Opinions Of Citizens Research Articles

Development of a citizen participation public service innovation model based on smart governance

This study explores an efficient approach to providing customized public services through a smart governance-based public service innovation model (SG-PSIM) that combines intelligent technology and co-creation. Multiple methodological approaches are applied to develop and evaluate the proposed SG-PSIM. Intelligent methodologies that can support the public service policy process are discussed, and the applicability of the SG-PSIM is demonstrated through four case studies. The study results showed that SG-PSIM can effectively collect the opinions of citizens in diverse ways and provide opportunities for citizens to actively participate in the development of public service policies.

Ambivalence towards historical urban development

The authors consider the consequences of the reduced control over the architectural and urban planning approval of capital construction in Russian cities. The new practice that simplifies the approval procedure will allow to reduce the costs for developers. However, without taking into account the opinion of specialists and citizens, it will provoke mass replication of unattractive cliches, aggressively erasing the traces of architectural identity. In view of the ongoing urbanization in large Russian cities, we can predict the transformation of certain historical buildings into architectural marginal formations forced out by uncontrolled development, which leads to the destruction of the integrity of perception of the cities’ architectural space and the loss of significant landscape components.

Who got what they wanted? Investigating the role of institutional agenda setting, costly policies, and status quo bias as explanations to income based unequal responsiveness

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that elected officials are more responsive to the opinions of high-income citizens than to those of middle and working-class citizens in the United States. This is often explained by the fact that economic elites make campaign contributions to political elites, leading to decision-making that aligns with the preferences of the affluent. This paper examines the opinion-policy link in Swedish politics, where campaign contributions are relatively low. Despite this, the study finds that high-income citizens still receive the most policy responsiveness. Three alternative possible explanations are discussed. Do high-income citizens receive more responsiveness because (a) they are better able to put issues on the political agenda, (b) because they are easier to satisfy and prefer ‘cheaper’ symbolic policy reforms, while low-income citizens prefer more costly policies or (c) because the status quo bias works to the advantage of high-income citizens?

プロセスと空間からみたエリア一体型リノベーションまちづくりに関する研究愛知県岡崎市籠田公園周辺地区を対象として

The purpose of this study is to clarify the actual situation of area-integrated renovation town planning in the Kagoda Park neighborhood of Okazaki City. The findings are follows, 1) the overall process of the redevelopment of public space by the government and the utilization of idle real estate by the private sector activities was clarified, 2) the redevelopment of Kagoda Park and Central Avenue created many spaces where many people can stay, based on the opinions of citizens, 3) few businesses were affected by both public space redevelopment and idle real estate utilization activities.

Chinese Media Representation of the SCO: A Study of People’s Daily and Global Times

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is one of the first international organizations in which the PRC played a key role. However, according to some researchers, over the past 20 years the Chinese leadership’s interest in this mechanism of international cooperation has decreased. This article explores the place of the SCO in Chinese foreign policy by analyzing the representation of this organization in the PRC’s media - Chinese-language publications in the newspapers People’s Daily and Global Times , which both belong to the Chinese Communist Party. Such focus allows better understanding the value of the SCO to China and its position vis-á-vis other Chinese initiatives in Central Asia. The authors use methods of quantitative and qualitative content analysis, namely counting the frequency of single words, identifying and counting the most common frames, and discussing the ways these frames are constructed. Frame analysis demonstrates that the articles focus on the achievements of the SCO in solving regional problems, while existing difficulties are ignored. The SCO is represented as an important element of China’s foreign policy, along with the Belt and Road Initiative, while the details of their interaction are not discussed. It should also be mentioned that the SCO is framed as an association of countries opposing Western hegemonism and advocating a new system of international relations. An extremely positive representation of the SCO serves legitimation of the political regime in the PRC: the articles focus on China’s role as a leader in the SCO and its successes in addressing domestic problems, such as poverty reduction and fighting the coronavirus infection. This narrative is often created by quoting the opinions of high-level foreign politicians and average citizens.

ELECTORAL GENDER QUOTAS IN KAZAKHSTAN

The scientific article is devoted to highlighting the issues of equal participation of women in the decision-making process, which is a necessary condition for taking into account the interests of women in modern society, including Kazakhstan. The article analyzes one of the most popular methods of increasing the representation of women in elected bodies - gender quotas. These quotas are aimed at determining the minimum number of women candidates to participate in the elections. As a strategy to increase the share of women in the Parliament of Kazakhstan, gender quotas for party lists were introduced in 2020 and implemented for the first time at the elections of deputies of the Majilis of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2021. This article presents the opinions of citizens in the perception of gender quotas and in explaining the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in political life. The study shows that a significant gender gap arises not only in perceptions related to the legitimacy and effectiveness of quotas in relation to positive discrimination, but also in explanations that hinder women's success in elections, and in which strategies can work better in overcoming inequality. These differences are important because they give an idea of the dynamics that explain why gender quotas do not lead to a noticeable increase in the representation of women in parliament.

Sentiments Analysis Study for the Adaptation of Online Medical Forums

Online medical forums allow users to research medical treatments or conditions and gain support from other users dealing with similar issues. These forums have become increasingly popular over the past decade, helping connect medical patients and professionals from various backgrounds and creating a supportive online community. This paper evaluates the adaptation of online medical forums in Nigeria, to analyse the opinions of Nigerian citizens in using the medical system. In this research, a Tweepy API (python library/ module that contains the required object and functions for managing the Twitter data), textblob (python library for processing textual data), and matplotlib modules (for creating statistical charts) were used to extract related tweets from the Twitter. The project involves steps like creating a Twitter developer account, which gives the privilege to create a Twitter application and has keys for accessing online resources. The analysis begins by searching for the data, storing it, filtering it and then returning the sentiment analysis to review the positive, neutral, and negative tweets. The output of this project returns a table and scatter graph that displays the Subjectivity and polarity of the opinions of Nigerians on the adaptation of online medical forums. Similarly, a bar chart is obtained that shows the positive tweets, the negative tweets and the neutral regarding online medical forums.

Opinions of citizens of the Czech Republic on the role of nurses in primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In spite of the general current decrease in COVID-19 incidence, the epidemiological situation on the territory of the Czech Republic is still unfavourable. Nurses play an essential role in the fight against this disease. A non-standardized questionnaire was used to discover the expectations regarding nursing care provided during the COVID-19 pandemic. The sample of respondents was constructed using quota selection. The sample consisted of 1,815 respondents. The study identified a significant correlation between the age of respondents and the method used to contact general practitioners (p < 0.001). The oldest respondents (65+) more likely contacted GPs by phone. Respondents with basic education used outpatient services more often before than during the pandemic (p < 0.05). The behaviour of nurses was considered as professional and accommodating. The oldest respondents (65+) reported nurses did not to make them feel rushed. Other age groups rated nurses more critically (p < 0.01). Respondents, especially women, described the psychological burden on nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic as demanding (p < 0.01). Women, more than men, reported that nurses lacked protective equipment during the pandemic (p < 0.05). The use of an online system was significantly influenced by respondent education (p 0.001). Respondents with lower education were less likely to welcome this option. Due to the persisting COVID-19 incidence on the territory of the Czech Republic, citizens` opinions of the position of nurse in primary care in the period of COVID- 19 pandemics need to be known.The behaviour of nurses was considered to be accommodating and satisfactory.

Covid-19 Information Protection: Between Information Privacy, Health Secrecy and Public Safety

To contribute meaningfully to the fight against disease outbreaks, the media should not just funnel predetermined health news to the audience. It should also play the vital role of convincing citizens to protect themselves and to shun rumors, misinformation and conspiracy theories that disfigure reality about infectious diseases. The present study examines alleged Covid-19 information concealment in Nigeria, which is thought to account for citizen uncooperativeness in the fight against the disease. It highlights the distinctions between data privacy and information secrecy. Using Spearman’s rank correlation, Chi-square and linear regression, we analyzed data from 183 statistically selected respondents from two states and the Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria. Data were also generated from qualitative survey of 12 health editors, two public affairs analysts and two government officials. Results indicate negative relationships between compliance with Covid-19 containment measures, citizen opinions on Covid-19 information protection and opinions on Covid-19 controversies. Data from qualitative survey suggest that government’s protection of information forces editors to report stories without “human face.” The study highlights the need for distinctions between physical privacy, information privacy and related concepts in the enforcement of health information privacy. This is to avoid sacrificing the public’s right to know in the guise of health information protection.

The comparative analysis of opinions of residents of the northern Caucasus Okrug and persons making decisions concerning issues of healthy municipal planning in its municipalities

The article presents comparative results of studying opinion of citizens and officials making decisions on modernization of urban environment, about cities conditions. It is established that valuations of citizens and decision makers about urban infrastructure, its quantity and quality, process of cooperation in this area as well as consideration of interests in healthy urban planning differ significantly. The majority of surveyed decision-makers are more satisfied with conditions of their city infrastructure than citizens. The same trend persists in assessing quantity and quality of sport and physical education institutions. On the contrary, environmental situation in municipalities is more likely to suit citizens as compared to decision makers. The decision-makers are more optimistic about intersectorial cooperation in issues of healthy urban planning. The respondents note that issues and interests of health are not sufficiently considered in development and adoption of urban planning decisions in their municipalities. To correct the situation, it is necessary to implement appropriate strategies of healthy urban planning, to determine organizational mechanisms for their implementation in national conditions and to confirm their effectiveness in organizational experiment.

A Framework for Effective Design Thinking Based Smart Cities Projects in Qatar

With the growing implementation of smart city projects and the significance of the research problem related to effective design thinking, the opinion of the ordinary citizens have become very relevant and contemporary. The current paper presents a quantitative empirical study focused on the attitudes towards and the readiness to accept smart cities in the specific context of Qatar. The study employs a survey questionnaire as a data collection tool. The survey is distributed online among a sample of 40 respondents from Qatar, including both residents and non-residents of smart cities in the country. Even though the sample is not representative of the Qatari population, the present study provides preliminary findings and fundamental insights into this novel topic in a specific socio-economic context. The major findings of the study uncovered that the respondents show quite positive attitudes toward diverse aspects related to smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment, and smart living, as well as significant readiness to accept this lifestyle. However, the respondents demonstrate concerns related to the privacy and security of the people living in smart cities. The superiority of fundamental aspects of life like housing and healthcare in smart cities compared to conventional ones are also questioned by the respondents.

Detection of Americans’ Behavior toward Islam on Facebook

Social network websites have become a rich place for detecting and analyzing people’s attitudes, perceptions, and feelings towards news, products, and other real-world issues. Facebook is a popular platform among different age groups and countries and is generally used to convey ideas about certain topics based on likes, comments and sharing. In recent years, one of the most controversial topics were the idea behind Islamophobia and other ideas built in people’s minds about Islam around the world. This research studied the public opinion of American citizens about Islam during the presidency of Donald Trump, as that period was rich in diversity of opinion between his supporters and detractors. In this paper, sentiment analysis was used to analyze American citizens’ behavior towards posts about Islam during Trump’s presidency in various states across the United States. Sentiment analysis was performed on Facebook posts and comments extracted from American news channels from the year 2017. Several machine learning methods were used to detect the polarity in the dataset. The highest classification accuracy among the classifiers used in this research was achieved using a logistic regression classifier, reaching 84%.

ЦИФРОВИЗАЦИЯ ВЗАИМОДЕЙСТВИЯ ГРАЖДАН И ГОСУДАРСТВА: ОЦЕНКА ГРАЖДАНАМИ ЭФФЕКТОВ, РИСКОВ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВ

The implementation of Russia's national development objective "Digital Transformation" implies achieving "digital maturity," including in public administration. Following this decree, public administration is becoming one of the areas where the implementation of digital technologies is very active. The Russian government has approved and is applying methods for assessing digital maturity. However, while both assessing and taking measures to further digitalize public administration, the opinion of citizens as its beneficiaries is not sufficiently taken into account. To address this gap, RANEPA developed an original methodology for a nationwide representative survey of citizens aimed at identifying their assessment of the effects and risks of the public administration digitalization. The survey focuses on citizens' views not only on public services and facilities (as is most often the case), but also on all types of digital interaction between citizens and the state. The survey was conducted in 2022 and 2023, and the paper compares the results. For example, according to the 2023 survey, in the last year, 86.0% of respondents used digital technologies when interacting with the state (2022: 88.2%). Citizens are also prepared for the use of digital technologies: 83.9% believe they are ready for possible digital interactions with government (2022: 81.7%). The results of the survey can be used to assess the digital maturity of government and develop measures to improve it.

The Impact of the Opinions of Male Citizens in Northern Cyprus as Regards Compulsory Military Service on the Construction of Masculinity

The Impact of the Opinions of Male Citizens in Northern Cyprus as Regards Compulsory Military Service on the Construction of Masculinity

Городской активизм в структуре гражданского общества Хабаровска: социально-политические аспект

Social activity of the city residents, aimed at changing in the different spheres of their life, implemented both in the structures of civil society and in the political organizations, has acquired a sound in scientific discourse as «urban activism.» This term does not have an unambiguous definition, which makes it difficult to operationalize it for sociological measurement, but allows using a number of methodological approaches to study this phenomenon in the structure of civil society in the city of Khabarovsk. Based on the sociology of «social movements» (G. Bloomer) and the analysis of collective actions from the standpoint of frame theory (I. Hoffmann), the article attempted to analyze the results of sociological studies of public opinion of citizens, reflecting indicators of their social activity, involvement in the socio-political sphere and actions of the local authorities. It has been shown that the origins of the low civic and socio-political activity of the citizens are rooted in a state of their concern about the urgent life problems that require their solution. They serve as a driving force, on the one hand, due to dissatisfaction with the real form of life, and on the other, out of desires and hopes for some new structure of their existence. It is noted that the semantic framework and value guidelines in the collective actions of the city community, authorities and activists of political parties are often contradictory and paradoxical, giving rise to indifference and alienation from the population from involvement in collective social activities to change life for the better. Strengthening of the position of civil activism aimed at the development of the city's civil society can be facilitated by targeted information and communication activities and demonstration of the successful initiative projects not only in the improvement of the urban environment, but also in formation of responsible political consciousness and behavior of the citizens.

Constitutional and legal aspects of developing electoral system of the Republic of Kazakhstan

This work is one of the first scientific studies in Kazakhstan, built on the basis of empirical research methods – interviewing. The author of the article conducted a total of 25 interviews in the period from September 2021 to December 2022. Among the respondents surveyed, 10 persons were ordinary voters, 15 persons were experts in the field of electoral law (including scientists, teachers of higher educational institutions, members of election commissions, judges, public figures). The article contains the opinions of 5 respondents regarding the existing problems in the field of the electoral system and ways to solve them. The study was conducted with the aim to study the opinions of citizens directly involved in the electoral process, as well as the voters themselves. The scientific literature shows that research in the field of improving the electoral system has not yet been studied (especially empirically). Therefore, it will undoubtedly increase the contribution of research to science. In addition, during the research, the author of the article analyzed the legal acts of Kazakhstan in the field of elections, examined the experience of Poland, in order to adopt the positive aspects of practice in solving problems that hinder the development of the electoral system of the Republic of Kazakhstan and, if possible, apply it in the conditions of our state.

Local actors and their agenda in the public sphere of social media

The transformation of the public sphere, caused by the influence of social media on public communication, encourages researchers to adapt existing tools for measuring public opinion and develop new ones. One of these tools is the procedure for creating a sample of actors who form public opinion in social media. Moreover, this procedure determines the methodological component of the study and also reflects the theoretical approach to measuring public opinion, which is derived from our view of the public sphere. In our study, we proposed and tested our version of classification of actors in the public sphere of St. Petersburg, using data from the social networking site VKontakte. Owing to the broad common agenda generated by the coronavirus epidemic, we could analyze the great variety of actors shaping the public opinion of citizens in the spring and summer of 2020. The final classification contains online communities and personal pages on the city and district level owned by the media, government bureaucratic organizations, politicians and parties, interest groups, business organizations and entrepreneurs. We also described the main elements of their agenda and ranked St. Petersburg public opinion makers by the share of interest from VKontakte users. The wide variety of agenda types obtained as a result of the analysis: news, reports, complaints, propaganda, agitation, advertising, entertainment, leads us to reconsider the indicators for selecting texts from social media. The research has expanded the understanding of public actors engaged in shaping public opinion in social media and their agenda.

Improving Sentiment Analysis in Social Media by Handling Lengthened Words

Machines are continually being channelized in the current era of automation to deliver accurate interpretations of what people communicate on social media. The human species is today engulfed in the concept of what and how people believe, and the decisions made as a result are mostly dependent on the sway of the masses on social media platforms. The usage of internet as well as social media is booming day by day. Today, this ocean of data can be used for the fruitful purposes. Analysis of social media sentiment textual posts can supply knowledge and information that can be used in citizen opinion polling, business intelligence, social contexts, and Internet of Things (IOT)-mood triggered devices. In this manuscript, the main focus is the sentiment analysis based on Emotional Recognition (ER). The proposed system highlights the process of gaining actual sentiment or mood of a person. The key idea to this system is posed by the fact that if smile and laughter can be two different categories of being happy, then why not happpyyyyyy and happy. A novel lexicon based system is proposed that considers the lengthened word as it is, instead of being omitted or normalized. The aggregated intensified senti-scores of lengthened words are calculated using framed lexicon rules. After that, these senti-scores of lengthened words are used to calculate the level of sentiment of the person. The dataset used in this paper is the informal chats happened among different friend groups over Facebook, Tweets and personal chat. The performance of proposed system is compared with traditional systems that ignore lengthened words and proposed system outperform tradition systems by achieving 81% to 96% F-measure rate for all datasets.

지역사회 공동체의식이 건강 및 삶에 미치는 긍정적 효과

Objectives: The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between citizens’ ‘sense of community’ and ‘health and quality of life’ in a Korean city that has both, rural and urban communities. Methods: We analyzed the survey data from “Citizen Opinions for Healthy City Nonsan” conducted in 2020. The survey used a self-reported questionnaire and the data of 1,181 participants were collected through quota sampling among aged over 19 from 15 administrative communities based in Nonsan-si Chungcheongnam-do. We measured the “sense of community” by using the Sense of Community Index, and “health and quality of life” with the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire. We conducted the correlation and multiple regression analyses to examine the relationship between citizens’ ‘sense of community’ and ‘health and quality of life’. Results: We found that citizens’ sense of community had direct positive effects on all domains of health and quality of life. Conclusion: This study affirms the importance of sense of community in promoting community health and quality of life and suggests that more efforts to actively heighten the sense of community should be made in developing community health programs and policies at the local level.

Konieczność ochrony praw podstawowych, kryzys demokracji i przyszłość europejskiej integracji w świetle spotęgowanego pandemią COVID-19 niebezpieczeństwa korupcji

The article is a reflection on how unnoticed and underestimated in everyday life the phenomenon of corruption has a disastrous impact on the foundations of the European Union built over the years. Currently, it is a serious challenge and a threat to the integration project which, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, is experiencing another crisis. In view of this, the author of the article recognizes the problem and, in this context, begins her consideration of the issue by outlining the origins of European integration and its consequences by drawing attention to the issue of uniformity in the creation and application of Community law under conditions of multicentrism and, above all, by showing the consequences of corruption, which puts Europe in a situation of duty and obligation to protect fundamental rights and democracy. It then analyzes the positions of experts, the opinions of citizens and the results of studies of international organizations. In addition, she refers to the results of his own research and, to this extent, mentions the Polish corruption reality seen through the eyes of young Poles in order to show that Europe is not only the West and we are also a part of this Community. Ad extremum she points out the key decisions taken at the European Union level and the remedies recommended by its bodies to counter the problem.