Topical Social Issues Research Articles

A comparative study of the electoral rhetoric of extreme right-wing parties in Germany and Russia

This article compares the electoral rhetoric of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) parties through the prism of the level of antagonization and the parties’ point of view on topical social issues. Discourse analysis is conducted using discourse frames and blocks, allowing formalizing the comparison between texts in different languages. The sample is based on party videos published online in April — May 2021 in the run-up to the upcoming federal elections in both countries. The LDPR uses more antagonistic rhetoric, especially against Western countries and Ukraine. The AfD uses we to unite its electorate, seeing the German and European establishment as its opponents, as well as organizations with an international agenda, including the Greens and the Antifa movement. Both parties raise important social issues such as immigration, digitalization, political freedoms, and national identity, but differences in emphasis emerge. The AfD is more likely to raise issues of economic freedom for business and the defense of German burgher culture against the leftist agenda, while the LDPR is focused on supporting Russian foreign policy and Russian culture against Western globalism. The authors also emphasize that modern far-right parties support democratic principles. Nationalism remains central to far-right ideology, but it is drifting towards democracy under the influence of sociocultural processes. The study aims to improve understanding of the dynamics of far-right political discourse in Germany and Russia. The theoretical developments allow us to expand the application of discourse analysis of political rhetoric.

Dmytro Ivanovych Kachenovskyi – a legal scholar, educator and teacher (based on the materials of Kharkiv Law Society)

The article examines the scientific and pedagogical activities of the legal scholar, professor of Kharkiv University Dmytro Ivanovych Kachenovskyi (1827–1872). The researcher pioneered the national legal education and had a significant impact on its development. The study of the creative work of the mid-nineteenth century international law expert became relevant in the early twentieth century. In 1903, Kharkiv Law Society held a solemn meeting on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Dmytro Kachenovskyi’s death. Following the meeting, a collection of materials in memory of Dmytro Kachenovskyi was published. These materials are a valuable historical source that contain special information and contribute to a deeper study of the scientist’s scientific heritage. The study of the source expands the existing documentary base. The purpose of the study is to study and analyse the materials of the collection published by the Kharkiv Law Society in honour of Professor Kachenovskyi.
 The analysis of memoirs helps to reconstruct the key episodes of a scientist's life in more detail, to form an idea of his personality, to explore the directions of his scientific research, views on topical social issues, attitude to teaching, relationships with colleagues, and influence on students.
 It has been proved that the distinctive features of the scientist were humanistic guidelines, breadth of outlook, and diversity of scientific interests. His natural abilities, academic education, developed intellect, and ability to work determined his personality. His knowledge of foreign languages, foreign internships, personal contacts with foreign colleagues, and the study of European scientific literature in the original allows us to characterise him as a typical representative of the “inner West” who saw his mission in spreading education and the latest scientific achievements. His lectures, which were characterised by a comprehensive approach to teaching, brought up a generation of public and judicial figures of the era of great reforms.

MODERN MILITARY PROSE: GENRE AND STYLE TYPOLOGY

The paper deals with the typology of modern Ukrainian military prose based on the analysis of relevant novels. According to the structural and functional features of the works, it is reasonable to classify them using division into high/mass/intermediate literature. The first type includes complex and multidimensional texts (with allusions, literary reminiscences, irony, parody, etc.), and their action takes place mainly in a mental sphere. Heroes are characterized by understanding of social processes and war realities (significant is the presence of two identities, “properly Ukrainian” and “Soviet”); they rethink their mistakes and transform in response to new challenges. These texts are mostly focused on the acquisition of individual subjectivity. They require a trained erudite reader who can discern the writer’s narratives behind their multi-layered nature. Mass literature includes works where action dominates, and such elements as shooting, chase, superman hero, excessive emotions, love triangle, etc. are widely used. The adventure genre, military detective, melodrama, and action novel are currently most fully represented. Intermediate prose may combine, on the one hand, topical social issues, character evolution, logical and consistent presentation of events (as a feature of “high literature”) with a simplified plot and images, the lack of attention to the psychology of the characters, and various means of mass literature. Contemporary Ukrainian writers have managed to create a large-scale cultural discourse, offering works that cover the problem of war, its causes and consequences, and the topic of a person at war from different perspectives and contexts.

Shaw Disarms the Man: War, Colonialism, and Theater in the 1890s (Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, and Caesar and Cleopatra)

Shaw Disarms the Man: War, Colonialism, and Theater in the 1890s (Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, <i>and</i> Caesar and Cleopatra)

디케의 저울 : 『자에는 자로』(Measure for Measure)에 나타난 법과 정의

This paper aims to analyze Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure from the perspectives of law and justice epitomized in the statue of Dike. The play deals with many topical social issues which have counterparts in Jacobean London, such as marriage, sex, law, and justice. Duke Vincentio of Vienna deputizes strict Angelo to govern his dukedom with the intention of straightening the loosened law. Angelo overrides his power and applies the law which was dormant for 19 years and sentences Claudio to be hanged for his transgressive fornication with Julia and making her pregnant. Angelo, however violates the law himself by demanding Isabella’s virtue in exchange for her brother’s life. The duke makes surveillance in disguise and manipulates the bed trick to entrap Angelo. The surveillance and the theatricality of power puts the power of authority, law and justice in question. Although the duke tries to contain all the disruptive voices in the reconciliation and in the festive mood of multiple marriages, there still remains the uncontained subversive voices from the marginalized in the play.

Absurdist Picture of Modernity in Dmitry Danilovʼs Plays

The article is addressed to today’s literary material – Dmitry Danilov’s plays of 2017–2020, where a three-dimensional artistic picture of modernity is created through absurdist stage situations, speech and collisions of actors. The ways of dramaturgical embodiment of topical social issues are considered, the image of the mental features of the hero-contemporary is discussed.

Эмоциональная специфика вербального и невербального поведения при обсуждении бодипозитива (на примере интервью с информантами из России)

The article focuses on the problem of describing the specifics of verbal and nonverbal be-havior of Russian-speaking respondents in oral discourse on body positivity as a topical social issue. Therelevance of the problem is determined by: 1) the growing interest of scientists in the study of emotional processes in language and speech; 2) the lack of scientific papers describing the national and cultural specif-ics of the emotional behavior of Russophones; 3) its interdisciplinarity. The aim is to describe the emotional specifics of verbal and nonverbal behavior of Russian-speaking informants in the discourse about body posi-tivity and, by identifying emotional markers, to describe the attitude of Russophones to the movement of rad-ical body positivity. The leading research method is multimodal analysis implemented using ELAN software. During the experiment, it was found that, on the one hand, through language cliches, phraseological units, obscene vocabulary and borrowings from the English language, the proposition ‘you need to accept yourself as you are’ is verbalized; on the other hand, there is an ironic attitude toward the supporters of body positivi-ty, embodied in the genre of parody. To comply withgenerally accepted norms of acceptability, respondents resort to self-correction, verbalized by tolerance markers. The gender aspect of body positivity is manifested in the actualization of the propositions ‘body positivity is about the female body’ and ‘the male is the earner’. References to pop culture are used for emotional reinforcement, which is also realized through nonverbal manifestations of emotions, including nonverbal markers of bewilderment, embarrassment, doubt, approval (a smirk, frown, facial expressions, laughter, smile, squinting). In addition, there are limiter gestures used to indicate a conditional separation of two objects, to visualize a ‘shield’ or show a frame, as well as a gesture visualizing quotation marks to normalize what has been said and emphasize disagreement.

Factors of Influence of the Regional Political Elite in Modern Russia: Evidences from St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region

The relevance of the research project is determined by the dominant role of elite groups in modern Russian politics. The opportunity and ability of the elite to solve topical social issues to a large extent depend on the degree of their influence. The article presents the results of an expert study in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region (late November to early December 2021). Representatives of the regional political elite themselves, as well as “key informants” acted as experts. The technology for collecting expert information included a set of qualitative and quantitative methods (methods of grouping data with an estimate of the average values of the variation series and dispersion measures, as well as multidimensional scaling, factorial and cluster analysis). The evaluation was carried out on 22 parameters. In St. Petersburg, six factors are associated with the strategies used by the authorities to strengthen their influence: the conditions of general and political socialization; dominant communication strategies of politicians based on the type of their leadership; economic resources; informal grounds for political career related to the politicians’ families; cultivation of clientelism, atypical for a metropolis; the regional elite having work experience in other areas, in addition to public administration and public policy. The politicians themselves are mostly attracted to three image types: a) a productive political “heavyweight”, belonging to a clan by birthright or “overgrown” with economic and informal ties, including with “shadow structures”, who has real economic opportunities to influence the situation in the region; b) a “political tribune”, who actively communicates with the population and relies on cultivating a stable positive attitude towards themselves among the inhabitants of the region; c) an “insider”, connected with the region by their destiny and having stable political views. The study showed that in St. Petersburg, public communicative activity online and offline is not a significant condition for strengthening the “political weight” of a politician; belonging to a clan (family, friend group, professional clan) is much more important. Experts deny that accentuated masculine or feminine behaviour patterns of politicians in St. Petersburg are a significant factor in strengthening their influence. In the Leningrad Region, the configuration of the latent factors influencing the significance of politicians is different. The most important factors include the following: the channel and method of politician’s recruitment to power; the activity of personal information policy on the Internet; the presence of social, human and status capital through birth in a certain family or effective interaction with certain influential regional groups; an accentuated demonstration of personal resources; the presence of real leadership qualities; control over economic resources in the region. Five dominant types of politicians were identified in terms of the various qualities exploited by them and demonstrated to the public. The importance of the ability of politicians to large-scale, strategic thinking in solving regional problems and the accentuated gender type of behaviour in public politics was confirmed.

The role of volunteering in the state social policy implementation (on the example of the city of Magnitogorsk)

Currently, volunteering plays a significant role in the implementation of the state social policy. On the one hand, the number of volunteers is growing, but, on the other hand, there are many questions and problems regarding the participation of people in volunteer activities. In order to study the attitude of young people to volunteering, their motives, and willingness to participate, a survey among 1st year university students majoring in Social Work was conducted. The choice of respondents was not random: their future profession of a social work specialist is directly related to the state social policy implementation. It was found that most of all young people are attracted to volunteering by a noble idea, the possibility of gaining new experience, self-realization, and new opportunities and hobbies. Thus, young people often begin to volunteer in order to satisfy their needs and interests in the first place. A novice volunteer can form humanistic values and the need to help people while being in the community united by the idea of helping others. An example is the activities of the all-Russian social movement "Volunteers of Victory", in particular, its branch in the city of Magnitogorsk. "Volunteers of Victory" cooperate with the city social service institutions, helping to solve various social problems, organize events for the patriotic education of children and youth, and conduct educational work, thereby contributing to the creation of a socio-cultural environment aimed at educating a socially active person and to the solution of topical social issues.

The Prediction of Public Risk Perception by Internal Characteristics and External Environment: Machine Learning on Big Data.

Presently, the public’s perception of risk in terms of topical social issues is mainly measured quantitively using a psychological scale, but this approach is not accurate enough for everyday data. In this paper, we explored the ways in which public risk perception can be more accurately predicted in the era of big data. We obtained internal characteristics and external environment predictor variables through a literature review, and then built our prediction model using the machine learning of a BP neural network via three steps: the calculation of the node number of the implication level, a performance test of the BP neural network, and the computation of the weight of every input node. Taking the public risk perception of the Sino–US trade friction and the COVID-19 pandemic in China as research cases, we found that, according to our tests, the node number of the implication level was 15 in terms of the Sino–US trade friction and 14 in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following this, machine learning was conducted, through which we found that the R2 of the BP neural network prediction model was 0.88651 and 0.87125, respectively, for the two cases, which accurately predicted the public’s risk perception of the data on a certain day, and simultaneously obtained the weight of every predictor variable in each case. In this paper, we provide comments and suggestions for building a model to predict the public’s perception of topical issues.

Impact of Film and Other Social Narratives on Students

Nowadays films occupy a significant portion of the media products consumed by people. In Russia, cinema is being considered as a means of individual and social transformation, which makes a contribution to the formation of the Russian audience's outlook, including their attitudes towards topical social issues. At the same time, the question of the effectiveness of films' impact remains an open question in psychological science. According to the empirical orientation of our approach to the study of mass media influence, our goal was to obtain new data on the positive impact of films based on specific experimental research. The task was to identify changes in the attitudes of young people, as the most active viewers, towards topical social issues after watching a specifically selected film. Using a psychosomatic technique that included 25 scales designed to identify attitudes towards elderly people, respondents evaluated their various characteristics before and after watching films. Using a number of characteristics related to the motivational, emotional and cognitive spheres, significant changes were revealed. At the same time, significant differences were found in assessments of the elderly between undergraduate students and postgraduate students. After watching films, postgraduate students' attitudes towards elderly people changed in a positive way, while undergraduate students' negative assessments only worsened. The revealed opposite trends can be explained by individual differences of respondents, which include age, educational status as an indicator of individual psychological characteristics, the experience of interaction with elderly people and, as a result, attitudes towards elderly people at the time before watching movies. The finding that previous attitudes mediate the impact of the film complements the ideas of the contribution of individual differences to media effects. Most of the changes detected immediately after watching the movie did not remain over time. A single movie viewing did not have a lasting effect on viewers' attitudes, and it suggests the further task of identifying mechanisms of the sustainability of changes.

Impact of Films: Changes in Young People's Attitudes after Watching a Movie.

Nowadays films occupy a significant portion of the media products consumed by people. In Russia, cinema is being considered as a means of individual and social transformation, which makes a contribution to the formation of the Russian audience’s outlook, including their attitudes towards topical social issues. At the same time, the question of the effectiveness of films’ impact remains an open question in psychological science. According to the empirical orientation of our approach to the study of mass media influence, our goal was to obtain new data on the positive impact of films based on specific experimental research. The task was to identify changes in the attitudes of young people, as the most active viewers, towards topical social issues after watching a specifically selected film. Using a psychosemantic technique that included 25 scales designed to identify attitudes towards elderly people, respondents evaluated their various characteristics before and after watching the film. Using a number of characteristics related to the motivational, emotional and cognitive spheres, significant changes were revealed. At the same time, significant differences were found in assessments of the elderly between undergraduate students and postgraduate students. After watching the film, postgraduate students’ attitudes towards elderly people changed in a positive way, while undergraduate students’ negative assessments only worsened. The revealed opposite trends can be explained by individual differences of respondents, which include age, educational status as an indicator of individual psychological characteristics, the experience of interaction with elderly people and, as a result, attitudes towards elderly people at the time before watching the movie. The finding that previous attitudes mediate the impact of the film complements the ideas of the contribution of individual differences to media effects. Most of the changes detected immediately after watching the movie did not remain over time. A single movie viewing did not have a lasting effect on viewers’ attitudes, and it suggests the further task of identifying mechanisms of the sustainability of changes.

The Datafication of Hate: Expectations and Challenges in Automated Hate Speech Monitoring.

Hate speech has been identified as a pressing problem in society and several automated approaches have been designed to detect and prevent it. This paper reports and reflects upon an action research setting consisting of multi-organizational collaboration conducted during Finnish municipal elections in 2017, wherein a technical infrastructure was designed to automatically monitor candidates' social media updates for hate speech. The setting allowed us to engage in a 2-fold investigation. First, the collaboration offered a unique view for exploring how hate speech emerges as a technical problem. The project developed an adequately well-working algorithmic solution using supervised machine learning. We tested the performance of various feature extraction and machine learning methods and ended up using a combination of Bag-of-Words feature extraction with Support-Vector Machines. However, an automated approach required heavy simplification, such as using rudimentary scales for classifying hate speech and a reliance on word-based approaches, while in reality hate speech is a linguistic and social phenomenon with various tones and forms. Second, the action-research-oriented setting allowed us to observe affective responses, such as the hopes, dreams, and fears related to machine learning technology. Based on participatory observations, project artifacts and documents, interviews with project participants, and online reactions to the detection project, we identified participants' aspirations for effective automation as well as the level of neutrality and objectivity introduced by an algorithmic system. However, the participants expressed more critical views toward the system after the monitoring process. Our findings highlight how the powerful expectations related to technology can easily end up dominating a project dealing with a contested, topical social issue. We conclude by discussing the problematic aspects of datafying hate and suggesting some practical implications for hate speech recognition.

Significant learning in catholic religious education: the case of Temuco (Chile)

ABSTRACTThe object of this article is to reveal the teaching strategies used by teachers for religious education in Temuco, Chile. The paradigm used was qualitative and the design was a single interpretative case study. The data were collected by semi-structured interviews with pupils and religious education (RE) teachers. The results show convergences of successful strategies, such as the use of conversations to form opinions related with the pupils’ everyday interests. We conclude that significant learning for catholic religious education in schools (CRES) includes teaching strategies associated with individual and collective reflections and conversations on topical social issues. Thus, religious education may enable us to advance towards a pluralist approach to the teaching of religion.

Коммуникативные стратегии авторского блога

Modern blogs are means of public influence. The authors analyze communicative strategies, stylistic and lexical means used by Deborrah Blum, journalist and blogger involved in environmental issues discussion. The range of means under consideration is wide due to extreme topical significance. Ecological problems are challenge of modern society and blog’s author attracts contemporaries attention to them. Discourse analysis and content analysis are dominant research methods. The author of the blog, having an expert status uses such communicative strategies as regulative, metacommunicative, informative and modal-evaluative. Informative and influential potential of blogs is caused both by topical acuteness and virtual communication participants feedback, their joint and collective authorship. Blog discourse emphasizes topical social issues. Contemporary blog is of both informative and evaluative character. Virtual communication depicts cognitive and mental patterns of the Internet communication typical participants in information epoch.

ВОСПРИЯТИЕ И ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИЯ ТЕКСТОВ КУЛЬТУРЫ СОВРЕМЕННОЙ МОЛОДЕЖЬЮ

В статье анализируется категория воспринимаемости текстов культуры на примере их восприятия современной молодежью. Утверждается, что это восприятие осложняется изза явно неудовлетворительной способности молодых людей погрузиться в прошлые эпохи, изза отсутствия шифра к коду семиотической памяти культуры. Интерпретация текстов культуры молодежью демонстрирует тревожное явление: у нее нет жизненной практики употребления многих слов духовного наследия, эти слова не прочувствованы, не прожиты ею образовавшиеся таким образом семантические лакуны быстро заполняются жаргонной и обсценной лексикой. The paper looks at the perception patterns of cultural texts with a particular focus on their perception by young people. The research methods employed include comparative analysis of the authors intentions and the recipients interpretations as well as linguistic experiment. The empirical analysis focuses on the texts by prominent authors and journalists and their interpretation by students, high schoolers creative writing works to analyze cultural texts and experimental texts featuring gaps. The findings of the analysis into the perception of cultural texts by young people suggest that their perception is impaired as youngsters are unable to comprehend the nations history and culturerelated semiotic elements. In case of a literary text they need to know the signaling features of a certain historic period or be familiar with the literary text itself. When dealing with an experimental mediatext the students were challenged with an abstract narrative lacking in images or featuring images which are used figuratively. Mass communication urges authors to address urgent and topical social issues, which suggest an emotional delivery featuring an idiosyncratic mix of bookish (archaic or dialectic) and colloquial (obsolete) lexemes. Recipients of these texts come from different social backgrounds and are less sensitive to the emotional charge of the text focusing merely on the texts content. While attempting to comprehend the authors message, they often fail to grasp the authors intention and appear to be less emotional. The analysis of the most common flaws and failures in high schoolers essays revealed misused speech patterns and grammarand stylerelated mistakes. This shows that they are lacking experience in drafting opinion essays. Another problem relates to their limited literary baggage as they are unfamiliar with classical texts and have no experience of analytical reading. Students texts often feature clich d pseudoscientific and formal stereotypical collocations which they see as markers of sophisticated style. Syntaxwise they tend to use sequences of words in similar syntactic functions, which, regardless of the authors intention, make a vivid stylistic tool of gradation and therefore is always emotionally charged. Overall creative essays drafted by students are excessively pathetic. On top of it, youngsters appear to have no sense of style. More than that, they often turn out to be insufficiently literate, which adds to the problem. The research findings showed an unwelcome trend: lacking in experience of using culturebased words, they turn to jargonisms and obscene words to fill in these semantic lacunae.

Освещение повседневной жизни заводских рабочих Вятской губернии в региональной прессе рубежа XIX—XX веков

The features of the coverage of the mores of factory workers of mining and military departments in the regional press at the turn of the 19 th -20 th centuries are considered. The study is based on the materials of the official edition - “Vyatskiye gubernskiye vedomosti.” Special attention is paid to the opinion of contemporaries who published essays, notes, correspondence on acute public topics in the newspaper. It is shown that the term morals in the study period, as a rule, was used to refer to local customs, the specifics of behaviour, illustrating deviations from the norms of morality, respectively, the publications were characterized by an accusatory tone. A review is made of journalistic materials reflecting the problems of the plant society during the crisis of the Ural mining industry on the example of Izhevsk, Kamsko-Votkinsk, Omutninsk, Peskov, Klimkovsk, Shurminsk and Glavnokholunitsk plants. It is concluded that the periodical press focused attention on topical social issues: level of crime, imperfection of justice, drunkenness, low cultural level of working youth, lack of educational and leisure institutions, etc. As a result, the reader formed mainly negative view of the daily life of industrial workers. Nevertheless, the messages on the topic of the day not only supported interest of the public, but also offered ways to solve the problems and exit from the crisis.

Patterns of Parental Involvement in Selected OECD Countries: Cross-National Analyses of PISA

&lt;p style="text-align:justify"&gt;Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), patterns of parental involvement were examined in selected OECD countries. The findings showed that, irrespective of educational qualifications, parents were frequently involved in their children’s learning at the start of primary school and at age 15. Cross-national analyses showed that a high percentage of parents were frequently involved in various ways with their children’s learning, with some OECD countries showing parental involvement to be very common. Less instrumental, more subtle forms of parental involvement such as parent-child conversations about topical social issues emerged as the strongest predictor for continuing parental literacy support at age 15. These findings have important implications for understanding patterns and forms of parenting and for guiding family policy to consider cultural, economic and educational explanations about the nature of parental involvement in children’s education.&lt;/p&gt;

Katolicka nauka społeczna w twórczości naukowej Janusza Mariańskiego

Janusz Mariański wniósł wkład w katolicką naukę społeczną, polegający na interpretacji nauczania społecznego Kościoła katolickiego i jego upowszechnianiu oraz zbadaniu w paradygmacie katolickiej nauki społecznej form i zakresu występowania struktur grzechu w Polsce w latach dziewięćdziesiątych ubiegłego wieku. W tym paradygmacie badawczym zajmował się też demokracją, ekologią i społeczną gospodarką rynkową. Stwierdzono, że badania socjologiczne prowadzone przez Mariańskiego umożliwiły ustalenie i opisanie aktualnych kwestii społecznych. Ponadto niektóre z tych badań, jak w przypadku badań etosu bezrobocia, pozwoliły empirycznie potwierdzić tezy zawarte w nauczaniu społecznym Kościoła katolickiego.

Hardboiled Performance and Affective Intimacy: Remediations of Racism in the Cenk Batu Tatorte

Although not around to stay, the first Turkish German detective to be featured in the Germany’s most popular television crime series, Tatort nonetheless represented a major TV event (2008–12). In his sixth episode as an investigator in a series famous for its continued engagement with topical social issues, Cenk Batu would be killed off after his loyalty to the German state had been tested by the schemes of a ruthless killer trying to exploit Batu’s love for a woman. Cast in the role of an undercover agent rather than regular police investigator, Batu’s portrayal more fully tapped into—and reworked—the topoi of the hardboiled genre than did most Tatort detective teams. In this sense, the Batu episodes can be read as a performative remediation of Germany’s heightened debates on Muslim immigration taking place at the intersection of post-September 11 anti-Islam(ist) culturalisms and an established, cross-media tradition of stereotyping Turkish German ‘thug’ masculinity. However, paradigms that deploy performativity as both a critique and reconfiguration of hegemonic discourse only partially capture the nature of the cultural interventions undertaken in these episodes. Via innovative aesthetics that blur the lines between cinema and TV, the Batu episodes also contributed to a twenty-first century visual culture focused on experiences of sensation, perception, and affect. This aesthetics of sensation challenged Tatort audiences to affectively engage with their first Turkish German Tatort investigator. In exploring remediations of racism in this context, this article rearticulates established paradigms of performance studies by bringing them into dialogue with recent conceptualizations of affect and of narrativity.