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This chapter is a reflection on the digital mediation of death and dying in the COVID-19 pandemic from a critical political economy perspective. It asks: What is the role of the communication of death and dying in capitalist society? How has communication with dying loved ones changed in the COVID-19 pandemic? What roles have digital technologies and capitalism played in this context?

Building on foundational theoretical insights into the role of death and dying in capitalism, this essay presents some empirical studies of death and dying in society and the COVID-19 pandemic and interprets their findings from a Communication Studies perspective.

In capitalist societies, death and dying are taboo topics and are hidden, invisible and institutionalised. The COVID-19 pandemic had contradictory effects on the role of death in society. It is a human, cultural and societal universal that humans want to die in company with loved ones. The presented empirical studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. The wish to die in a social manner derives from humans' social and communicative nature. In capitalism, the reality of dying diverges from the ideal of dying. Capitalism hides, individualises, makes invisible and institutionalises death and dying.

The analysed studies confirm the insights of the philosophers Kwasi Wiredu and Jürgen Habermas that humans are fundamentally social and communicative beings from the cradle to the grave. Building and going beyond the works of the political theorist and philosopher Achille Mbembe and the philosopher and sociologist Erich Fromm, the essay introduces the notion of capitalist necropower. It is shown how the COVID-19 pandemic in many cases destroyed the social and communicative nature of human beings and how capitalist necropower created unnecessary surplus deaths and formed the context of the digital mediation of communication with dying loved ones in the pandemic.

The following chapter describes and discusses survey-based findings of students’ perception concerning the acquisition of a third language supported by modern technologies at the university level and provides an overview of research on teaching methodologies. The surveys show that selected reality-based activities not only support students’ language-learning efforts, but also contribute to a more relaxed acquisition of the German language, an important factor of Stephen Krashen’s theory of the lowering of the “Affective Filter,” which stems from 1984. The goal was to find specific technology-enhanced exercises that support the acquisition of the German language, including relatively complex grammatical structures. Although the surveys were conducted among students who took German classes at various levels, the assumption can be made that some aspects of the findings and suggestions are also beneficial for the teaching of other foreign languages.

Introduction: New ideas and concepts of big data have emerged in recent years in response to the astounding growth of data in many industries. Furthermore, the phenomenal increase in the use of the internet and social media has added enormous amounts of data to conventional data processing systems. Still, it has also created challenges for traditional data processing.

Purpose: A significant characteristic of the insurance sector is critically dependent on information. This sector generates a great deal of structured and unstructured data, which traditional data processing techniques cannot handle. As compared to conventional insurance data processing and decision-making requirements, this lesson shows an analysis of data technology’s value additions.

Research methodology: The author assesses the primary use of cases for data in the insurance industry via a case study analysis. From the perspective of the insurance sector, this chapter examines the concepts, technologies, and tools of big data. A few analytical reviews by the insurance company are also provided, which justified several gains gained either through inefficient processing of massive, diverse data sets or by supporting better decisions.

Findings: This chapter demonstrates the importance of adopting new business models that allow insurers to move beyond understand and protect and become more predictive and preventative by using the tools and technologies of big data technology.

The German evidence-based model of educational governance is bureaucratically regulated, but teachers and schools are autonomous in their way of implementing requirements in schools. Accountability is ensured by regularly monitoring educational outcomes with reference to national educational standards, e.g. in the form of mandatory comparative performance tests. In this context, it is worth determining the process stages of research engagement with which the available data or evidence is associated and which purposes they can serve in teacher education and practice. Building on that, an overview is provided of the state of (mainly German) research on teachers' and school leaders' research engagement and influencing factors. This research field has flourished in the wake of the Empirical Shift in German education. By now the understanding has emerged that ultimately the depth of inferential processes is vital for sustainable development and this in turn is influenced by data, context and user characteristics. On the individual level, in particular, positive affective-motivational dispositions and research literacy are deemed important, whereas the feeling of being controlled has detrimental effects. On the school level, school culture and leadership are of impact, whereas a certain continuity of measures on the governance level proves meaningful for the engagement with data and evidence in educational practice. With regard to the German experience, it is concluded that more (funded) dialogue opportunities between different actors and professional groups in education are needed and that initial and further training should strive even more to impart a meta-reflective stance or enquiry habit of mind.

In his book Pasteur's Quadrant, Donald Stokes (1997) argued that research projects can be described by their contributions to theoretical understanding and the solution of practical problems. Building on this model, scholars have suggested that educational research should focus more or less exclusively on what Stokes called “use-inspired basic research.” With this move has come a focus on projects with the potential to create systemic change – and the concurrent devaluation of naturalistic studies of learning in context and design research to develop innovative educational interventions. We argue that this current predilection is based on a fundamental misreading of the processes through which scientific investigation addresses practical problems, and (more important) is counter-productive for the field of educational technology. To make this case, we look more closely at the operationalization of Stokes’ quadrant model in the field of education, suggesting that its short-term focus on systemic change is based on a misunderstanding of history. We use Latour's (1983) study of Pasteur to suggest an alternative lever model for the research-based transformation of educational practices through educational technologies. By way of illustration, we use a brief example of a research project in educational technology to ground a discussion of the broader implications of this alternative conceptualization of the process of education research.

Purpose: This chapter aims to review the research literature on the insurance industry and map the emerging research trends in this field through a bibliometric analysis and network visualisation exercise.

Design/methodology/approach: The research literature gathered from the Web of Science (WoS) databases was applied to bibliometric analysis in this article. With the help of Biblioshiny, this research was utilised to identify documents, most prolific institutions, countries, resource titles, and WoS categories in the insurance industry. In addition, bibliometric mapping was used to identify national and institutional collaboration networks.

Findings: The author discovered that the literature had increased drastically in the academic discourse during the last two decades. According to the bibliometric data, developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom reign research in this sector. The research highlights the most prominent studies and writers in the insurance field and the evolution of the domain from its inception to the contemporary. It also highlights theoretical disagreements and contradictions between theoretical conceptualisation and empirical measures by presenting the significant concerns in the literature.

Originality/value: This chapter delivers the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the insurance sector’s literature production in connection to emerging technology, which will aid researchers and practitioners in better understanding the relationships between themes and outsiders to understand the domain area better. The author makes recommendations for future perspectives study directions and highlights the critical conceptual framework that can build future research. Overall, this research contributes to a better understanding of the insurance industry and offers new perspectives.