Activism Research Articles

Would teaching gender as core, not boutique, move us closer to the SDG gender equality goal?

ABSTRACT The Sustainable Development Goals, through Goal 5 on Gender Equality, put gender as a focus at the heart of every endeavour. Yet with 2030 looming, across the globe, we have made insufficient progress towards gender equality. Despite a plethora of mentions of the aim to achieve gender equality in regional and international documents, progress is slow (see https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2022/09/progress-on-the-sustainable-development-goals-the-gender-snapshot-2022 and https://pacificdata.org/dashboard/sdg-5-gender-equality). What can be done? If transformative change is required, then a range of options needs to be explored. Could expanding exposure as to who studies gender be just one tool for building a pipeline of actors who take a gender lens when engaging with key issues, and speeding up progress towards the gender equality goal of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Goal 5)? How should we rethink the teaching of gender and development? My proposition is that gender should be mainstreamed in every course through a revised curriculum as a practical lever for change and to hasten progress towards Goal 5. The hope is that this paper can encourage conversation both in gender and development circles and the scholarship of teaching and learning, and prompt new lines of research and action towards rethinking the teaching of gender and development, which can then strengthen the knowledge base in the pipeline of political decision-makers and development actors. This paper is a call to action for the repositioning of gender at the heart of all studies – not as an elective or “boutique”, but as core to every subject.

Institutional policies and practices to improve access and success in higher education: the students’ proposals

ABSTRACT Ensuring equal conditions of access and success for all higher education students is a challenging task for educational systems and institutions. Understanding the students’ perspectives and needs regarding educational policies and institutional practices in higher education can be an important contribution to improving the quality of education. This paper aims to identify the main obstacles faced by students and their proposals for the improvement of policies and institutional practices in the Portuguese higher education system to promote access and success for all students. By using a mixed-methods approach, we gathered responses from 1,292 students enrolled in 56 HEIs. Data was analysed through content analysis with a pre-existing grid comprising three dimensions: socio-economic, educational and institutional. Descriptive statistics were carried out for the quantitative data. The results revealed socio-economic factors were the most frequently mentioned as needing improvement, followed by the educational and institutional factors. The results allow concluding that institutional practices and educational policies are directly related. Thus, the institutional and political improvement actions should be seen in a holistic and integrative way, integrating actions to enhance the students’ socio-economic, educational and institutional conditions.

HOW DID THE PANDEMIC AFFECT THE RESIZING OF TELEVISION NEWSROOMS IN ALBANIA?

The pandemic has brought a great surprise by transforming many dimensions of our lives, but it has undoubtedly also found the entire media industry unprepared. It has led to the paralysis of every political and economic activity, as well as of media systems, not only in Albania, but did not spare the information corporations all over the world. The immediate challenges faced by the media, particularly the traditional ones, were the collapse of information, job losses, decline in advertising, reduction of staff and budgets, biased information, decreased access to resources. In this article we aim to prepare a qualitative analysis, of how Covid-19 has re-dimensioned the editorial staff of information television in terms of organization and operation of daily basis of the journalist’s work. In the following, we have taken in consideration in our study three newsrooms of news televisions, such as: Syri Tv, Euronews and News 24. The methodology is based on qualitative interviews of the three relevant chief editors of the aforementioned media, such as: Bledian Koka, Anta Muçaku and Anila Jole. The survey of 23 journalists working in these newsrooms also provides quantitative data, concluding that today’s editorships bring many "innovations" and organizational "changes", that had not previously been embraced by classic TV editors, before the Covid 19.

Examining the spread of disinformation on Facebook during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic: A case study in Switzerland

Abstract Disinformation poses a significant threat to democratic societies, particularly in the context of the Covid-19 health crisis. This study delves into the prevalence and nature of disinformation in social media by analyzing Facebook accounts of political actors and alternative media within the unique Swiss landscape during the first wave of the pandemic. Using standardized quantitative content analysis, we categorize posts as either accurate, reconfigured, or fabricated. Our findings reveal a disconcerting pattern: Disinformation was shared more frequently than accurate information. Notably, right-wing politicians and parties, alongside alternative media sources, emerged as the most prolific disseminators of disinformation. Digging deeper, we discovered that the predominant form of disinformation shared on social media was reconfigured disinformation, signifying manipulated or contextually distorted information. This prevalence of reconfigured disinformation on social media platforms raises pressing concerns about the public’s ability to discern fact from fiction. Moreover, our study shines a spotlight on the inadvertent or perhaps deliberate contributions of right-wing politicians and parties and alternative media sources to the propagation of disinformation. By examining this phenomenon within the Swiss context during the initial wave of the pandemic, we provide valuable insights into the dynamics of disinformation and its implications for society during crisis situations.

Indirect corporate political strategy in cross-border acquisitions: influence of political affinity on target-dependent firm lobbying

Purpose To mitigate the impact of legitimacy concerns, firms often depend on strategic partnerships that enable them to navigate both complex political landscapes and regulatory environments. In this paper, the authors expand research into the dynamics of indirect and collective forms of corporate political activities (CPA), particularly focusing on multinational enterprises (MNEs) originating from countries with low political affinity with the host country and its allies. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample consisting of 2,173 friendly acquisitions in the USA made by 1,612 foreign acquirers originating from 66 countries, the authors used Tobit regression analysis to test the direct and moderating hypotheses. Findings The empirical evidence shows that acquiring MNEs grappling with heightened legitimacy issues due to low political affinity between the involved countries are more inclined to leverage target firms for effective lobbying resources. This tendency is amplified when the multilateral political affinity between the home and the host country's allies is also considered. Originality/value The evolving nature of global politics and the increasing scrutiny of corporate-political interactions necessitate a deeper understanding of indirect CPA strategies. The findings of this research shed light on how bilateral and multilateral political relations affect MNEs’ corporate political activities, specifically in the form of indirect, collective lobbying.

Online Political Participation of Refugees in Germany: Analysis of a Survey in Bavaria

New media are an important resource for the political participation of marginalized groups. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about the factors that influence whether this opportunity is used. Influencing factors emerge from both the Civic Voluntarism Model and previous research on migrants’ political activity. Using data collected in 2019/2020 from 486 refugees living in Bavaria, we estimate linear probability models to investigate facilitating factors for the use of new media for political participation. The analysis shows that refugees in Germany who inform themselves about politics online tend to be predominantly male, higher educated, and politically involved. Language skills and the duration of stay also appear to be important. For the expression of one’s political opinion online, gender and language skills have an impact, but informing oneself about German politics, political interest, and offline political activity in Germany are the most relevant factors. This indicates that there is a close link between on- und offline activity. However, using the internet requires particular resources, so that people with lower language skills, for example, are particularly disadvantaged.

Reforms of Political Finance: Strengthening Democracy by Reducing the Impact of High-Cost Politics

This study has two objectives: First, to examine high-cost politics in Indonesian elections; Second, to propose measures to strengthen the Ministry of Home Affairs’ authority in political finance supervision and enhance regulations to promote electoral transparency, using the recent Indonesian elections as a case study. Indonesia’s political process is characterized by high-cost politics, where candidates often face pressure to raise substantial funds to finance their election campaigns. Consequently, elections, meant to serve as a democratic platform for all Indonesians, frequently become subject to abuse by individuals seeking to attain power. The primary goal of this study is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the high-cost politics in Indonesian elections and its impacts on democratic integrity. The study utilized a normative juridical methodology, incorporating statutory and conceptual approaches. The findings indicated that transactional and money politics, along with high-cost politics in Indonesia’s elections, pose a serious threat to democracy. The Ministry of Home Affairs and the General Election Supervisory Agency must strengthen their legal instruments to monitor political party finances. Furthermore, political actors must be encouraged to reduce high-cost politics.

Dismissed or Acclaimed for Breaking Norms: The Discursive Positioning of Young Active Citizens in Czech Online Media

Despite new affordances available since the mainstreaming of digital media in countries with high levels of internet connectivity, young actors in teenage years are a group whose involvement in social and political affairs remains constrained by prevailing stereotypes regarding the social role of youth and acceptable forms of civic engagement. This paper explores the discourse on youths’ active citizenship found in Czech online media outlets, conceptualised as adult-governed spaces. Considering age as a significant exclusionary category in approaches to citizenship, the discursive construction of young active Czech citizens is studied on six concrete local actors and analysed via two types of relational positioning: (1) intra-generational (youth-to-youth) and (2) inter-generational (youth-to-adult). Media representations reveal normative expectations of youth as political actors that range from a refusal to recognise their participation to acclaiming them for it. Depending on the intersection of the actors’ agendas, their personal profiles, and the political orientation of the media outlets, the media depict the actors either negatively as deviant or positively as exceptional, reflecting contemporary ideo-political conflicts in Czechia. The paper concludes that the young age of the actors serves as an amplification factor for discreditation of a counter-attitudinal political agenda.

La publicitación de los feminicidios de madres buscadoras en México

This article analyzes the publicizing of the femicides of searching mothers from the perspective of sociology of critique. To this end, it tests an actantial model of complaints through a digital ethnography based on public texts, with the purpose of understanding the slow process of configuration of this social problem as a public problem. The work analyzes this type of feminicide, whose execution pattern is related to the field of organized violence, through a strategy focused on the justifications of the actors involved. In this logic, it reconstructs the stories and narratives of the political and social actors involved in the process, describes relationships between experts and victims in the complaint and access to justice, and provides elements for understanding the meaning that social and political actors give to their experiences of this borderline social problem. The article closes with some considerations about the challenges in researching the structural effects of this type of violence in the field of social sciences and multi-localized public action at a national and subnational scale.

Black Girls as Transformative Leaders in Physical Activity Programs

Background: Black adolescent girls possess a unique ability to inspire and enact change in their communities, yet are overlooked in discussions of leadership and empowerment. Coupled with deficit approaches to school-based physical activity programming, positioning Black girls as physical activity leaders is missing from practice. BLinG-HealthTM (Black Leadership in Girls’ Health) trained peer leaders in group fitness instruction instrumental in delivering group fitness sessions in an 8-week after-school physical activity pilot program. Methods and Analysis: This paper presents the qualitative data illustrating the program's impact on Black girls leading peers in a group fitness setting using general inductive narrative analysis based on group interviews, observations, reflection notes, and faculty leadership testimonials. Results: Participants exuded community, collaboration, and confidence. Peer leadership was effective but differed. Girls recognized the program's benefits and challenges while enjoying it. Conclusion: Black girls can lead physical activity initiatives when allowed to do so while building a community. Researchers and school and community activists should empower Black girls to lead physical activity programs to foster better health outcomes.

Radios y Cacerolas

This article elaborates a feminist digital activist perspective on the Colombian national strike of 2021 through the work of two women-led collectives (colectivas) in which I participated from afar, as part of the Colombian diaspora. Radio Lila is a collective of women living in Cali’s oriente, and Cacerola Collective is formed by Colombians in the diaspora, mostly people working in the creative industries. Through the study of these colectivas’s praxis, this article argues that women-led collectives use digital tools and the internet not only to set up political actions but also to create online places for care and mourning. This argument makes conspicuous how there is a gap in the research on digital activism, concerning the emotional tools activists seek to transit political uprisals and their aftermaths. In other words, we see here how feminist research on social media can also focus on retreating, going offline, as a way of personal and communal care.

Reconstituting the ‘good woman’: Gendered visual politics on social media during 2021 state election in West Bengal, India

This paper explores the visual politics of gender in electoral politics in West Bengal (WB). We examine how women political candidates visually construct their non-verbal political performance on social media, and how such visuals relate to social mores and societal expectations surrounding femininity. Drawing on theories of the social construction of gender and visual political communication, we conducted a content analysis of 1,033 visual artefacts from eight individual women candidates and 205 from the Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) pages of the four main political parties taking part in the January-April 2021 electoral campaign for state-level elections in WB. We analysed how these candidates construct gendered relationships with the electorate through different cues on the platforms, such as sartorial choices (traditional or Western attire), use of culture-specific religious symbols (sindoor or vermillion, bindi – forehead marking worn by married Hindu women), and gendered/non-gendered political actions like cooking or serving food, giving speeches or meeting constituents in political processions. Our findings about the visually performed politics show a combination of cultural, political, and gender signifiers, which are mediated and remain connected to societal expectations, and historical narratives. The candidates’ negotiation of these aspects, in turn, underscores a reproduction of colonial legacies and, in the present day, an ongoing production of societal differences. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on visual politics of gender, particularly in Asian contexts. It sheds light on the nuanced ways women politicians use social media to construct their visual identities, and how the deployment of body politics into the relatively ‘new’ online sphere reifies ‘old’ social, political, cultural symbolisms, and norms regarding gender. In this way, this article highlights the importance of considering pre-digital forms of gendered identity construction and visual representation when analysing the contested terrain of digital visibilities.

Martin Buber’s engagement with Hebrew as political activism

This article follows Martin Buber’s (1878–1965) engagement with Hebrew in the context of his political activism, focusing on the 1930s and 1940s. It examines Buber’s paradoxical command of the language and years-long lack of fluency, which he finally acquired upon immigrating to Palestine in 1938. It is argued that between 1933 and 1948 Buber crafted his translations and authored works in a manner that employed specific resonances of the Hebrew language to advocate his ideology. The article presents Buber’s sophisticated employment of his expert knowledge of Hebrew in the service of political activism, in Nazi Germany and British Mandate Palestine, demonstrating how Hebrew figures both in his theological-political programme and in his political activism in specific circumstances.

Dimitrie Cantemir in the face of the change of the civilizational paradigm

In the following communication Dimitrie Cantemir in the face of civilizational paradigm change, the authors try to examine from a different angle the actions of Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723) during his short reign in Moldova (1710-1711) and especially regarding his alliance with Peter I, Tsar of Russia (April 2/13, 1711). Starting from the fact that the Romanian scholar during his adolescence and youth had been formed as an intellectual and politician in the Orthodox cultural and spiritual environment from Moldova on the one hand and in that of the Islamic world and culture from Constantinople on the other, it can be assumed that he was acquainted both with the Christian European civilization and with the Arab-Turkish-Persian Oriental one. Throughout his entire literary creation as a historian, philosopher, musician, etc., Cantemir relied on representative scientific, cultural and religious values from both civilizational worlds. As for his political activity, both before and during his reign in Moldova, the Romanian prince understood that his homeland was included in the civilizational area of the Ottoman Empire, a circumstance that inhibited its development and affirmation on the international level. In accordance with the Biblical conception of the universal cycle of the four monarchies, which the erudite prince had embraced and further developed in a special study, Monarchiarum physica examinatio / A Natural Research of Monarchies, he considered that the unfolding political-military events at the crossroads of the two great civilizations, that of Europe and that of Islam, inevitably led to the collapse and disappearance of the Ottoman Empire as a historical anomaly. As a result, the baton of universal evolution would soon be taken over by the Northern monarchy, which was represented, according to D. Cantemir, by the Russian state. This system was used as the theoretical basis for the decision of the prince of Moldavia to break his relations with the Ottoman Gate and negotiate an alliance with the new rising European power. Thus, through such an action in these new circumstances, Cantemir was actually trying to break Moldova away from the area of Oriental civilization and place it de facto as a sovereign country in the new system of European international relations.

The Role of the State Civil Apparatus (ASN) in Preventing and Suppressing the Practice of Money Politics

This study aimed to analyze the constrained role of the State Civil Apparatus (ASN) in suppressing the practice of money politics which contributes to high-cost elections during general elections. ASN’s political activities are heavily restricted, limiting its ability to actively and directly engage in the electoral process. However, statutory provisions also mandate that ASN serve as both the implementer of public policy—an inherently political product—and as a unifying force for the nation. In its role as a unifier, ASN must actively contribute to ensuring that elections are conducted fairly and appropriately for the future of the nation. The object of this study was to examine the limited authority and role of ASN in suppressing the practice of money politics. The study employed a qualitative descriptive analysis to explore the issue from the ASN’s perspective, focusing on the potential contributions of its authority and role in enhancing the quality of elections. The findings indicated that ASN can leverage its authority and role both individually and institutionally to suppress money politics practices. Individually, ASN members can contribute through socialization, advocacy, political education, information dissemination, and anti-money politics campaigns. Institutionally, contributions can be made by strengthening regulatory and policy frameworks, enhancing the integrity and capabilities of ASN personnel, conducting studies, analyses, and discussions to improve electoral process quality, and enforcing strict sanctions against perpetrators of money politics.

Saving Providence Public Library: Financial Crises and Community Activism, 1960s to 2009

Saving Providence Public Library: Financial Crises and Community Activism, 1960s to 2009

Mnemonic adoption and rejection: How activists remember and forget previous mobilisations

Contributing to the growing literature on the memory-activism nexus, this article analyses how activists remember past activism. For social movements and activists, memories of past mobilisations represent both an asset and a burden. This article seeks to contribute to existing research on memory in activism by identifying recurrent patterns of how activists remember and forget previous mobilisations across different movements. Based on interviews with activists of the Global Justice Movement (1998–2007) and the Blockupy movement (2012–2015), four mnemonic modes are identified. These entail two types of mnemonic adoption, which highlight continuity with a positive or negative valence attached, and two types of mnemonic rejection, which highlight discontinuity with a positive or negative valence attached. I show how similar patterns of these mnemonic modes can be found across the two movements and their diverse subgroups. At the same time, however, these mnemonic patterns differ depending on the degree of activists’ identification with the overall movement; while activists who strongly identify with the movement in question remember failures of past mobilisations and their differences to current ones more clearly than similarities and successes, the opposite is the case for activists with low identification attachments.

An Application of Welfare Game Theory on Discussing the Reactions between Ukraine and US-NATO in the Russia-Ukraine War

<p>The Russia-Ukraine war broke out on February 24, 2022, shaking the international community. To understand the behavior of both Russia and Ukraine in this war, as well as how military and economic aid from the United States, the European Union, and NATO influences Ukraine’s actions, this paper explores the interaction between Ukraine and the U.S.-EU alliance through the viewpoint of welfare game theory. The discussion focuses on how these interactions affect the progress of the Russia-Ukraine war. International political and military activities are based on national interests. The U.S.-EU alliance’s support for Ukraine in resisting the Russian invasion must consider the mutual interests, losses, and related conditions between the U.S., EU, and Ukraine.</p> <p> </p>

Government Ownership, Political Regime, and Flipping of IPOs in Pakistan: Evidence from Emerging Market

This study investigates how government ownership (state-owned IPOs) and the political regime affect the flipping of IPO shares, as well as the moderating impact of investor demand on the association between the political regime and flipping activity. Ordinary least square was employed to investigate the impact of government ownership and political regime on the flipping of IPO shares. The data set consists of 95 IPO firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) during the period of January 2000 to December 2019. The findings of this study reveal that government ownership and a political regime have a positive influence on the flipping of IPO shares, demonstrating the quality that creates liquidity in Pakistan’s IPO market. Furthermore, in Pakistan, investor demand has been reported to moderate the association between the political regime and IPO flipping activity. This research offers valuable insights that may result in abnormal trading behavior or flipping immediately after listing. Likewise, state-owned IPOs and the political regime appear to be more appealing to investors, signaling the firms’ high quality, causing in increased demand and higher levels of flipping. As a result, the government and regulators may devise policies to control unusual trading, ensuring that government investments in the capital market are successful and also that the government’s economic and political objectives are met. Moreover, this research is critical for investors and issuers making investment decisions. JEL Classification: G12, G18, G32.

Political party building in populist style

This article assesses the local organisation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in its first participation in South Africa’s local government elections in 2016. Drawing on original interviews with local party activists, it explains how the EFF’s brand of populism mobilised at the grassroots level during its formative years. The study argues that the party’s populist style was effective because it helped appropriate existing diverse networks of political activists by positioning itself as the voice of ‘ordinary black people’ against business and government ‘elites’. This orientation of the EFF appealed to youth, activists, and mineworkers who felt excluded from the African National Congress (ANC); while the protests and regalia of its populist style nurtured feelings of collective identity and efficacy among local party organisers. The article indicates how a populist style can be effective in exploiting generational cleavages to build a viable opposition party within the constraints of a dominant party system.