed information orally, make the revitalization effort difficult but not impossible. In response, this project has employed visual storytelling (digital storytelling) and combines traditional ways of passing knowledge with modern technology. Using this form of storytelling, along with the capabilities of social media, this visual storytelling project has the ability to educate thousands of people on the history and revival of this indelible marker of tribal identity. A visual narrative (also visual storytelling) is a story told primarily through the use of visual media. The story may be told using still photography, illustration, or video, and can be enhanced with graphics, music, voice and other audio. The return of passing information through oral means is a way to decolonize the process of ethnographic documentation, while simultaneously respecting Indigenous ways of passing knowledge. Through interviewing Indigenous women and men in California, we can learn more about the importance of this traditional practice across different Native communities of California. As a Native scholar and cultural practitioner, I was able to obtain interviews from the interviewee’s personal perspective and highlight the tattoo revitalization that is currently happening in Native California.

The main idea behind this research paper is that modern information and communication technology could be better made to serve human beings, if we could specify more precisely the process of human thought and action. The cognitive stages of rational thinking has been studied from the user interface and product point of view but there does not seem to be any generally accepted model for the dynamics involved in cognitive stages in literature. In addition, a few studies have investigated the cognitive stages in rational thinking process from human centric point of view, i.e. how the skills are actually learned.

While traditional religious faith is impacted by modern rational thinking and scientific technology, people nonetheless pursue spirituality or transcendence. The fact that mythology is disenchanted by the rationalization of the society does not mean people no more aspire to be touched and satisfied deep within their souls. Though modern culture is different from traditional culture in the way of expression, there is still profound spiritual need or transcendental aspiration within human nature or human culture itself. In face of the great progresses made by contemporary religious philosophy and modern religious theories, the pioneering of the modern theories of traditional local religions is indeed confronted with a brand new situation full of challenges and possibilities. In view of the research on the doctrines of religious philosophy in the academic circle, the writer studies particularly Confucianism and Christianity, Here, we list and comment on the religious views of three representative scholars of modern philosophy. The humanist moral religion of the New-Confucian, Zong-san Mo, is a humanist Confucianism informed by the doctrine of mind; Archbishop Kuang Lo's theism is a Christianity fused philosophy of life; and the complete humanism of Professor Chun-yi Tang, a contemporary New-Confucian, is a Confucianism that returns to the unity of heaven and man. The writer implicitly tries to fit the three religious interpretations appropriately into the doctrinal framework of the modern dialectical interpretations about the unity of heaven and man.

Fertility differential, public policy, and development

In the women entrepreneur management environment, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are internal and external efficiency tools. Therefore, this chapter determines if the dimensions of the variable “incorporation of ICT in: Basic ICT stage, ICT development stage, ICT maturity stage,” improve the management of the entrepreneur women in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) located in Guanajuato, Mexico. This is done using a quantitative approach, with a descriptive, correlational and regression analysis of a sample of 133 enterprising women. The results show that the stages of incorporation of ICT, along with the size of the MSME, influence their management. This chapter aims to raise awareness among governments (state and federal) about the situations of these MSMEs to promote the change in public policies and establishing training programs to empower entrepreneur women with tools such as ICT, giving them the opportunity to strengthen their decisions, conduct e-business and increase the creation of jobs.

Traditional Chinese sports culture is facing both opportunities and challenges in the omni-media era. Diversified communication channels have freed the communication of traditional Chinese sports culture from the limitations of geographical space, and unprecedented changes have taken place in the subject, audience, form, and technology of communication. In recent years, although traditional Chinese sports culture has made achievements in its international communication thanks to the information technology, the strategies, mechanisms, skills, awareness, methods and channels of communication still need further improvement. By literature research method and questionnaire survey method, the author conducted an in-depth study on the current condition and environment of international communication of traditional Chinese sports, with the aim to unveil the difficulties and regulations during the communication process, and to improve the communication effects based on a reliable theoretical basis.

Social Media has lately witnessed a roller coaster progress, from timidly connecting students to performing countless and chameleonic functions, tailored to the users’ needs, to being a pipeline for vast amounts of data that provided support for infamously ran election campaigns. It has thus equally contributed to changes in social practices, redefining the public sphere, reshaping organizations, voicing the silent actors, while bridging societies to their public institutions and governments to people. Moreover, the current digital transformation is protecting people’s rights, ensuring that all players act safely and responsibly, while technology unites people in a leveled up democratic process, to make change happen. In this context, a plethora of research speaks about raising awareness activities (Stoch& Roodt, 2016), highlighting that digital media can build social capital (Armstrong& Butcher, 2018) or generate collective action (Milan, 2015; Bennett & Segerberg, 2012) in organized “cloud protesting”. More recent research concentrates on activism as a powerful tool for decolonisation (Garbe, 2024) or explores its utility and effectiveness to advance citizens’ voices where the absence of strong institutions is a challenge in transitional democracies, (Saka & Ojo, 2024) through connective emotion.This helps participants digitally organize themselves, even though they sometimes lack an identifying cause (George & Leidner, 2019.) Concurrently, the present paper shows how social media mobilization backed by real public space initiatives and the power of social learning, social support and connectivity have been used in a co-creation campaign aimed at bringing change in Romanian public policy. The tested hypothesis was that social media provides an open, democratic and widely available arena for citizen discussions and involvement in developing public policies, with goal oriented results that serve the public interest, with legitimacy and triggered authority involvement. First we defined collaboration, the co-creation of public policies and their role in actively and directly involving citizens in the governing process, then reviewed literature on social media’s role as a platform for open discussions, drafting and supporting public policies. To gather data and validate the hypothesis we used Zelist Monitor application, to track the activity of the campaign’s Facebook page and analyzed fan metrics, interaction index and responsivity, engagement and sentiment analysis. Results have validated the hypothesis and thus they can further be used in future research, to identify which of the public values can garner enough support for co-creation to occur and thus lead to social change.

Introduction. The relevance of the study is due to the increasing importance and complexity of horizontal public relations in socio-political processes, an increase in the number of practices of grassroots civic activity at the regional and local levels, including the use of new information and communication technologies. The purpose of the article is to identify the causes of initiation, the specifics of the organization and practical implementation of grassroots civic activity, as well as the specifics of the interaction of its key actors in modern socio-political conditions in the Yaroslavl region. Materials and Methods. The empirical basis of the study is 21 practices of grassroots civic engagement in the Yaroslavl region, the analysis of which was carried out by the case-study method with elements of comparative analysis. The case-study method made it possible to study these practices of grassroots civic engagement in their complexity and integrity, and also identified their key characteristics and factors influencing them. Results. A comparison of the main practices of grassroots civic engagement that have taken place in the Yaroslavl region in recent years has been made. The main mechanisms and subjects of grassroots civic engagement, processes of interaction between actors are identified. The role of information and communication technologies in the organization of grassroots civic engagement was determined. The problems of grassroots civic engagement organization and interaction of its key actors were also outlined. Discussion and Сonclusion. The study revealed the key characteristics of grassroots civic activity: significant actors, theirs goals, motives, resources and methods of action, features of media coverage and the use of information and communication technologies. The results of the study will be useful for improving the efficiency of the work of local authorities with various formal and informal organizations and associations of citizens. They will help to build work with these groups, taking into account the identified features in the implementation of practices of grassroots civil initiatives in the Yaroslavl region.

The worldwide shift towards a knowledge society and information based economy requires educational policy makers to re-evaluate their understanding of the knowledge and skills students need in order to achieve national development goals. This shift has influenced curriculum development, teacher preparation, and the role of formal schooling in creating lifelong learners and an educational culture, which reflects both national development interests and global norms. The Arabian Gulf countries, which largely comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries, include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Most of these Gulf countries have embarked on bold national experiments to pilot technology and teaching in their schools as a way to transition to knowledge societies. Their national interests and expectations have increasingly focused on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education and both the regional and global context in which Gulf societies, economies, and political systems operate.