Role Of Democracy Research Articles

The role of Sá Carneiro in the building of the Portuguese democracy: Memory(ies) of the agents of change through the press

This article aims to analyse how the press has depicted Francisco Sá Carneiro, founder of the Social Democratic Party, regarding his role in the construction of Portuguese democracy. Debates on the Portuguese transition to democracy focus almost invariably on its revolutionary phase and on the relative importance of its actors and agents of change. Nonetheless, little attention has been paid to the role of civilian leaders during or after the 74-75 Revolution. In addition, the impact of the media on the historical memory of the Portuguese transition remains an underexplored research topic. Considering the importance of the media in shaping public opinion and in the process of building the historical memory, we will undertake a qualitative analysis of piece of news published on Sá Carneiro and his role in Portuguese democratization. Our research will focus on Portuguese and Spanish largest newspapers in order to perceive if Sá Carneiro’s memory also changed abroad. This article argues that the press hasn’t paid much attention to Sá Carneiro’s role in the democratisation process, echoing mythologized visions of the centrist leader.

Podcast – Commentary journalism in a digital public

The internet and digital platforms provide commentary- and opinion-based journalism with new opportunities to develop into new digital formats, such as podcasts. This article is based on the case studies of four Norwegian podcasts in 2020 and 2021. The findings show that commentary journalism in the form of podcasts has an obvious dual purpose: as publicity and as a commercial. The podcast facilitates a societal mission for the public while creating branded goods for the companies involved. Based on the material and the categories we had constructed, we developed a set of binaries that, understood as typologies, capture important dimensions of the differences between the podcasts. These binaries are monologue vs. dialogue, factual vs. personal, reflexive vs. assertive, and intellectual discussants vs. experts. In the article, we discuss how podcasts draw commentary journalism in a dialogical direction. We also discuss what impact this has upon public reasoning and the democratic role of commentary journalism.

Liberalism and nationalism: An analytical perspective on their relationship with Christianity

The aim of this article is to carry out a conceptual analysis of liberalism and nationalism and their relationship with Christianity. To this end, we employ a qualitative methodology, a theoretical-reflexive approach a documentary analysis, to determine why and how liberalism and nationalism have influenced Christianity. We conclude that nationalism, in addition to shaping secularization, has caused a rupture with Christian principles and values by elevating the national interest above other ideals, thus validating wars. Liberalism, meanwhile, has also shaped secularization, emphasizing the principle of subsidiarity and the value of democracy. For its part, the Catholic Church has rejected waging war and violating people’s essential rights in the name of nationalism. It has been flexible regarding the principle of subsidiarity, considering the role of democracy as a form of government and constituting the Vatican City State to escape from an exacerbated nationalism as in the case of fascism.

SWEDEN-2022: THE EVOLUTION OF THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the results of the elections to the Swedish parliament in September 2022. It shows the significance of these elections, which confirmed the transformation of the party-political system in this country, when stable inter-party unions were replaced by temporary coalitions of changing partners. The consequences of the significant strengthening of the nationalist Sweden Democrats party against the background of the weakening or stagnation of the old parliamentary parties are revealed. The discussed options and combinations of political parties applying for participation in the government are shown. The main features of the settlement of the current political crisis in Sweden are revealed, an explanation is given why exactly the renewed union of bourgeois parties gained an advantage and what is the role of the Swedish Democrats in the formation of the government. The author sees in the found formula for overcoming the political crisis only an intermediate stage in its resolution due to the complexity of the growing domestic and foreign policy problems.

The Role of Democratization and Economic Freedom on Corruption: A Case study of ASEAN

This study aims to determine the interaction effect of democracy and economic freedom on corruption in ASEAN, 2012-2021. The tool analysis used in this study is typology analysis to determine the position of each ASEAN country based on the level of Corruption, democracy, and economic freedom, and it was amplified by panel data regression with a fixed effect. Typology analysis shows that the higher the level of democracy and economic freedom, the better the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). Regression analysis also shows that when a country possesses economic freedom level below 6.25, then democracy has a negative effect on corruption. Likewise, when the level of democracy of a country is below 4.4 then a change of economic freedom will reduce the CPI instead. This corresponds to the typology analysis in which Malaysia and Singapore have levels of democracy and economic freedom over 4.4 and 6.25—on average—during 2012-2021.

Understanding Alternative News Media and Its Contribution to Diversity

In this introduction to the special issue Contesting the Mainstream: Understanding Alternative News Media, we discuss how and to what extent alternative news media contribute to news diversity. We elaborate on the concept of diversity, the democratic role of media, and the normative implications of alternative media in the wider media sphere. Based on the articles published in this special issue, that offer new and revealing empirical insights into a wide range of alternative media sites and their practices, from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North America, and Latin America, we argue that it becomes increasingly clear that awareness about normative positions within alternative media research is imperative. This is because an appreciation of the normative purpose of alternative media guides our ability to understand their role in society. The necessity for thinking through such positions is particularly exemplified by the most radical alternative media actors, and how they are debated and studied in different political systems.

Is It Still in the Works? Understanding e-Government as A Stage in the Democratic Process

Democracy operates through the mechanisms of society. Today, technology has become an integral part of societal development, has permeated many aspects of life, and is expected to play an important role in democracy. The government, activists, and academics have all advocated for the use of technology in government, known as e-government. While there is academic debate about its impact on democracy, this article believes it is critical to place impact after development. This viewpoint is useful for engaging in academic debate. Assuming that each stage has its own timetable, this article asks, "What stage is e-government at right now?" Looking at the indicators measured by various agencies and positioning them as shared awareness of e-government, it is possible to conclude that today is the stage of e-government development. The answer may serve as a reminder to academics researching the impact of e-government.

Beyond the Lines of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’: A Positive Discourse Analysis of ? Dioelected Speeches of Nelson Mandela

Keeping in view language as a social practice capable of bringing socio-political changes, the current study is an endeavour to conduct positive discourse analysis of Nelson Mandela’ speeches, an anti-apartheid leader of South Africa. Taking guidelines from Van Dijk’s ideological square, we illustrate how novel strategies, contrary to the conventional ones, were employed by the orator to break the boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Mandela used the merger of dichotomies in terms of pronouns, positive other representation, mitigation through passivization, and replacement of positive words with words having negative connotations to describe the out-group and malicious state of affairs. The aim was to promote inter-racial tolerance and solidarity among the divided nation in order to attain the goal of an all-inclusive nationhood. The study concludes that Mandela’s strategic and unconventional use of discourse enabled him to play a major role in the peaceful democratization of South Africa and made him a global icon of peace and humanity.
 Keywords: apartheid, ideological square, positive discourse analysis, us-them dichotomy

Stakeholder Theory, Embedddedness and Democracy: A Dewey Encounter

Recently, the research on the embeddedness of business-stakeholder relationships in society is gaining momentum. Here in this paper we present an approach for businesses and stakeholders' embeddedness based on John Dewey's Dewey, a well-known pragmatist thinker who elaborated a thick, original and innovative concept of democracy as an associated living, as a source of conjoint and shared experience between organizations and groups (including business and stakeholders) based on freedom, equality, and fraternity considered the democratic values. We develop the concept of democratic embeddedness, that is, the embeddedness that brings social progress and social hope, based on five main tenets: 1) A diverse, novel, and enriching conjoint experience 2) Cooperation based on equality, freedom, and fraternity 3) a higher degree of overlapping membership between stakeholders 4) Flexibility and adjustment between organizations 5) No isolated organizations or clusters of organizations. Consequently, a new role of the executive has described the democratic role, which consists of the promotion of the 5 tenets, requires democratic habits (courage, intelligence, open-mindedness), requires a scientific and experimental method for solving public problems, and creative and face-to-face communication (with new symbols and signs).

De 'youtubers' a 'cultubers'. Un fenómeno de divulgación académica, cultural y científica en YouTube

El término youtuber ha arrastrado connotaciones negativas cuando se ha visto reducido únicamente para definir a los creadores de YouTube ligados al sector del videojuego y el entretenimiento. Paralelamente al éxito cuantitativo de este tipo de youtubers, en los últimos años han ido emergiendo en esta plataforma divulgadores de prácticamente la totalidad de campos académicos, culturales y científicos. Dentro de la realidad digital de habla hispana, han surgido comunidades como Cultube que reúnen a este tipo de creadores y promocionan esta nueva vía de divulgación científica en la red social de vídeo con mayor popularidad. Basándonos en una metodología cualitativa a partir de la teoría fundamentada, este artículo presenta los resultados del análisis semiótico-discursivo realizado sobre la totalidad de las intervenciones efectuadas en las tres ediciones de Cultube celebradas hasta la fecha: 2018, 2019 y 2021. Este caso de estudio sirve también para profundizar en el fenómeno global y creciente de los divulgadores científicos en YouTube, su papel en la democratización mundial del aprendizaje asociada a los nuevos medios y sus potencialidades para el futuro.

Kynjaslagsíða í fréttum: Um fjölbreytni og lýðræðishlutverk fjölmiðla

Fjölmiðlar gegna mikilvægu hlutverki í lýðræðissamfélögum. Lýðræði krefst þess að fólk hafi aðgang að upplýsingum og umræðu um samfélagsleg málefni. Það sem fjölmiðlar birta skiptir máli og lögum samkvæmt ber þeim að gæta þess að sjónarmið jafnt karla sem kvenna komi fram og að vinna að jafnrétti og jöfnum tækifærum allra kynja. Ísland, líkt og önnur Norðurlönd, hefur í fjölmörg ár verið ofarlega á alþjóðlegum listum um kynjajafnrétti. Markmið þessarar greinar er að skoða hvernig íslenskir fjölmiðlar spegla það. Hversu fjölbreyttar eru fréttirnar og hvernig stendur Ísland í samanburði við önnur Norðurlönd? Byggt er á gögnum sem aflað var í alþjóðlegu fjölmiðlavöktuninni Gender and Media Monitoring Project árið 2020. Færð eru rök fyrir því að karlaslagsíða sé meiri í íslenskum fréttamiðlum en ætla mætti miðað við stöðu kvenna innan íslensks samfélags almennt. Aðeins þriðjungur viðmælenda í fréttum eru konur og hlutur kvenna í fréttum hér á landi er einnig rýrari en annars staðar á Norðurlöndum. Ekki er afgerandi kynjaskipting eftir málefnasviðum í fréttum og konur koma ekki síður en karlar fram í tengslum við „harðar“ fréttir. Konum sem viðmælendum í innlendum fréttum hefur fjölgað umtalsvert frá fyrri rannsóknum, en hlutfall kvenna í erlendum fréttum er enn lágt. Fáar konur eru í hlutverki sérfræðinga og álitsgjafa í fréttum, sem er ekki í samræmi við stöðu kvenna í samfélaginu. Niðurstöðurnar benda til þess að ráðast þurfi í aðgerðir til að stuðla að jafnrétti og fjölbreytni í fjölmiðlum ef fjölmiðlar eiga að sinna lýðræðishlutverki sínu sem skyldi.

The Association between Subjective Well-being and Regime Type across 78 countries: the moderating role of Political Trust

This study investigates the association between regime type, political trust, and subjective well-being (SWB) in 78 countries. Differently from previous works, democracy was conceptualized in terms of a multidimensional model (i.e., regime type), rather than a bipolar continuum ranging from authoritarian regimes to full democracies. The first question was raised as to whether regime characteristics would be nonlinearly related to SWB. A second question was examined as to whether political trust could moderate the relationship between regime type and well-being, such that under conditions of high or low trust in the government the differences in well-being across the type of regimes would be reduced. Data from the European Values Study as well as from the World Value Survey were used. Moreover, regime types were defined according to the Varieties of Democracy as well as the Economist Intelligence Unit. Multilevel analyses revealed that life satisfaction scores were lower for electoral autocracy compared to closed autocracy and liberal democracy. Moreover, happiness scores were significantly higher for full democracies compared to authoritarian regimes and flawed democracies. Finally, political trust moderated the association between regime type and SWB. Specifically, at higher or lower levels of political trust, the relationship between regime type and well-being tended to decrease. Overall, the findings support the conclusion that the relationship between democracy and subjective well‐being is nonlinear, and that the role of political trust is as important as the role of democracy.

An Empirical Investigation into the Contribution of Foreign Aid to Economic Growth in Developing Countries: Exploring the Role of Democracy

The significance of the study lies in the fact that this study will enable developing countries to find the benefits that they can get by establishing and strengthening democratic institutions in order to augment the positive effects of foreign aid for their economic growth. This study aims to explore the role of democracy in determining the effectiveness of foreign aid in economic growth. This study utilizes the growth rate of real GDP as an explained variable while foreign aid (FAID), official development assistance (ODA), Political regimes (DEM), gross capital formation (GCF), real financial consumption expenditures (GFCE), and Consumer price index (CPI) are used as explanatory variables. For this, the present study uses the panel data of selected developing countries for the period of 2006 to 2018. The results of the generalized method of moments (GMM) indicate that foreign aid is not beneficial for the economic growth of selected countries whereas, democracy is favorable for higher economic growth. When foreign aid is granted to democratic countries, it accelerates economic growth. Hence, the policy makers of donors’ institutions should consider the democratic attributes to make decision about foreign aid towards developing countries.

PRINCIPLES, PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES OF DEMOCRACY AS A SOURCE OF DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNOLOGIES AND METHODS OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY OF PSYCHOLOGISTS AND TEACHERS

The relevance of the article lies in the need for better understanding of the role of democracy in the socio-psychological progress of the state. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the position on the innovative nature of democracy, the importance of practical implementation in the professional activities of teachers of its principles and procedures. It is shown that a number of state practices carried out in antiquity and in the Middle Ages (in the form of the Peopleʼs Council), and today carried out in countries such as Switzerland, USA, Germany, were successful because of basic principles and procedures of democracy. It is argued that technologies created in these countries, such as brainstorming, social partnership in enterprises, deliberation, debate, and socio-psychological training, are democratic in nature. Based on theoretical analysis and psychological and pedagogical modeling, the author created technologies such as algorithm for project development by civil society educational centers, psychological and pedagogical expeditions to build civil society centers, self-study of democracy for young and adults, distance school of democracy and civil society, collective client -concentrated psychological counseling of victims of hostilities, etc. This allows to enrich the theoretical and practical psychology and pedagogy with new technologies of professional activity of specialists. The principles, procedures and practices of democracy form a special social atmosphere that determines the emergence of creative technologies and methods of work of specialists, including psychologists and educators. This process of civilized democratic creativity should be better understood by psychologists and educators and purposefully lead to the development of even more effective forms of their professional training and productive activities.

Evaluating “exemplary data journalism” from Asia: An exploration into South China Morning Post’s data stories on China and the world

As more newsrooms practice data journalism in this age of big data through the use of analytical and visualization tools, much research on exemplary award-winning data stories continue to be Western-centric and associated with data journalism’s democratic role of scrutinizing government and corporations as watchdog. This study examines the news organization in the non-West that has scored the most wins in international data journalism awards, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, to discover characteristics of the data journalism it practices, as its media operates within an environment with increasing government monitoring of the press, similar to countries in the Asian region subjected to various forms of authoritarian politics. Through a content analysis of 130 data stories produced from 2016 to 2020, this study investigates the topics that SCMP’s data team chooses to cover, how they are covered and the extent to which data journalism is able to work in the public’s interest amid Hong Kong’s increasingly complex political and social context. Findings show that even when stories are data-driven and evidence-based, with the use of diverse data sources and visualizations, topics related to China or Chinese politics tend to be approached with caution and the nature of stories more explanatory than investigative and less interactive. The roles of watchdog and interventionist are felt weakly in SCMP’s data stories, and the role of loyal-facilitator felt more strongly for stories on China than those on Hong Kong and the world, suggesting that data journalism may face challenges performing its democratic functions.

Stay Strong, Get Perspective, or Give Up: Role Negotiation in Small-Scale Investigative Journalism

ABSTRACT This article examines how investigative journalists, especially those working in newsroom contexts, deal with discrepancies between ideals and practice by actively negotiating their roles. Based on interviews with 28 Swiss journalists, it argues that despite having a strongly shared ideology revolving around the democratic roles of journalism, investigative reporters negotiate their investigative commitment on a daily basis. The study provides a conceptual model of this process based on a distinction between “liquid” and “solid” negotiation strategies, in the sense of Deuze. “Liquid” strategies involve reinterpreting, contesting and combining various journalistic roles, leading journalists to negotiate their investigative performance based on various individual organizational and institutional factors. Conversely, “solid” strategies tend to involve dogmatic attitudes toward investigative journalism. While this approach allows journalists to live by their ideals most of the time, it can also lead to simply dropping out. The study concludes with several important implications for research on journalistic identity and roles, as well as on media management, particularly regarding journalists’ agency in redefining journalism.

Editorial special issue ‘Public Pedagogy and Sustainability Challenges’

This special issue is developed within the scientific research network ‘Public Pedagogy and Sustainability Challenges’ funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). The network has brought together educational theorists, sustainability education researchers, sustainability transition researchers, artists and activists from Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Ireland, Norway and South Africa. They share an interest in the relation between education and societal transformation and wanted to deepen and widen the understanding of the public role of education in the face of sustainability challenges through interdisciplinary research collaboration. The aim of the network and, hence, the special issue is to progress theory development and research on public pedagogy with a focus on sustainability challenges. It addresses issues such as how education can play a democratic role in addressing sustainability challenges, the conditions and obstacles for that, implications for the design of sustainability education practices, and theoretical, methodological and empirical implications for researching sustainability education as public pedagogy.

Government as a Brain: How Can Governments Better Understand, Think, Create, and Remember, and Avoid the Traps of Collective Stupidity Both in Emergencies and Normal Times

Governments are evolving new ways to think, combining observation, memory, analysis, models, and creativity. This article describes how they think, how the COVID crisis has accelerated innovation in new ways of thinking, the use of metaphors to understand these processes, the role of democracy and civil society, and the new skills needed.

Can Cryptocurrencies be the Future of Money? The Role of Democracy

The purpose of this article is to evaluate if cryptocurrencies that have robust technology and anonymous features can be the money of the future. In this study, the transition phases of paper money, which started to be used at the beginning of the 17th century, to bank money, then banknotes and fiat money were examined. By pointing out that the fiat money system has developed within the conditions of humanity's search for democracy and freedom. It has been stated that fiat money can only be successful in democratic systems where institutions operate freely, and therefore fiat money is an instrument of democracy. It has been concluded that the authoritarian tendencies, which have started in the world since the 21st century due to nationalism, migration, and climate change, are an important factor in the widespread use of cryptocurrencies. It has been concluded that the spread of cryptocurrencies is directly dependent on the democratic practices of countries and if authoritarianism rises, the use of cryptocurrencies will inevitably be more.

The Democratic Role of the National Library in Improving the Culture of Information Literacy During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This study was conducted to describe the role of the National Library (Perpustakaan Nasional) in improving literacy culture during the Covid-19 pandemic through the analysis of the SWOT+PEST communication strategy. With the desk research analysis method, data and information from observational information sources from online media and books combined with a description of the SWOT+PEST analysis, it was found that libraries can be said to play an important role in increasing public information literacy. The achievement of a strong literacy democracy can lead to a stronger development of Indonesia.