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It is often said that we live in a time of crisis for social democracy. Many of the West European centre-left parties that seemed the natural parties of government in the second half of the twentieth century are in decline. The most common long-term explanations centre on a shrinking working class, a widening gap between the party elite and their core voters, and the challenges from new populist parties and/or greens. Short-term policy factors include the failure to address the recent financial and refugee crises. None of these factors carry much explanatory weight for developments in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the three decades since the transition from communism. We find that much of the explanation for the rise and the fall of the five social democratic parties in these countries lies in the dynamics of party competition and party system change. All parties face dilemmas of policy, electoral appeal and coalition-building. The Central European cases suggest that it is how social democrats handle such challenges and make difficult choices about strategy and tactics that ultimately shapes their long-term fate. Centre-left parties are stronger masters of their fortunes than much of the literature on the decline of social democracy suggests. Consequently, seeking a common structural explanation for the rise and decline of social democratic parties might be a double fallacy: both empirically misleading and a poor base for policy advice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore current questions about metaphor, experience and aesthetic awareness that persist through the variations of critical approaches and projective research in architectural theory and practice.

Further considerations focus on the advanced technological possibilities which re‐invest the relations between principles of cybernetics and architecture.

The current between art and architecture is more than ever manifested in fields related to the computer sciences and its conceptual background: cybernetic sciences.

The paper re‐thinks the aesthetic value of architecture and architectural experience in this time of digital productivity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the type of personalisation services satisfying the needs of cancer websites’ target users, and the influence of their emotional states on website usage intentions.

Three data collection methods were employed. Survey questionnaires were distributed to online health users. Interviews with representatives of the cancer-affected population further explored emotions as stimuli for online cancer-related activities. Finally, availability of personalisation features was evaluated on existing health websites in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UK.

A clear preference emerged for personalisation on cancer-related websites. There are specific personalisation features the cancer-affected population desires. Interestingly, certain emotions were found to stimulate visits to health websites.

Fighting cancer implies constant support, including from cancer-related websites. It is thus vital to understand the required personalisation, stemming from target users’ actual needs, including the neglected user characteristics, as are emotions for cancer-affected people. This supports emotion-based personalisation.

The paper focusses on the cancer-affected population, and developing a comprehensive understanding of their personalisation needs in online health services. It further shows which emotions influence intentions to use cancer websites. The three concepts combined have not yet been studied, to the best of the authors’ knowledge.