Alternative Outlets Research Articles

Conduits of the Kremlin’s Informational Influence Abroad? How German-Language Alternative Media Outlets Are Connected to Russia’s Ruling Elites

Extant research on alternative media in Western democracies has focused on scrutinizing their content, organization, production, and audiences. However, the extent to which alternative outlets are linked to powerful foreign actors has not yet been analyzed, despite the fact that a plethora of outlets have openly sided with Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, spreading the Kremlin’s propagandistic narratives. To fill this gap, this study adopts a case study approach. It selects Germany as a revelatory case of a key target country of Russia’s foreign influence efforts, raising the question of how and to what extent German-language alternative media outlets are connected to Russia’s ruling elites. Grounded in qualitative analysis of a wide range of documents, this study proposes a categorization that divides the connections into three different types: organizational, media, and personal connections. Subsequently, it is demonstrated that half of the analyzed German-language alternative media outlets maintain at least one of these three types of connections to the Kremlin. These findings contribute to our knowledge of alternative media, as well as Russia’s overt and covert foreign influence operations, the so-called “active measures.” They also highlight the need for more transparency in alternative media landscapes in democratic contexts across the globe.

Bored and spoiling for a flight: capabilities lost and found in lockdown.

Human beings are dynamic; our innate faculties beg to engage in activities. To achieve fullness and human dignity, people "convert" personal capabilities into active "functionings," Amartya Sen explains. This means that staying still is not a normal state. It can feel like punishment. Forced inactivity will generate resentment, resistance, and boredom that can fester until pent-up energy explodes violently, or implodes in depression. Boredom defaults on capabilities and resources in many cases. In other cases, stillness is a gift. It can stimulate the imagination to fill in emptiness with memories and new explorations. Either boredom builds toward doing damage, or it releases energy to think and to create. What people don't do is stay put, mentally or physically. Authorities-including police, judges, teachers, parents -should take this dynamic human condition into account and reconsider the effects of conventional command and control policies. Then they can choose between violence and creativity as alternative outlets for the energy that boredom generates. Short of facing up to human dynamism, decision-making may continue to favor strong-arm tactics, which trigger the violence and pain that policing is meant to mitigate. Is it surprising that apparently peaceful peoplebecome enraged in lockdown conditions? Do adults wonder why students drop-out of school and suffer escalating rates of depression and suicide? Boredom is certainly not the only cause for these disastrous effects, but to ignore it risks remaining complicit with processes that perpetuate personal and collective dysfunctions. Complicity with harmful practices will miss opportunities to channel frustrated energy toward developing human capabilities. Authorities are responsible for promoting peaceful development. We are all responsible.[2] Normally, people stay busy with routine activities. We work, play, attend to family and to friends. Particular activities have even become our public badges of identity, as is evident in surnames (Cooper, Baker, Taylor, Farmer, etc.) that trace back to work that ancestors answered to. Lockdown during COVID-19 meant that many otherwise occupied people had few outlets for energy. Those who knew how to meditate managed to assuage anxiety through contemplation and the pursuit of ideal emptiness.

Choice of a family planning outlet in urban areas: The role of distance and quality of services in Kenya and Uganda.

Quality of care and physical access to health facilities affect facility choice for family planning (FP). These factors may disproportionately impact young contraceptive users. Understanding which components of service quality drive facility choice among contraceptive users of all ages can inform strategies to strengthen FP programming for all potential users of FP. This study uses data from Population Services International's Consumer's Market for Family Planning (CM4FP) project, to examine drivers of facility choice among female FP users. The data collected from female contraceptive users, the outlet where they obtained their contraceptive method, and the complete set of alternative outlets in select urban areas of Kenya and Uganda were used. We use a mixed logit model, with inverse probability weights to correct for selection into categories of nonuse and missing facility data. We consider results separately for youth (18-24) and women aged 25-49 in both countries. We find that in both countries and across age groups, users were willing to travel further to public outlets and to outlets offering more methods. Other outlet attributes, including signage, pharmacy, stockouts, and provider training, were important to women in certain age groups or country. These results shed light on what components of service quality drive outlet choice among young and older users and can inform strategies to strengthen FP programming for all potential users of FP in urban settings.

How do people who smoke perceive a tobacco retail outlet reduction policy in Aotearoa New Zealand? A qualitative analysis

BackgroundAotearoa New Zealand plans to greatly reduce tobacco retail outlets, which are concentrated in areas of higher deprivation and perpetuate health inequities caused by smoking and borne particularly by Māori....

Shaping a career in management: the importance of gendered expectations

ABSTRACT The study focuses on students in professional bachelor programs, how men and women navigate career opportunities after graduation. The research is based on longitudinal data from 969 Norwegian students. A crucial finding is that when men and women have equal expectations of entering a management position, they also attain such positions equally often. The results also reveal that women have equally high ambitions as men, but lower expectations of entering management positions. These findings indicate that perceived barriers reduce women’s choices and make them self-select away from manager positions. The study shows the necessity of a divide between ambitions and expectations and that gendered expectations are formed before graduation. Opposite to what earlier theory suggests, women have not tuned down their ambitions to match their expectations through an irrational and unconscious process. Instead, ambitions stay high and women appear to search rationally for alternative outlets, such as more often expecting master’s degrees.

How Alternative Are Alternative Media? Analyzing Speaker and Topic Diversity in Mainstream and Alternative Online Outlets

Alternative outlets can differ in their degree of partisanship, activism, and their opposition to a perceived news “mainstream.” We expect this could lead to diverging contributions to overall news diversity. We assess how mainstream-like, partisan and activist media differ from mainstream reporting concerning migration and refugee policy in Germany. We combine a manual analysis of speaker diversity in 12 mainstream and alternative outlets (N = 1,172 articles) with a computational topic model (N = 34,819 articles) covering 30 outlets to assess topic diversity. Interestingly, we find no significant differences between mainstream and alternative outlets regarding overall speaker diversity. But our data show differences in which parties get cited, and whether outlets focus on experts, civil society speakers, or migrants themselves. While mainstream media offer higher overall topic diversity, alternative media split along the lines of agenda accommodation and more independent agendas of partisan and activist media.

Emotional profiling and cognitive networks unravel how mainstream and alternative press framed AstraZeneca, Pfizer and COVID-19 vaccination campaigns

COVID-19 vaccines have been largely debated by the press. To understand how mainstream and alternative media debated vaccines, we introduce a paradigm reconstructing time-evolving narrative frames via cognitive networks and natural language processing. We study Italian news articles massively re-shared on Facebook/Twitter (up to 5 million times), covering 5745 vaccine-related news from 17 news outlets over 8 months. We find consistently high trust/anticipation and low disgust in the way mainstream sources framed “vaccine/vaccino”. These emotions were crucially missing in alternative outlets. News titles from alternative sources framed “AstraZeneca” with sadness, absent in mainstream titles. Initially, mainstream news linked mostly “Pfizer” with side effects (e.g. “allergy”, “reaction”, “fever”). With the temporary suspension of “AstraZeneca”, negative associations shifted: Mainstream titles prominently linked “AstraZeneca” with side effects, while “Pfizer” underwent a positive valence shift, linked to its higher efficacy. Simultaneously, thrombosis and fearful conceptual associations entered the frame of vaccines, while death changed context, i.e. rather than hopefully preventing deaths, vaccines could be reported as potential causes of death, increasing fear. Our findings expose crucial aspects of the emotional narratives around COVID-19 vaccines adopted by the press, highlighting the need to understand how alternative and mainstream media report vaccination news.

Deep learning applications in manufacturing operations: a review of trends and ways forward

PurposeDeep learning (DL) technologies assist manufacturers to manage their business operations. This research aims to present state-of-the-art insights on the trends and ways forward for DL applications in manufacturing operations.Design/methodology/approachUsing bibliometric analysis and the SPAR-4-SLR protocol, this research conducts a systematic literature review to present a scientific mapping of top-tier research on DL applications in manufacturing operations.FindingsThis research discovers and delivers key insights on six knowledge clusters pertaining to DL applications in manufacturing operations: automated system modelling, intelligent fault diagnosis, forecasting, sustainable manufacturing, environmental management, and intelligent scheduling.Research limitations/implicationsThis research establishes the important roles of DL in manufacturing operations. However, these insights were derived from top-tier journals only. Therefore, this research does not discount the possibility of the availability of additional insights in alternative outlets, such as conference proceedings, where teasers into emerging and developing concepts may be published.Originality/valueThis research contributes seminal insights into DL applications in manufacturing operations. In this regard, this research is valuable to readers (academic scholars and industry practitioners) interested to gain an understanding of the important roles of DL in manufacturing operations as well as the future of its applications for Industry 4.0, such as Maintenance 4.0, Quality 4.0, Logistics 4.0, Manufacturing 4.0, Sustainability 4.0, and Supply Chain 4.0.

Whom to trust? Media exposure patterns of citizens with perceptions of misinformation and disinformation related to the news media

This study tests how perceptions of misinformation and disinformation in one’s general news media environment relate to media trust and media consumption patterns, relying on survey data from 10 European countries. The results show that perceptions of misinformation and disinformation are both related to reduced trust in the news media. Furthermore, they go hand in hand with reduced consumption of traditional TV news, but with no changes in newspaper and (mainstream) online news use. Finally, those with stronger perceptions of misinformation and disinformation are more likely to consume news on social media and alternative, non-mainstream outlets. This pattern is stronger for those with higher perceptions of disinformation. These findings indicate that news users who distrust the veracity and honesty of the news media may turn to alternative outlets that reflect anti-establishment worldviews.

Alternative Media, Alternative Voices? A Quantitative Analysis of Actor Diversity in Alternative and Mainstream News Outlets

abstract Alternative news media are largely independent players in the news environment, which allows them to publish more alternative, and possibly more radical, news content. Do they utilise their independence to display actors that are underrepresented in the mainstream news? And does it affect the actor diversity in their news coverage and the journalistic environment as a whole? This study scrutinises the differences in actor diversity and actor presentation in articles published by alternative and mainstream news media to gauge if alternative media are more one-sided and if they contribute to the external actor diversity of the news environment. We analyse a sample of news articles on migration and social affairs published by two mainstream media and four alternative outlets. Despite limited differences in article-level actor diversity between alternative and mainstream news media, our findings highlight that right-wing and left-wing alternative media exploit their editorial independence differently to highlight other actor categories. Left-wing alternative news media present more civil society actors, while right-wing alternative news outlets pay more attention to right-wing politicians and parties. Thus, alternative news media are not that different in terms of internal actor diversity, but they modestly advance the external actor diversity in the news environment.

Understanding Audience Engagement with Mainstream and Alternative News Posts on Facebook

Facebook is an integral part of the American news environment. Substantial numbers of users now seek or encounter news on the platform and news organizations depend on the site to build audiences and drive traffic to their websites. At the same time, Facebook has also become a space for people to engage alternative sources of news and political information, including highly partisan and ideological sources. Yet we know relatively little about the types of news sources Americans engage with most frequently on the platform. In this study, we evaluate the scope of news and information sources on Facebook, including engagement with these sources. We analyse nearly 12 million Facebook posts from 416 news organizations between 2012 and 2017. We find that the sources that receive the most user engagement are often the most ideologically extreme. We also find that alternative outlets that are politically conservative frequently get more engagement, which may provide them an outsized presence on users’ newsfeeds.

Fate of Postharvest Woody Debris, Mammal Habitat, and Alternative Management of Forest Residues on Clearcuts: A Synthesis

Coarse woody debris on the forest floor contributes to maintenance of forest biodiversity and long-term ecosystem productivity. Down wood is often dispersed over harvested sites during logging activities, thereby leaving piles of postharvest debris as “excess” material at landings and roadsides. These wood residues may be burned in most jurisdictions in North America to reduce a perceived fire hazard. The fire hazard debate needs to acknowledge the documented benefits of woody debris retention while striking a balance among biodiversity, bioenergy, and alternative uses for debris, while reducing ignitions by humans. The burning of excess woody debris also creates smoke, causes the release of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and creates human health issues, particularly for vulnerable individuals. The relationship of wildfire smoke to human health problems is well documented. However, there is no scientific evidence showing that postharvest debris piles are ignition points for forest fires, other than those caused by humans. Wood residues from forest harvesting or natural disturbance wood from wildfire and insect outbreaks may be used as renewable biomass “feedstocks” that could help improve energy supplies and reduce GHG emissions. If not marketable, the management of postharvest debris should seek alternative outlets that do not dispose of debris by burning, but still meet fire hazard abatement requirements. The construction of woody debris structures (e.g., piles and windrows) built at the time of forest harvesting and log processing, or later at the site preparation stages, has positive benefits for wildlife habitat and forest biodiversity. A windrow or series of piles may connect patches and reserves of mature forest and riparian areas on clearcut openings. Piles and windrows have consistently provided habitat on new clearcuts for southern red-backed voles (Myodes gapperi) and Microtus voles, as well as a host of other forest-floor small mammal species, at least up to 12 years postconstruction. Woody debris provides important habitat for foraging and cover attributes for marten (Martes americana), weasels (Mustela spp.), and other furbearers. A list of “What to do?” and “When and Where?” with options for construction of woody debris habitats: poorest, good, better, and best are given. In the cases where fire risk from humans is minimized and there are no marketable wood products, eight alternative management scenarios for postharvest woody debris are provided. These include: (1) piles for wildlife habitat; (2) distribution of debris in partial cut forests; (3) machinery to break up and crush debris; (4) protection of riparian zones with barriers for cattle; (5) construction of range fencing; (6) reclamation of landings and skid-trails; (7) soil fertility and reduction in weed competition and drought for planted conifers; and (8) slope stabilization and revegetation. Advantages and disadvantages (if known) are given for each alternative. A flow chart for the fate of excess postharvest woody debris with respect to fire hazard abatement and markets or nonmarkets is given.

STRUCTURING ARTISTIC CREATIVITY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF A ‘CREATIVE CITY’: Urban Sculpture Planning in Shanghai

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between institutional environments and individual artists’ artistic creativity to provide an understanding of the ‘creative city’, using urban sculpture planning in Shanghai as a case study. I argue that political censorship alone will not stifle artist's creativity: when authoritarian power interacts with elite social networks and permits a certain form of market economy, artistic creativity becomes concentrated on the technical aspects of artistic representation and can be channeled towards utilitarian projects in service of the community and the creative economy. A less open or tolerant institutional setting results in a type of ‘structured creativity’—this refers to novel ideas and artistic expressions that emerge in the process of seeking valuable alternative outlets when facing political constraints. ‘Structured creativity’ characterizes the ‘creative city’ in countries such as China. The implication is that such ‘structured creativity’ contributes to the economy in terms of traditional statistical indicators, but is problematic in other ways. Richard Florida's ‘creative city’ thesis simplified the relationship between social conditions, creativity and economy; similarly, the complexity of this relationship has been overlooked in the critical literature about this topic.

Victory, Defeat, Gender, and Disability: Blind War Veterans in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Abstract This article examines the intersection between disability, gender, victory, and defeat in interwar Czechoslovakia. We look at a small but prominent group of disabled veterans: men who lost their sight fighting in the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War. These veterans, unlike men who had fought in the pro-Entente Legionary divisions, were not celebrated in official and patriotic discourse in the First Republic. They had to find alternative outlets to express their place in society as disabled men. Through analysis of the most important associations for blind veterans, interwoven with a series of case studies, we consider how disability weakened, but did not completely remove, the social and cultural barriers that existed in interwar Czechoslovakia between “victorious” and “defeated” war veterans. We also analyze a series of literary and professional responses to blindness that show how blind veterans’ masculinity was renegotiated in the wake of their disability. Blind war veterans were considered throughout Czechoslovak society as the embodiment and the epitome of the disabled subject; their experiences thus speak more generally to the manner in which disability was experienced as a socially enforced category in Czechoslovakia.

Determinants of Market Outlet Choices of <i>Tef</i>

In Ethiopia, specifically in Dendi district tef is cash crop for majority of the smallholder farmers. and the supply of tef in the study area still can’t satisfy the existing market demand and the farmers are not benefited from the market price. This study was aimed at analyzing the factors affecting market outlet choices of tef producers in Dendi district. The study largely uses primary data that were collected through structured and semi-structured questionnaire. Both descriptive statistics and econometric models were used. Multivariate probit model was used to identify the determinants market outlet choices. From descriptive statistics result six tef marketing channels are identified in the district. The multivariate probit model result indicated that educational level of household head, household size, livestock owned, equines owned, land area under tef, distance to the nearest market and current market prices of tef significantly influenced tef producers’ choice of alternative market outlets. The probability of choosing wholesalers, consumers, collectors and cooperatives outlets are 64.4%, 41.6%, 39.1% and 51.1%, respectively. Wholesalers is the most likely chosen market outlet while collectors are the less likely chosen market outlet. The joint probabilities of the households to jointly choose the four market outlets was 4.1% which is lower than the likely of not choosing all market outlets which is 5.2%. Therefore, strategies aiming at promoting tef producers’ marketing and outlet choices should focus on strengthening the technical skills, resource base, infrastructural and institutional capacity of smallholder farmers.

Reassessing China’s Growing Presence in the Arctic:

This paper intends to provide an analytical framework to interpret China’s growing presence in the Arctic from the perspective of world-system theory. I have set up the analytical framework from the following four aspects. Firstly, China’s externalizing behavior in the Arctic region is governed by the internalized law of value of the modern world-system, i.e., the endless accumulation of capital. Secondly, China has benefited and is still benefiting from the division of labor, with Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and most recently the Arctic serving as a relatively subordinated resource periphery. Thirdly, driven by a strong upward mobility, China has leapfrogged the periphery and semi-periphery and gained a semi-core position with an upward trend towards the core, by offering a favorable external environment to the Arctic (invitation to promote). Lastly, since the world-economy is currently in a Kondratieff B-phase, China, as an emerging global core power, is logically dedicated to the relocation of productive activity and the probability of alternative profitable outlets, where the Arctic is highly compatible. Keywords: China, Arctic, world-system theory, endless accumulation of capital, division of labor, upward mobility, Kondratieff B-phase

Connecting the (Far-)Right Dots: A Topic Modeling and Hyperlink Analysis of (Far-)Right Media Coverage during the US Elections 2016

The 2016 US election and the victory of Donald Trump are closely connected to a perceived rise of the far-right in the United States. We build upon public sphere and alternative media theory to discuss the relevance of alternative media for the US (far-)right and whether the election period and the candidate Trump allowed far-right alternative media to establish themselves in the (far-) right networked public sphere. We investigate whether it has come to a convergence of topics between the right and the extreme far-right. We analyze the topics nine right-wing outlets, ranging from Fox News to the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, covered in 2015/2016 during the US presidential election. We show through topic modeling of 21,919 articles how Breitbart established itself as a media outlet between the extreme far-right and mainstream right by both covering more extreme and more classic conservative topics. We show through time series clustering how Breitbart and Fox News converged in their coverage of Islam and immigration. Finally, we show through hyperlink analysis that the connection between the far-right and the mainstream right is mostly one-sided; while the alternative outlets link to more established ones, the established outlets mostly ignore the outlets from the far-right.

Parasocial relationships with disliked television characters, depressive symptoms, and loneliness among older adults

ABSTRACTThis study considered how older adults’ parasocial relationships with disliked television characters predict depressive symptoms and loneliness, as well as how attachment styles and real-life romantic relationship quality moderate these associations. Adults aged 55 and older reported on their most disliked television character and romantic relationship functioning in a self-administered survey, and hierarchical multiple regressions were used to test the data. Results revealed that older adults with low attachment avoidance and low-quality romantic relationships demonstrated the largest increases in their depressive symptoms and loneliness as their antagonistic parasocial relationships increased in intensity. Applied implications of these findings are considered, such as alternative outlets to which older adults with low attachment avoidance and low-quality romantic relationships might turn (e.g. community volunteering, relationships with children, grandchildren, and friends) if their romantic and parasocial relationships are not conducive to fostering mental well-being.

Alternative outlets for sustaining photosynthetic electron transport during dark-to-light transitions

Environmental stresses dramatically impact the balance between the production of photosynthetically derived energetic electrons and Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle (CBBC) activity; an imbalance promotes accumulation of reactive oxygen species and causes cell damage. Hence, photosynthetic organisms have developed several strategies to route electrons toward alternative outlets that allow for storage or harmless dissipation of their energy. In this work, we explore the activities of three essential outlets associated with Chlamydomonas reinhardtii photosynthetic electron transport: (i) reduction of O2 to H2O through flavodiiron proteins (FLVs) and (ii) plastid terminal oxidases (PTOX) and (iii) the synthesis of starch. Real-time measurements of O2 exchange have demonstrated that FLVs immediately engage during dark-to-light transitions, allowing electron transport when the CBBC is not fully activated. Under these conditions, we quantified maximal FLV activity and its overall capacity to direct photosynthetic electrons toward O2 reduction. However, when starch synthesis is compromised, a greater proportion of the electrons is directed toward O2 reduction through both the FLVs and PTOX, suggesting an important role for starch synthesis in priming/regulating CBBC and electron transport. Moreover, partitioning energized electrons between sustainable (starch; energetic electrons are recaptured) and nonsustainable (H2O; energetic electrons are not recaptured) outlets is part of the energy management strategy of photosynthetic organisms that allows them to cope with the fluctuating conditions encountered in nature. Finally, unmasking the repertoire and control of such energetic reactions offers new directions for rational redesign and optimization of photosynthesis to satisfy global demands for food and other resources.

Deviant Cyber-Sexual Activities in Young Adults: Exploring Prevalence and Predictions Using In-Person Sexual Activities and Social Learning Theory.

Technology has shifted some human interactions to the virtual world. For many young adults, sexual encounters now occur through virtual means, as social media, picture exchanges, sexually explicit Web sites, and video chatting have become popular alternative outlets for these activities to occur. This study used the self-report responses of 812 undergraduate students (282 men and 530 women), collected from an online survey. In addition to using 10 personal demographic control variables, this study used five sexual activity/relationship characteristics (number of sexual partners, relationship status, age to first use pornography, frequency of sexual activity/intercourse, and frequency of masturbation), and the four constructs of Akers' social learning theory (identified as differential association, differential reinforcement, imitation/modeling, and definitions favorable) to predict a seven-item count of deviant cyber-sexual activities, and two measures of "sexting" behaviors. Gender, self-esteem, sexual orientation, race, and religion were strongly significant predictors in the models, but Akers' four elements of social learning performed the strongest in predicting the two measures of sexting and the overall deviant cyber-sexual activities scale. This finding indicates that peer associations and peer reinforcements have a strong influence on individuals' willingness to engage in deviant cyber-sexual activities. This study explored different avenues for young adults' engagement in sexual deviancy and the results suggest that sexual behaviors performed in-person may not be the strongest predictors of online sexual behavior.