Influential Agenda Research Articles

Data Journalism in the Context of Important Political Events

Data journalism is one way to provide readers with objective and relevant reports. The study ‎is a content analysis of the use of data journalism by Slovak online news portals. The research sample ‎consists of 11,267 articles published during February 2020, February 2019, June 2019 and November‎2019. The aim was to use a quantitative research strategy to determine whether significant policy events ‎have an impact on the higher frequency of data journalism components in domestic news. The results ‎show that data journalism is an integral part of newsrooms. Despite this, the use of data faces several‎ problems, especially in terms of journalists’ lack of skills and experience in this area of journalism. This ‎is also reflected in the limits of the use of data journalism in reporting on an influential agenda that‎ has an impact on public and political life. Newsrooms do not respond adequately to the presence of a‎ significant political and public agenda, which is mainly processed in the form of text articles, while more‎ sophisticated components of data journalism are used only sporadically.‎

Shrinking the Police Footprint

The most influential agenda for progressive police reform today aims to shrink the police footprint by reassigning many problems they currently manage to other institutions. This paper argues that this agenda relies on faulty understanding of the police role, and that a more promising agenda based on a better understanding is available. Police are a residual institution, charged with managing the crises that other institutions cannot handle adequately on their own, and it is not easy to reassign that work to anyone else. In the course of doing it, however, they develop expertise in the nature and sources of these crises that positions them to identify and help repair the institutional failures that generate them. The paper illustrates these claims with case studies of the challenges that efforts to reassign police work elsewhere have encountered and the role that police have played in institutional repair. It concludes by considering he normative concerns that this important aspect of the police role raises.

How States Can Drive the Next Era of Climate Management in India: Perspectives in Mainstreaming Climate Actions from Gujarat

At the September 2019 UN climate action summit, India vowed to upscale its climate action by focusing on a low carbon pathway through renewables and other forms of clean energy, adopting sustainable mobility, preserving water, and securing finances for this transition. Implementing and up scaling these actions form an influential agenda under India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement. The emphasis on national determination and its success strongly hinges on the ambition of the states and the seriousness it has for driving climate actions. The initial step is to streamline such activities at sub-national levels to achieve climate change goals. Indian states, like countries, are too at different starting points with dissimilarities in their economic and developmental interests. Climate priorities took center stage for a few states, while many others have not been too aspirational due to misplaced prerogatives and differing capabilities. Thus, a pertinent question which arises is, could cross-pollination of ideas and innovations push states for concrete climate actions? This paper discusses a few prominent initiatives from the progressive state of Gujarat that could facilitate the exchange of climate measures in other states.

From WeChat to “We set”: exploring the intermedia agenda-setting effects across WeChat public accounts, party newspaper and metropolitan newspapers in China

The sudden emergence of WeChat, particularly its public accounts, drastically altered China’s social media landscape and the ways in which ordinary Chinese people obtain information. However, no study has yet explored whether user-generated content in WeChat public accounts has the potential to influence the agendas of China’s traditional state-controlled media. The present study explores the intermedia agenda-setting effects across WeChat public accounts, party newspapers, and metropolitan newspapers in China. The results showed the following: 1) WeChat and the party newspaper’s agendas were not reciprocal at any time; 2) a significant, although ephemeral, unidirectional effect of WeChat on the metropolitan newspapers emerged; 3) both reciprocal and unidirectional effects were observed on the party newspaper and the metropolitan newspapers’ agendas. The findings provided insights into the conditions under which influential agenda setters can be identified.

Contextualising Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education in the era of the Industrial Revolution 4.0

The Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah is one of the disciplines that has been given a unique space in various fields of study nowadays. Though a plethora of studies touched on Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah, it rarely linked to the area of STEM education. This phenomenon is crucial in ensuring that the education world is in the mould of the Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah while at the same time realising the pure will of the Islamic Legal System. STEM Education in the image of the perfect Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah is believed to be able to shape and produce good people in the future, especially in driving a very challenging industrial revolution. Through a qualitative approach using document analysis, this study attempts to draw out the basics of education by the Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah that can form the perfect and proper thinking. Subsequently, the investigation continued by discussing the elements of the Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah identified in these fundamentals. The paper revealed that four main components identified in this issue, namely, the belief in good faith, noble morals, Sharī’ah-based thinking, and professionalising the world. All of these elements acquired by humans through the process of education. The implication is that the study found that placing the STEM education world in the purview of the Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah should be an influential agenda of national education to drive and meet the challenges of industrial revolution 4.0. Therefore, this effort should be the attention of the national education policymakers who must involve scholars in the field.

Economic inequality: problems and perspectives for interdisciplinary accounting research

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to encourage and advance interdisciplinary accounting research on economic inequality. Design/methodology/approach The authors review prior research into economic inequality, including two new papers in this issue, to identify topics where economic inequality and accounting research intersect. The authors then draw on prior accounting research to identify frameworks accounting scholars already use apposite to analysing these topics. Findings Economic inequality cuts across major accounting topics, including measurement, reporting and tax. Inequality also bears on an influential agenda in interdisciplinary accounting research to hold corporations and states accountable for their impacts. Four prior research frameworks accounting scholars might apply to this agenda are: critical Marxian or post-Marxian; accounting ethics; advocacy; and disclosure studies. Social implications A growing body of social scientific research, as well as influential global institutions, social movements and political debates, raise concerns over inequitable global distributions of wealth and income. The authors explore ways accounting scholars can help redress these inequities. Originality/value While economic inequality affects billions of people, accounting scholarship is yet to give these inequities the attention their scale and social impact merits. The authors suggest ways accounting researchers can make substantive contributions to addressing this issue.

APPLICATION OF FINANCIAL INCLUSIONS IN INDONESIA: A STUDY ON VULNERABLE GROUP

Financial inclusion refers to all efforts aimed at eliminating all forms of price and non-price barriers to people’s access to financial services. Financial inclusion is a national development strategy and an influential agenda. The aims of this research are to examine any informal norms or limitations that affect the realization of financial inclusion. Regulative, normative, procedural, and declarative cognition as relaxed norms are thought to influence the implementation of financial inclusion, especially for vulnerable groups. Financial inclusion aims to encourage economic growth through income distribution, poverty alleviation, and financial system stability. This strategy is targeted at groups experiencing obstacles in accessing financial services, especially groups with the greatest needs and financial services that have not been fulfilled, such as poor people and vulnerable groups, in four different locations in Indonesia. As a result of testing several financial inclusion instruments for 254 respondents in this group, it was found that users of financial institution services, both men and women, had similar roles and needs; though government regulation through normative aspects has a positive effect, the procedural elements hurt financial inclusion. Moreover, government regulation through declarative cognitive aspects (the ability to use the dimensions of memory and cognitive skills) has a positive effect on financial inclusion.

Establishing psychological wellbeing metrics for the built environment

The business case for wellbeing is now an influential agenda in the built environment. Increasing demand for user-centred environments means evidence-based design proven to deliver wellbeing outcomes for end users is essential. The challenge is to effectively capture and disseminate this evidence to a range of expert and non-expert audiences. Further, being able to make the link between increased wellbeing and an increase in the productivity, or performance, of building users requires new definitions and methods. An innovative wellbeing valuation approach is presented, consisting of a multi-item scale to measure and quantify the wellbeing outcomes experienced by building users, and impact reporting techniques using Social Return on Investment to produce transferable, monetised evaluation metrics. This combination has the capability to communicate the value of design in a powerful and accessible manner. Wellbeing valuation metrics represent an opportunity to develop new user-driven knowledge and shape the built environment in positive ways. Practical application: Wellbeing has become an influential agenda in the built environment in recent years, suggesting that user-centred priorities will become increasingly significant to the design and construction sector. The wellbeing valuation approach presented represents an innovative blend of a psychological wellbeing model, quantitative measurement and financial reporting to produce transferable metrics to communicate the value of design in a powerful and transformative manner. Wellbeing valuation is a nascent practice, but it provides the professions with opportunities to collaborate with end users and develop new knowledge about buildings, enhancing the ability of practitioners to shape the built environment in positive ways.

Challenges of Folktale and Fairy-Tale Studies in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: Fascicle by fascicle, volume by volume, over the course of the last forty years, the Enzyklopädie des Märchens (EM) has significantly changed the landscape of folktale and fairy-tale studies. Accompanying the publication of the EM, parallel developments reflected and complemented its influential agenda to promote historical and comparative folk-narrative research. The history of these developments not only illuminates the vitality and interdisciplinary importance that contemporary folktale and fairy-tale studies have achieved; it also helps to identify and explain the challenges we face as we contemplate current research and imagine the field's future. This paper reviews critical developments of the last forty years and then considers how we might come to grips with the ensuing challenge of sustaining, in a responsible way, the comparative study of folktales and fairy tales in a global context.

Choosing an Influential Agenda Setter: The Appointment of the Commission in the European Union

Choosing an Influential Agenda Setter: The Appointment of the Commission in the European Union

Building on What's Already There

Twenty years have passed since release of Boutros Boutros-Ghali's influential agenda for The publication of this document coincided with a rapid expansion in United Nations -mandated complex humanitarian interventions, as well as with new efforts to apply postconflict as an operative framework for restoring and wellbeing to societies fractured by armed conflict. The present anniversary provides an opportunity not just for retrospective thinking about impact of past international efforts, but also for prospective thinking about how next 20 years might be more dynamic and sustainably effective.The advent of as an evolving practice supported by United Nations has created new opportunities for coordinating constructive responses to protracted conflict. Given its aspiration to develop instrumentalities for addressing root causes of violence and establishing foundations for stable peace, represents a significant development in thinking about problems of human insecurity, and helps to shape collective intentionality in ways that support lasting solutions. Nonetheless, deficits and challenges in contemporary practices must be faced squarely if we are to define a new or renewed agenda for decades ahead. Increased international capacity to mitigate organized violence and provide relief to suffering populations has not yet been matched with a corresponding ability to make stick or to avoid dangers and pitfalls associated with large-scale external intervention in fragmented and frague societies. Activities undertaken in name of have often marginalized local actors, proceeded in ways that did not adequately respond to local expectations and needs, and at times replaced one set of problems with another. In many cases, efforts to transplant through international efforts yield disappointing results - a temporary reduction in armed violence, but not a robust and deeply rooted process of reconstruction and social transformation.In light of these challenges, there is a need to acknowledge local agency and empowerment as one of foremost challenges of contemporary practice. If a special commission were to rewrite agenda for peace to incorporate lessons from last 20 years of experience, its authors would be well advised to localize peace - that is, to partner with local actors to tap indigenous resources and energize context- specific processes - as a central goal of 21st century efforts.FROM GALTUNG TO BOUTROS-GHALI AND BEYONDPeacebuilding is a subject and activity that predates work of United Nations' sixth secretary-general, but that was nonetheless substantially influenced by his contributions. In its early uses, term peacebuilding held currency almost exclusively among academic specialists in enterprise known as research. Though research tradition is seldom credited for its impact on Boutros Boutros-Ghali' s formulation, intellectual fingerprints of scholars are readily apparent. An early usage of term can be found in writings of Johan Gaining, who conceptualized it as one of three approaches to peace, alongside peacekeeping and peacemaking. Like Boutros-Ghali, Galtung contrasts with both peacekeeping and peacemaking. He describes peacekeeping as a dissociative path to peace: the antagonists are ktipt away from each other under mutual threats of considerable punishment if they transgress, particularly if they transgress into each other's territory.1 In contrast, Galtung designates peacemaking as the conflict resolution and as the associative approach.2 Critical of traditional approaches to keeping through threat and coercion, Galtung offers a qualified endorsement of conflict resolution approach - provided it is not merely an effort to paper over deep inequalities and divisions - and presents a case for as a process of change that seeks to redress global as well as intra-national structural violence by building nonexploitative structures and infrastructures of peace. …

Agenda Setting from the Oval Office: An Experimental Examination of Presidential Influence over the Public Agenda

Agenda Setting from the Oval Office: An Experimental Examination of Presidential Influence over the Public Agenda

Asian Americans are People of Color, Too. . .Aren’t They? Cross-Racial Alliances and the Question of Asian American Political Identity

Asian Americans are involved in cross-racial community and advocacy coalitions. The article explores the barriers and problems that people in these groups encounter, which impede their progress in sustaining impactful and influential agenda and decisions. The central problem behind this is Asian American’s ambiguous political stance, thereby making coalition partners apprehensive. Asian American’s lack of definitive political identity and how they relate to other racial background pose as a problem to coalition building. A brief look to one of the earliest Asian American immigrants to the US shows that even from the very beginning Asian Americans have occupied a highly ambiguous position in American society. Discussed is the central question of what Asian Americans are fighting for in terms of social justice. Asian Americans need to discuss their political identification and agenda as a way to sustain cross-alliances and to have a secure future in American society. Asian Americans as an internally diverse group explain the difficulty of having a unified voice representing our political stance. Two Asian American grassroots organizations with clear political identities are explored.

Restorative Justice and Collective Responsibility: Lessons for and from the Rwandan Genocide

Genocide struck Rwanda in 1994. Since then, national and international trials have endeavored to promote reconciliation, deterrence, peace, justice, and human rights. This article posits a disconnect between these trials and the attainment of their avowed goals. This disconnect emerges in part from the influential agendas of international lawyers who equate selective criminal prosecution with the "rule of law" and espouse criminal prosecution as the preferred and uniform response to mass atrocity. Creating a presumption in favor of criminal prosecution has dampened the need to explore whether such trials actually are suitable for the particular afflicted society. A socio-legal analysis suggests that Rwanda is precisely a place where constructed notions of what "rule of law" ought to be are supplanting the need to implement reconstructive policies that may be best for Rwanda. In particular, the populist nature of the Rwandan genocide, coupled with the vast level of victimization, suggest that a shame-based restorative approach may be more successful in promoting reconciliation, deterrence, and peace than the guilt-based retributive approach currently in vogue. This article argues that, when the law blames occurrences of genocidal evil largely on the existence of some evil people, it obscures the fact that so many people, to varying degrees of complicity, are required for this evil to result in so many deaths.

Globalization, Governance, and the Political‐Economy of Public Policy Reform in East Asia

In the wake of the crisis that developed in East Asia during 1997, perceptions of the region have been transformed. Critics claim that East Asian political practices and economic structures must be reformed if the region is to prosper in an era of globalization. In short, the region must adopt a different sort of public policy, one associated with an influential agenda of “good governance.” This paper critically assesses this discourse and the predominately “Western” assumptions that underpin it. It is argued that, not only is this reformist agenda likely to be resisted by powerful vested interests, but the institutional infrastructure to support such a style of governance is inadequately developed in East Asia.

The Invention of Middle English: An Anthology of Primary Sources (review)

Short Notices 259 A brief discussion of the different genres involved, the choice and use of different voices, especially where words are attributed to Columbus himself, and the way in which these differences shape the three works' presentation and choice of content adds considerably to the reader's understanding of the texts which follow. This edition clearly corrects and supersedes any earlier printed versions. Sybil M. Jack Department ofHistory University of Sydney Matthews, David, The Invention of Middle English: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Making the Middle Ages), Turnhout, Brepols, 2000; board; pp. viii, 244; R.R.P. EUR50.00; ISBN 2503507697. David Matthews describes this anthology of writings on Middle English as a ki of sequel to his earlier study, The Making of Middle English, 1765-1910 (1999), though we might rather call it a prequel: it presents extracts, often substantial ones, from many of the sources Matthews used when examining the study of Middle English in its broader institutional and social contexts. The earlier book focussed on the individuals Matthews argues had the most formative influence on Middle English as a discipline (Percy, Ritson, Scott, Madden and Furnivall); but was also particularly concerned with the social and cultural contexts in which they developed their influential agendas for scholarship in thisfield.This anthology can offer less detail about those contexts, but it does frame its carefully selected extracts with briefbiographical notes and suggestions for further reading. Matthews'firstsection is concerned primarily with the various attempts to define and describe Middle English as a philological phenomenon. It is interesting to see how far the discipline has been transformed, now that literary studies enjoys almost complete dominance over philology, and when later Middle English are increasingly studied quite separately from early medieval texts. It is also remarkable how little importance Chaucer enjoys in these discussions. In the second section on 'Literary criticism', however, the relative absence of Chaucer is even more marked. As Matthews remarks, it would seem pointless to reproduce material already printed by Caroline Spurgeon, yet the effect of this economy is to reinforce the division between Chaucer and 'non-Chaucer' that 260 Short Notices was a crucial aspect of the development of academic medieval literary studies in the late nineteenth century. This decision does, however, throw less familiar texts into the limelight. Some will be familiar to many readers, such as Ritson's famous condemnation of Lydgate as 'this voluminous, prosaick, and driveling monk' (p. 103). But it is a revelation to read from Scott's introduction to his edition ofSir Tristrem. There are also perverse pleasures to be found in reading these scholars' debates against each other in an era preceding our own very formal academic prose. So, for example, in 1767, Percy condemns the antiquaries 'who have revived the works of our ancient writers' as 'for the most part men void of taste and genius' (p. 77), while in 1783 it was Ritson's rum to launch an ad hominem attack on Percy. The Invention ofMiddle English is a companion volume, certainly, to The Making of Middle English, but like all good anthologies it does not foreclose research; rather, it opens up the history of medieval studies by making so many of its key texts so readily accessible. Stephanie Trigg Department ofEnglish with Cultural Studies University of Melbourne Mazzoni, Cristina, trans., Angela ofFoligno's Memorial (The Library of Medieval Women), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1999; paper pp. xi, 132; R.R.P. US$19.95; ISBN 085991562X. The new translation of Angela's Memorial is a welcome addition to the growi literature about this fascinating thirteenth-century mystic. The full text allows the English reader to place in context the much-cited single passage when she swallows the leper's sore as an imitation of the Eucharist. To many modern tastes, aspects ofAngela's life must seem hysterical or neurotic. However, her biography shows a woman of complexity and deep spirituality, and allows a more complex understanding of a particular w o m a n and her time. Angela has increasingly become the focus of feminist studies and Cristina Mazzoni provides an interpretative essay to explore Angela's Christology in terms ofm o d e m...

A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus's First Voyage (review)

258 Short Notices Lardicci, Francesca, ed., A Synoptic Edition of the Log of Columbus's First Voyage (Repertorium Columbianum 6) trans. Cynthia L. Chamberlin and Blair Sullivan, Turnhout, Brepols, 1999; cloth; pp. xiv, 681; R.R.P. EUR88.00; ISBN 2503508731. This international, multi-volume scholarly work, jointly funded by the USA, Spain and Italy, is bringing together all the currently known texts which relate to the four voyages of Christopher Columbus. Carefully edited from the original surviving manuscripts, they will provide for students everywhere an indispensable and reliable source for study of this turning point in world history. The volumes will be an essential part of every institutional collection which makes any claim to be a specialist historical, anthropological, geographical and linguistic library. There are three texts involved in the present volume, two in Spanish and one in Italian. Thefirstis the summary account of thefirstvoyage, presumably derived from Columbus's original logs. The second is the History attributed to Fernand Colomb, originally written in Spanish but surviving only in an Italian publication published in 1571. The third is the account given by Las Casas. Philological expertise has been applied to the interpretation of the language. The texts have also been translated into English with particular attention to precision of use rather than elegance of style. The disappearance of Columbus's original log books and the disputed history, authorship and relationship of the existing texts have givenriseto much academic debate, often acrimonious, about the reliability ofthe evidence and the extent to which Las Casas may have manipulated material he had collected to serve his purpose of reconciling God's providence with his o w n criticism of the cruel treatment of the Indians whose human dignity he was concerned to defend. This volume provides a synoptic edition of the texts which enables an easy comparison of the representation of particular events in the different texts. A succinct introduction gives a clear overview of the present state of historical debate and stemma to illustrate the possible relationship of the different documents. The editor gives evidence derived from the parallel synoptic texts to support the hypothesis that there was a wider 'macro-text' from which both Las Casas and Fernand Colomb derived much of their longer commentary. Their writings are too similar to be the result of independent work, too dissimilar for either to be the original, and too extensive to come from the version of the log as we have it, even though this may be Las Casas' own summary of the material he found useful in Columbus's original logs. Short Notices 259 A brief discussion of the different genres involved, the choice and use of different voices, especially where words are attributed to Columbus himself, and the way in which these differences shape the three works' presentation and choice of content adds considerably to the reader's understanding of the texts which follow. This edition clearly corrects and supersedes any earlier printed versions. Sybil M. Jack Department ofHistory University of Sydney Matthews, David, The Invention of Middle English: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Making the Middle Ages), Turnhout, Brepols, 2000; board; pp. viii, 244; R.R.P. EUR50.00; ISBN 2503507697. David Matthews describes this anthology of writings on Middle English as a ki of sequel to his earlier study, The Making of Middle English, 1765-1910 (1999), though we might rather call it a prequel: it presents extracts, often substantial ones, from many of the sources Matthews used when examining the study of Middle English in its broader institutional and social contexts. The earlier book focussed on the individuals Matthews argues had the most formative influence on Middle English as a discipline (Percy, Ritson, Scott, Madden and Furnivall); but was also particularly concerned with the social and cultural contexts in which they developed their influential agendas for scholarship in thisfield.This anthology can offer less detail about those contexts, but it does frame its carefully selected extracts with briefbiographical notes and suggestions for further reading. Matthews'firstsection is concerned primarily with the various attempts to define and describe Middle English as a philological phenomenon. It is interesting to see how far the discipline has been transformed, now that...