Public Voice Research Articles

Sustainable political commitment is necessary for institutionalizing community participation in health policy-making: Insights from Iran

BackgroundCommunity participation is currently utilized as a national strategy to promote public health and mitigate health inequalities across the world. While community participation is acknowledged as a civic right in the Constitution of Iran and other related upstream documents, the government has typically failed in translating, integrating and implementing community participation in health system policy. The present study was conducted to determine the level of public voice consideration within the health policy in Iran and address fundamental interventions required to promote the public voice in the context of Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This study has originality because there is no study that addresses the requirements of institutionalizing community participation especially in low-middle-income countries, so Iran’s experience can be useful for other countries.MethodsMethodologically, this study utilized a multi-method and multi-strand sequential research design, including qualitative, comparative and documentary studies. In the first phase, the current level of community participation in the health policy cycle of Iran was identified using the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) spectrum. In the second phase, a comparative study was designed to identify relevant interventions to promote the community participation level in the selected countries under study. In the third phase, a qualitative study was conducted to address the barriers, facilitators and strategies for improving the level of public participation. Accordingly, appropriate interventions and policy options were recommended. Interventions were reviewed in a policy dialogue with policy-makers and community representatives, and their effectiveness, applicability and practical feasibility were evaluated.ResultsBased on the IAP2 spectrum, the level of community participation in the health policy-making process is non-participation, while empowerment is set at the highest level in the upstream documents. Moreover, capacity-building, demand, mobilization of the local population, provision of resources and setting a specific structure were found to be among the key interventions to improve the level of community participation in Iran’s health sector. More importantly, “political will for action” was identified as the driving force for implementing the necessary health interventions.ConclusionsTo sum up, a paradigm shift in the governing social, economic and political philosophy; establishing a real-world and moral dialogue and communication between the government and the society; identifying and managing the conflicts of interest in the leading stockholders of the healthcare system; and, more importantly, maintaining a stable political will for action are integral to promote and institutionalize participatory governance in the health sector of Iran. All of the above will lead us to scheme, implement and institutionalize suitable interventions for participatory governance in health and medicine.

Public Voices in the Environmental Decision-Making in Georgia

The article presents the results of the scientific research and gives the ways to solve the problems dedicated to PP (public participation) in the process of EDM (environmental decision-making) in Georgia. Several obstacles were found, by studying the environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Georgia. All necessary information was collected through interviews and questionnaires. The study discusses the existing legislation on this issue and aims to find answers to these obstacles. Four hypotheses were developed - transparency in the decision-making process promotes successful public participation, effective cooperation with one another is a better way for NGOs to participate in the environmental decision-making process, Georgian NGO’s successful participation in the process of DM (decision-making) was related to the development of an environmental legal system, self-financing helps the Environmental NGOs in Georgia to improve their financial status and increase their flexibility in the EDM process. The Soviet regime caused the nonexistence of PP approaches in EDM. Currently, many international and trans-boundary projects are taking place and will be completed shortly in Georgia. The participation of the public, especially non-governmental organizations is a key point and crucial element in decision making as most of these developments entail additional environmental problems and to prevent damage to the environment and foster sustainable development when such projects are completed. The research gives key provisions that require improvement to increase the effectiveness of PP in EDM process.
 Keywords: public participation, environment, decision-making, NGOs

„Szegény Sándor! Szegény Sándor!” Petőfi emlékezete Arany János Emlények (1851–1855) című versciklusában

Petőfi not only became (remained) an extremely popular figure in the literary, journalistic, and critical discourses of the 1850s, but his figure and literary heritage – in addition to national pantheonization and widespread popularization – also became a competition for the appropriation of competing memory constructions and commemorative communities. The dilemma arises: how could personal grief be given a public voice in this communication dumping? Were the media, discursive and genre frameworks of the era at all suitable for the literary representation of the depths of grief? Or do media noise and public forms necessarily empty private dimensions? If we ask these questions, perhaps the seemingly suffocating atmosphere of Hungary in the middle of the 19th century does not seem so distant and foreign.

Understanding the public voices and researchers speaking into the 5G narrative.

The many different voices speaking into the current narrative surrounding the health effects of 5G technologies necessitate an exploration of the background of the various published author-spokespersons and their potential motives. This has been attempted recently by de Vocht and Albers. However, that opinion piece used a narrow investigative lens, resulting in an undermining of both the rationality of the concerned general public and the motives of specific researchers. At the same time, biases, conflicts of interest, and flaws found in "independent" reviews were not considered. To address these oversights, an evidence-based appraisal of public opinion and the scientific caliber of authors involved in the 5G health discussion is warranted. Subsequently, this review article presents an analysis of the available Australian data representing public voices, while also conducting a broader investigation of the level of expertise of recent author-spokespersons based on their experience as scientists, particularly in the area of health effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. This review thus attempts to more clearly illustrate for the reader the caliber and motives of the voices speaking into the 5G narrative. The article concludes with a set of questions that need to be answered to enable scientists to advise policy makers more effectively on matters of 5G and public health.

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING EMPLOYING SENTIMENT ANALYSIS ON THE PUBLIC VOICE OF FILIPINOS DURING CRISIS SITUATIONS

Aims: This Natural Language Processing study examined the sentiments of Filipinos in crisis situations using Twitter data. The goal was to identify the prevalent emotional tone, categorize sentiments, and explore variations across different types of crises. Study design: Qualitative Research using Natural Language Processing Place and Duration of Study: Philippines, 2019 - 2023 Methodology: There were 10,000 tweets that narrate the public voice of Filipinos during crisis situations that were analyzed using sentiment analysis. They were mined using Apify Easy Twitter Search Scraper. Results were analyzed using Orange Software and Plutchik’s Emotional Wheel via Box Plot. Results: Results show that the dominant public voice is neutral, this is followed by positive and negative tones. This means that Filipinos mainly share information, describe their situations, and seek clarifications during crises. It is further revealed that joy was the most dominant emotion, followed by sadness, trust, surprise, fear, disgust, anticipation, and anger. This means that even in crisis, Filipinos wish peoples safety, pray for the situation and give jokes to lighten the mood. The order of dominant emotions or tone for earthquake, inflation, and typhoon followed a pattern of neutral, positive and negative. The pandemic stood out, featuring a dominant neutral tone, followed by negative and then positive. Conclusion: These Findings Offer Valuable Insights for Refining Government Crisis Response Strategies. Additionally, This Underscores the Significance Of Recognizing And Understanding Emotions In Communication, Providing Valuable Guidance For Educators And Students. KEYWORDS: Education, applied linguistics, natural language processing, sentiment analysis,public voice, emotional tone, Philippines

Commentary: Understanding the public voices and researchers speaking into the 5G narrative.

Commentary: Understanding the public voices and researchers speaking into the 5G narrative.

Organizing and the Revitalization of American Catholicism

American Catholicism today struggles to sustain its longtime character as a truly “public religion”—that is, a religious tradition with a vital presence within the public sphere in the US. Reinvigorating Catholicism in the US will require both internal renewal and new approaches to public life, both of which will require continuity with the deep tradition and significant reorientation of ecclesial dynamics. This paper argues that specific, faith-based community organizing practices can help renew the public voice of Catholicism. In adopting such practices and inflecting them through Catholic commitment to theologically coherent processes of leadership formation, American Catholicism can reinvigorate parish life and play a crucial role in reconstructing democracy in the US for a multiracial and multifaith society in the twenty-first century and beyond.

THE EFFECT OF SATISFACTION WITH SERVICES AND TRUST IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS ON CITIZENS’ VOICE ORIENTATION: THE ROLE OF ETHICAL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

This study investigates the causal relationships between satisfaction with services, trust in public organizations and the voice orientation of citizens through the perspective of the New Public Management. The moderating role of ethical public administration in these relationships is also investigated. Survey methodology with a sample of 586 citizens from Diyarbakır city is used to analyze proposed hypotheses. According to linear regression analyzes, political efficacy level of citizens is positively affected by satisfaction with services and trust in public organizations variables. On the other hand, political participation is only impacted by satisfaction with services positively. No significant relationship can be found between satisfaction with services and political participation. Public administration ethics has a positive moderator role on the relationship between satisfaction with services and voice orientation behaviors (political efficacy and political participation). It also positively moderates the relationship between trust in public organizations and voice orientation of citizens (political efficacy and political participation). This research provides findings about the New Public Management outcomes from different country contexts through first-hand data.

Weaving in the Threads

Weaving in the Threads

Stitchers of Instagram

Stitchers of Instagram

The Trial of Public Voice in Anti-Sexual Harassment: Functions, Limits and Risks

With the awakening of womens consciousness, sexual issues are brought to the front stage, and the call to solve sexual harassment has been growing. The networks social public voice plays a huge role in this process. This study focuses on the effect of public voice in social sexual harassment incidents and analyzes its multiple functions in detail by combining legal theory and actual events. In conclusion, public voice helps spread sex-related events rapidly across all social strata, increasing the publics and relevant departments attention. However, radical public voice will also cause the focus of the problem to shift, promoting unnecessary group confrontation so that the real problem cannot be solved. This paper puts forward a targeted policy to solve the problem of sexual harassment and also points out the future optimization direction of the judicial system.

Capturing public voices: The role of social media in heritage management

Social media platforms have been increasingly used by locals and tourists to express their opinions about buildings, cities, and built heritage in particular. Most recently, scholars have been using social media to conduct innovative research on built heritage and heritage management. Still, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) methods to analyze social media data for heritage management is seldom explored. This paper investigates the potentials of short texts (sentences and hashtags) shared through social media as a data source and artificial intelligence methods for data analysis for revealing the cultural significance (values and attributes) of built heritage. The city of Yazd, Iran was taken as a case study, with the particular focus on windcatchers, key attributes conveying outstanding universal values, as inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. This paper has three subsequent phases: 1) state of the art on the intersection of public participation in heritage management and social media research; 2) methodology of data collection and data analysis related to coding people's voices from Instagram and Twitter into values of windcatchers over the last ten-years; 3) preliminary findings on the comparison between opinions of locals and tourists, sentiment analysis, and its association with the values and attributes of windcatchers. Results indicate that the age value is recognized as the most important value by all interest groups, while the political value is the least acknowledged. Besides, the negative sentiments are scarcely reflected (e.g., critiques) in social media. Results confirm the potential of social media for heritage management in terms of (de)coding and measuring the cultural significance of built heritage for windcatchers and also other attributes in Yazd and other case studies and scales.

Mapping pandemic responses in urban Indigenous Australia: Reflections on systems thinking and pandemic preparedness

ObjectivesWe investigate some of the strengths and challenges associated with Covid-19 responses in urban Indigenous communities in Brisbane, Australia. Our research reflects on the interconnected dynamics that impact health outcomes and mitigate or exacerbate the risk of Covid-19 spreading within urban Indigenous communities. MethodsThree systems thinking workshops were held in 2021 with Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders (N15/workshop) from State and Federal services, along with Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations. All worked in the urban Indigenous health sector. Stakeholders produced a Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) incorporating the critical feedbacks determining the dynamics influencing health outcomes. The aim of the research was to help stakeholders’ build awareness of how the structure of the system influences health outcomes. ResultsStakeholders identified 6 key dynamics which have a negative or positive impact on mitigating risks of Covid-19 infection. By mapping these dynamics within a CLD, 7 intervention points were identified. ConclusionsSystems thinking provides a useful tool in identifying the complexities associated with navigating health challenges, but further research is needed to develop frameworks that work in conjunction with Indigenous Australian methodologies. Implications for public healthIndigenous voices and communities must lie central to health responses/policies for Indigenous peoples. When systems thinking is done by or in collaboration with stakeholders it provides a visual language that can help design public health policy. What can be ascertained is that their effectiveness is predicated on systems thinking’s integration with Indigenous methodologies that acknowledges Indigenous self-determination and challenges Eurocentric representations of health and Indigeneity.

Twitterowa komunikacja polityczna w kontekście wojny w Ukrainie: analiza porównawcza wpisów Roberta Biedronia i Antoniego Macierewicza

Rewolucja cyfrowa włączyła w przestrzeń działań polityków media społecznościowe, z których najczęściej użytkowany jest Twitter. Platforma ta sprzyja szczególnej partycypacji użytkowników oraz informowaniu odbiorców o najbardziej bieżących wydarzeniach w czasie niemal rzeczywistym. Można też rozumieć ją jako jedno z najbardziej efektywnych narzędzi współczesnej komunikacji politycznej. Artykuł zawiera analizę porównawczą komunikacji Antoniego Macierewicza, związanego z obozem rządzącym w Polsce w roku 2022 roku, oraz Roberta Biedronia, jednego z liderów opozycji. Analizowane komunikaty dotyczą pierwszego miesiąca wojny w Ukrainie. Do przeprowadzenia badania wykorzystano zarówno metody ilościowe, włącznie z elementami analizy statystycznej, jak i analizę jakościową, opartą głównie na analizie treści. Celem badania jest wskazanie różnic w komunikacji oraz ukazanie ich twitterowych wypowiedzi o wojnie w Ukrainie w kontekście szerszej strategii komunikowania politycznego zgodnej z programem reprezentowanej partii i odnoszącej się do działalności na scenie politycznej (polskiej czy też europejskiej). Analiza wskazuje również na różnorodność komunikatów przekazywanych za pośrednictwem medium społecznościowego oraz na ogólne polaryzacyjne tendencje, rozwijające się mimo społecznych głosów wzywających do zjednoczenia się w celu pomocy ofiarom rosyjskiej agresji. Political Communication on Twitter in the Context of the War in Ukraine: Comparative Analysis of Posts of Robert Biedroń and Antoni Macierewicz: The digital revolution has brought social media into the space of politicians’ activities, the most widely used of which is Twitter. This platform fosters special participation of users and informing the audience about the most current events in almost real time. It can also be understood as one of the most effective tools of modern political communication. The proposed article provides a comparative analysis of the communications of Antoni Macierewicz, who is associated with Poland’s ruling camp in 2022, and Robert Biedroń, one of the opposition leaders. The analysed communications concern the first month of the war in Ukraine. Both quantitative methods, including elements of statistical analysis, and qualitative analysis, based mainly on content analysis, were used to conduct the study. The aim of the study is to identify differences in communications and to show their twitter statements about the war in Ukraine in the context of a broader political communication strategy in line with the program of the party represented and relating to activities on the political scene (Polish or European). The analysis also points to the diversity of messages communicated through the social medium and the general polarising tendencies developing despite public voices calling for unity to help the victims of Russian aggression.

Coproduction of a resource sharing public views of health inequalities: An example of inclusive public and patient involvement and engagement.

UNderstanding Factors that explain Avoidable hospital admission Inequalities-Research study (UNFAIR) addresses how to reduce health inequalities, particularly for avoidable hospital admissions. Our Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) members broached that health inequalities are complex, challenging to understand and communicate. They identified a need to explore diverse views, including people who have a higher risk of health inequalities. With limited public-facing resources relating to the public's understanding or emotions around health inequalities, this project aimed to fill this gap using co-leadership and co-production. Members of the public worked with researchers to co-produce and run PPIE workshops. Thisproject was co-led by a member of the public and a researcher. One online workshop open to anyone in England accompanied by three face-to-face workshops were held. Public contributors, including people living in diverse communities, were invited. Inclusive involvement opportunities were offered including flexible ways of involvement and remuneration. To strengthen the key messages' rigour, transcriptions of the audio-recordings from each workshop, with facilitator notes, were analysed using thematic analysis. From the key messages, an animation was co-produced with public contributors with the public's voice being integral throughout. A total of 58 people took part capturing intersecting and multiple dimensions of marginalisation including people with a range of ages, genders, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, and members of communities who face exclusion (including people with learning difficulties and experiencing ill-health). The animation highlighted powerful lived experience, for example, some people are dying earlier than expected. Health inequalities conjured up powerful emotions, such as anger and hopelessness. Public views of how to address health inequalities included respecting, accepting and valuing everyone, regardless of, for example, where people live. The animation is publicly available for use by anyone, including decision makers across the health and care system. Through co-leadership and co-production, this project is an example of inclusive PPIE. This project provided a way for the public's voice to influence policy and practice to inform understanding and action to address health inequalities. The animation provides powerful insights into what health inequalities mean to people with examples of lived experience and corroborates the moral argument for action by decision makers. Members of the public, including people who were affected or at higher risk of health inequalities, co-led this project and were involved as co-creators and developers from the inception of the project to completion. Their involvement was integral and documented in full throughout the project.

TVA and the Grass Roots at 75: The Legacy of a Planning Classic

Planning struggles with the tension between professional expertise and public voice. The approaching 75th anniversary of Philip Selznick's classic, TVA and the Grass Roots, is an apt time to revisit that tension. In Selznick's analysis, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was a modernist institution aligning with local agricultural elites at the expense of vulnerable Black and poor farmers. He coined the term ‘informal co-optation’ to characterize TVA's affiliation with the powerful. We bring renewed attention to informal co-optation and the institutional aspects of engagement by examining how Selznick's analysis was received contemporaneously, and then considering recent scholarship and the current implications of Selznick's work.

In Stanisław Lem's Orbit

In Stanisław Lem's Orbit

Count Me Too: Sentiment Analysis of Roman Sindhi Script

Social media has given voice to people around the globe. However, all voices are not counted due to the scarcity of lexical computational resources. Such resources could harness the torrent of social media text data. Computational resources for rich languages such as English are available. More are being developed, meanwhile strengthening and enhancing the current ones. However, Roman Sindhi, a resource-poor writing style, is a phonetically rich language lacking computational resources, creating a working space for researchers. This work attempts to develop lexical sentiment resources that will help calculate the public opinion expressed in Roman Sindhi and bring their point of view into the limelight. This work is one of the initial efforts to develop lexical Roman Sindhi sentiment dictionary resources to help detect sentiment orientation in a text. Furthermore, it also developed two interfaces to leverage the lexical resources—a Roman Sindhi to English translator (RoSET) that translates a Roman Sindhi feature into an equivalent English word and a Roman Sindhi rule-based sentiment scorer ( RBRS3) that assigns sentiment score to a Roman Sindhi script features. The results obtained from the developed system accommodated the bilingual dataset (Roman Sindhi + English) more adequately. An increase of 20.8% was recorded for positive sentence detection, and a 16% increase was obtained for negative sentences, whereas neutral sentences were marginalized to a lower number (59.31% decrease). The resultant system makes those public voices expressed in the Roman Sindhi script get counted, which otherwise are in vain.

Designing Public Identity: Finding Voice in Coalitional Technical Writing with Black-Led Organizations

This experience report offers an applied example of coalitional communication design, written collaboratively by a white faculty member for a student grant writing program and a Black executive director of a community organization. Highlighting the needs, thought processes, and practical considerations of doing antiracist technical communication work collaboratively from varied identity positions, we detail an ongoing effort to redesign a Black community organization's public voice to honor Black humanity and communal healing. This example spotlights the possibilities of coalitional technical writing that deeply engages with and supports community needs, one way to meet the challenge of TPC's social justice imperative.

“Our time is up”: a patient’s perspective on psychotherapist retirement

Organic terminations in a “good-enough” treatment at their best end with feelings of warmth, pride, sadness, and a letting go. Psychotherapist retirement, however, is a unilateral ending imposed upon patients, sometimes causing not only feelings of loss and hurt, but bringing about damage, breaching the age-old mandate of the Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm”. Yet, humans can avoid ageing only by early death. They retire, sometimes forced by necessities, sometimes beckoned by a readiness for a final life chapter filled in ways that do not include professional work. Some hurts, even harm, may be unavoidable. Despite a growing literature on the topic of psychotherapist retirement, the first-hand perspective of the retired-upon patient is as yet without a public voice. A retired psycho-dynamic psychotherapist myself, in this article I share my experience as a patient who lost a much-loved therapist to retirement. I write with a patient’s heart informed by a practitioner’s eyes, ending with suggestions for both members of the therapeutic dyad and also for the professional community.