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This article presents, from sociological perspective, some selected methodological issues related to urban studies. The authors of such studies remain between creating theory of the city functioning, and depicting a changing urban reality, thus investigating the history of a city. In the first strand we will encounter the more or less formalized works, such as these of Louis Wirth or Richard Florida, or the quantitative concept of Geoffrey West and Louis Bettencourt. The second type of studies is represented by Max Weber, Fernand Braudel and others. The author, although not denying the merits of the first strand, claims that so far the descriptive-historical approach is more useful in explaining the process of urban development.
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The research on collective memory has few important charactersitics: it is regarded as an mulitdisciplinary field, it is dominated by the qualitative approach, there is relatively well developed theoretical analysis but less methodological reflections. The paper attempts to fill this gap by analysing the selected issues of quantitative research on collective memory and the specificity of researching the collective memory of local city community. The paper discusses the selected examples (from author’s research) illustrating such issues as the effects of quantitative measurement to understand how the collective memory is formed, the use of photographs to examine the reception of the urban space, the study of reception of the city history and the application of the natural experiment to survey techniques.
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One of the more and more popular tendencies in current urban studies leads to analyses which try to explain how the small and medium sized towns can develop, even if they lay on the periphery of globalization. Taking into account the trend, the aim of this paper is to describe instruments and strategies of regional and central governments which influence socio-economic conditions of SMST (small and medium sized towns) and can be helpful for these urban areas in finding an alternative path of development. The article describes three potential forms of support created by regional and central public institutions. Firstly, it shows a role of financial grants transmitted from regional and central governments to local actors. Secondly, the text discusses how the institutions strengthen attractiveness of small or medium town due to the fact that they offer important administrative services. Finally, the paper shows how the strategic priorities which are shaped by regional and central governments may support the local actors in access to the financial grants mentioned above. The article also considers if an administrative status of a town determines the access of the local actors to public funds and shapes a position of this place in regional or central strategies.
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More than twenty years ago Wacław Piotrowski noticed that the identity of the city is defined by its essential features. These features could derive from the different city’s contexts: history, architecture, social structures and system of the public space. In this context public space in the sociological analysis is understood in the wide perspective which include its history, present and past events which take place on it, ways of everyday and holiday social using and meanings which are communicated by the public space. Consequently public space co-create the city’s identity. This identity is obvious in some cities, but in the others, with complicated history and the process of production of space, cause some diversity of meaning. Such situation could be fascinating and cause the achievement of the competitive edge but on the other side sometimes could be barrier of the cities development. It shows that the problem of the role of public space in the creation of the city’s identity is important for the research. This article presents this problem according to in-depth interviews with institutional and social experts in Gliwice and Wrocław which were conducted as a part of the wider research project in 2014 and 2015.
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Author is focused on the issue of relations: the public urban space (as form / function architectural) and the local authority and inhabitants. The article presents problems: responsibility of inhabitants for their city; privatisation and fragmentation of the urban public space; reinforcement of aesthetical and architectural identity of important (symbolical and prestigious) part of public space – city centre.
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The article’s main subject is the Culture Zone in Katowice – a new district established in an area of the now-closed coal mine called “Katowice”. Katowice Culture Zone consists of: a well known “Spodek” arena, recently opened The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra complex, International Congress Centre and new buildings of The Silesian Museum. The new buildings gained recognition and appreciation in the architects’ community. However, there are also negative opinions about the way the whole project was executed. Some critics complain about the fact of concentrating buildings of similar function in a close-by area. It has been pointed in the article that the new district was designed according to the modernist paradigm in urbanism (functional separation, loose density of buildings). There is nothing unusual about it considering past modernist influences in the city architecture. Nevertheless, the social consequences of modernistic urban planning are way more important, as it has been pointed out by the critics. A special place among them belongs to Jane Jacobs, an author of a famous book: “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. In the article, the public space of Culture Zone in Katowice was analyzed according to Jacobs’ thesis. Several issues have been discussed: layout of buildings and streets or a functional variety. Unfortunately, conclusions of the research are not optimistic. The Culture Zone is separated from rest of the city and lacks diversity. It also suffers lack of citizens’ interest.
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The aim of this article is to analyze what values and ideas are crucial to the vision of urban development from the perspective of social urban movements in Poland. Five different values/ ideas were chosen to elaborate: inter-city solidarity, justice, culture instead of economy, sustainable development and participation. The paper tries to explore what these values might mean for urban activists and what are relations between these values and typical values of new social movements. Furthermore, the author hypothesizes that making some values more popular among, both “ordinary” habitants of the polish cities and local/ national government representatives, is one of the cultural consequences of urban movements in Poland. Researchers who aims to observe and understand changes in human consciousness should conduct empirical studies on urban movements, firstly, to verify which values are declared and put by them into practice in daily urban life, and secondly, to find out what priorities urban activists assign to these values. Conclusions and hypotheses in the article were given on the basis of: 1. The secondary data analysis of Urban Movements Congress website and Urban Movements Agreement website; 2. An observation of the actions of urban activists on the national level; 3. Empirical studies conducted by the author in 2011 among participants of the “Social Movement Respect for Lodz” – local activists from Lodz in Poland.
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It is argued in this paper that the relative deficit of media freedom in most of Central and Eastern Europe as opposed to the relative freedom of the media in most of Western Europe is ultimately rooted in the specificities of the former communist countries’ party systems. Young parties in young democracies lack the resources needed for party building and organization, which they compensate for by colonizing the state and the media and by exploiting state and media resources; party colonization of the media necessarily inhibits media freedom. It is further argued that temporal and spatial variations in media freedom in and across Central and Eastern Europe are explained by different patterns of media colonization. The more centralized the governing party’s or parties’ decision-making structures, the greater the likelihood of one-party colonization, and the more fragmented the governing party’s or parties’ decision-making structures, the lesser the likelihood of such colonization; one-party colonization of the media leads to lower levels of media freedom than multi-party colonization. In other words, the weaker the government, the more freedom the media have.
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This paper examines the thematic structure of written media texts published in two national Polish and British dailies, namely Gazeta Wyborcza and The Guardian. The investigation, based on traditional content analysis methods, includes over a thousand articles published between January 14, 2010 and February 10, 2010. The analysis of data includes a study of frequency of occurrence of individual topics. Results are interpreted with reference to Hofstede’s 5D model and Hall’s division of societies into high-context and low-context cultures. The investigation reveals significant correlation between the frequency of occurrence of individual topics and cultural patterns characteristic to na- tional culture, especially in the dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and individualism vs. collectivism. It is argued that the results of the study support a belief that culture wields an influence on language. The author concludes that the impact that culture has on language in press starts at the level of news values the criteria of prominence of media texts.
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This article analyzes political narratives of the discourse on the future use of nuclear energy in Hungary. In light of the January 2014 parliamentary decision to expand Hungarian nuclear energy production capacity with Russian technology and financing, the article examines parliamentary addresses of the period 2010-2013 to identify and interpret characteristics and changes in nuclear narratives of parliamentary parties and the government. The content analysis includes identification of framing, characteristics of choice of language, realization of risk and of benefit oriented speaking patterns, and the assessment of power relations between the political actors. The article argues that the nuclear communication strategies of political parties show distinct approaches: f u l l f r o n t approach to include nuclear aspects of all possible issues, avoidance that attempts not taking sides in this issue, and re-direction that, within the nuclear framing, places a focus on other aspects with the purpose to re-define the dominant framing and to rule the discourse. Risk awareness patterns range from comprehensive to occasional, selective and latent risk perception structures. The Risk Perception Index, comprehending levels of risk and benefit perception, can serve as a model to measure, in numeric terms, the support or critique of the nuclear agenda.
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Individuals in ‘freer’ media environments are assumed to have better choices among media and are thus able to make better and more efficient use of media. Using the European Parlia- mentary Elections of 2009 as a highly visible political event, we find that, as expected, individuals use media to satisfy informational needs about the elections in highly ‘free’ media environments (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). In addition, we find strong prima facie evidence that in ‘less free’ media environments distinguished by the strong alignment of parties, social and political cleavages, and media outlets individuals also respond with higher information-seeking media behavior. For comparative media studies, by linking specific media environments to specific individual-level media behaviors, where media is used tells us more about how media is used.
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How to reinforce relationships between European institutions and citizens?Which actions should be carried out to promote European communication? These are the main questions our article intends to respond to, examining the most significant steps that involved the European Union’s communication policies up to the 2014 European Parliament elections. Among the crucial matters of this paper, we focus on the Italian context about the necessity to realize a strategy of integrated communication able to involve European Institutions altogether with national and local ones, and to make citizens knowledgeable about the European Union’s policies.
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Social, political and economic changes experienced by Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries generated a plethora of new problems which are typical to young democracies. Twenty-five years after the abolition of censorship in the majority of CEE states, we pose questions on the current challenges to media freedom in a selection of national cases. Professor Andrei Richter elaborates on the notion of media freedom and the ways in which media freedom might be measured and analyzed in the context of online media and the development of ‘Open Journalism’?
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The long peroid of current isolation of Russian researchers from an international context ? due to political reasons – has come to an end. However, their work continues to be relatively unknown abroad. Theoretical concepts from West are poorly suited for understanding of local journalism with its original traditions and professional characteristics. The objective and subjective reasons of such a state of affairs are considered. The Russian research school should take the place of an equal partner in the international community and act according to principles of mutually adventageous exchange. A de – Westernization trend in media studies creates good conditions for this.
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This article presents the main findings of an international comparative project on the news coverage of the Polish EU presidency (2011). The study examines the coverage of Poland that for the first time held the leading position in the RU Council within a new institutional context. The findings presented a stem form the analysis of six countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Poland, and Romania, following a mixed-method approach, combining quantitative and qualitative methods of content analysis. The results suggest that Poland`s presidency did not change the thematic focus of the news reporting on Poland, neither in other EU countries nor in Poland. The patterns of international and domestic news were not affected significantly by EU-related events but remained shaped by news values of relevance and deviance. In general, Poland was portrayed in a neutral way with rather limited visibility which is related to the then dominant coverage od the Eurozone crisis.
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With the Internet`s political imporance on the rise, anonymous online deliberation has become a vital form of citizen participation in the public discourse. Proponents o the right to anonymity argue that it helps secure users’ privacy, autonomy and freedom of speech. Critics, on the other hand, maintain that anonymous content is usually offensive, deceptive and of little value. While the advantages and threats of online anonymity have been widely researched, little has been said about the role of the media in determining the future of anonymous communication. Through the analysis of 300 articles related to online anonymity, published in the Polish quality press, this paper explores how this contested issue is constructed in the Polish media discourse. It is argued that Polish newspapers paint a mostly negative and highly simplified picture of online anonymity which might have damaging consequences for online privacy and freedom of speech.
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This paper discusses the rise of citizen journalism in Turkey. By using the example of Otekilerin Postati (The Post of Others) – a Facebook page that makes citizen journalism and collective reporting – it argues that citizen journalism in the country was born because the citizens needed news that was not being reported in mainstream media. The state of Turkish mainstream media became obvious during the Gezi Park protests, where news flow to citizens did not occur especially on the first day, 31 May 2013. The approach of mainstream media opened up alternative ways for news to be disseminate, such as the use of sovial media for receiving news during and ater the events. This chapter will discuss the central importance of citizen journalism by showing the ties between media owners and the Turkish government and the benefits that both enjoy as a result of this relationship, which prevented citizens from having freedom of information.
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This study discusses the way the advertising industry underwent important changes in many ex-communist European countries, considering Romania as a prime example. The reinvention of advertising in Romania after 1990 is firmly related to features of political system, professionals’ training, and consumer needs. Given that consumer behaviour is constantly evolving, as is the entire industry, the present paper investigates the views of Romanian professionals on local advertising in democracy, as well as on the transformation of advertising agencies, using the primary metgod of the semi-structured interview. To be more credible, the chapter presents the relevant case study of ROM chocolate, a brand that was awarded 9 Lions at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Consequently, we hypothesize that advertising developed twocontrasting attitudes during the transition: fistly brands denied their past; secondly, they began to use it to prove their endurance and stability.
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