Julkaisuarkisto

The present article contributes to surveillance studies as well as health security studies by presenting an analysis of the Chinese COVID-19 dataveillance Track and Trace System (TTS) as a new form of dromopolitics. Unlike most states, China's total dataveillance combined with stringent means of discipline (strictest forms of quarantine) allowed China to retain societal flow-control that was akin to governmentality even without mass vaccination during the first year of the pandemic. In the TTS, colour was used as a technique with the goal of maintaining flow-control, for making the microscopic virus visible, and for providing a mundane security routine that provided visual tokens of trust and validity. Such measures worked to turn the uncontrollable terror of the virus into a manageable fear and were part of the emotional work done to maintain social stability and political legitimacy. We argue that Paul Virilio's notions of speed and dromopolitics provide for new insights into the politics of this unprecedented dataveillance operation. Our analytical reading in the article is based on previous literature on China's COVID-19 sociotechnical assemblages and first-hand experiences and observations in the PRC during its international closure.

This essay investigates how graphic devices—such as tables, diagrams, and images—were referenced on the title pages of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English printed books, and how these references functioned as promotional tools. While explicit mentions of text-internal graphic devices were relatively rare, they were habitually accompanied by evaluative, quantitative, or content-based modifiers emphasizing the novelty, utility, or aesthetic value of the graphic devices within. The term “table” was by far the most frequently used of the nouns studied, largely due to its prevalence in almanacs. The study demonstrates that references to graphic devices were not merely descriptive but served to market the book’s informational and aesthetic appeal, reflecting the broader trends in Early Modern English marketing of the printed book.

Language education offers tremendous potential for implementing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in higher education (HE), as the pedagogical processes of language teaching and ESD are complementary to each other. Researchers have recognised this potential, but it has yet to be fully utilised. The study analyses HE language teachers’ (n = 43) questionnaire data to determine how often they incorporate different sustainable development (SD) dimensions into their teaching, and which factors are associated with the frequency of teaching SD. The data was analyzed using percentage distributions and Spearman’s correlation, while open-ended responses were analyzed using thematic categorization. Cultural sustainability was the most frequently integrated dimension into language teaching. A majority of teachers were motivated to teach SD, but only a third reported high self-efficacy in doing so. Similarly, only a third reported sufficient institutional support. Self-efficacy correlated with SD teaching motivation, and both correlated with the SD teaching frequency. Institutional support correlated with motivation and the frequency of teaching ecological and social sustainability. The challenges of teaching SD were related to time constraints and availability of teaching materials. Teachers who had access to SD materials were less likely to perceive time constraints as a barrier.

Purpose

This study examines how individual assessment in social assistance is shaped within screen-level bureaucracy, focussing on the role of guidelines and ICT (information and communication technology) systems in decision-making in digitalised welfare administration.

Design/methodology/approach

Using Finnish social assistance as a case study, we applied qualitative content analysis to government bills and guidelines for social assistance decision-making in order to explore the shaping of individual assessment within screen-level bureaucracy.

Findings

The rationalising logic of screen-level bureaucracy, which aims for consistency, conflicts with the flexibility required by individual cases. Efforts to preserve discretion within systems designed for mass processing may ultimately undermine both appropriate individual assessment and accountability.

Research limitations/implications

The findings are based on a single centralised system. Future research should examine how guidelines and ICT systems are perceived and translated into workers’ practices when conducting individual assessment within screen-level bureaucracy.

Practical implications

Designing a digitalised welfare administration requires a comprehensive approach that recognises both the advantages and limitations of screen-level bureaucracy, while acknowledging the requirements of individual assessment, given its essential role in social assistance.

Originality/value

This study shifts the focus from front-line practices to how organisational conditions shape individual assessment, highlighting the challenges inherent in individual assessment in digitalised welfare administration.

Altmetrics need to be more critically assessed in terms of the extent to which they reflect impact and quality of research compared to popularity or mere attention. Twitter (now rebranded as X) is a popular platform to, among other things, discuss and share scientific articles. Earlier altmetric studies have often focused on investigating whether the number of tweets mentioning scientific articles could be used as an indicator of scientific impact or attention, with results showing weak to moderate correlations with citation counts. But all tweets may not be equal, as original tweets and retweets may reflect different levels of engagement and impact. Using a dataset of over 330,000 PLOS publications, this study explores whether these two forms of Twitter activity correlate differently with traditional citation metrics and how these relationships vary across disciplines. The findings showed the correlation between citations and original tweets was consistently higher than that between citations and retweets and significant weak or moderate, but higher in Social Science and Humanities than in Natural Science, Engineering and Medicine fields. Also, including zero citation counts improved the correlation coefficients for original tweets, but reduced that of retweets. This indicates that original tweets may be more aligned with citation counts as an indicator of scholarly impact, whereas retweets might reflect broader dissemination and popularity. In conclusion, tweets and retweets are different altmetric indicators and should be considered as two different metrics and analysed separately.