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This chapter will examine the interplay among actors who took part in the process of consensus building towards a post-2015 education agenda via different channels of global governance, including both formal and informal channels.

Most of the forums and entities established as part of the global governance structure are composed of representatives from UN or UNESCO member states, civil society organizations (CSOs) and UN agencies. However, each of these categories has diverse constituent groups; representing these groups is not as straightforward a task as the governance structure seems to assume. Therefore, based on interviews and qualitative text analysis, this chapter will introduce major groups of actors and their major issues of concern, decision-making structure, mode of communication and relationship with other actors. Then, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the various channels and actors, it will present the structural issues that arose during the analysis of post-2015 discourse and the educational issues that emerged as the shared concerns of the ‘education community’. While most of the analysis to untangle the nature of discourse relies on qualitative analysis of texts and interviews, the end of this chapter will also demonstrate the trends of discourse in quantitative terms.

What was the post-2015 discourse for the so-called education community, which in itself has an ambiguous and virtual existence? The keywords post-2015 and post-EFA provide us with an opportunity to untangle how shared norms and codes of conduct were shaped at the global scale.

What is the historical, normative and institutional setting that helps leading Latin American and Eurasian countries to implement a post-hegemonic agenda and contribute to the multipolarization of global politics? Post-hegemony describes a situation in which the unipolar organization of the world political economy is challenged by a plurality of alternative projects, without however being entirely replaced by another system. Emblematic of post-hegemonic initiatives is the rise of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa countries who have taken the lead in creating alternative institutions that constrain US global hegemony, while however failing to spearhead a coherent, uniform and confrontational opposition movement. Regarding post-hegemonic regionalism, Latin American regionalism – as represented by Bolivarian Alliance for Our America (ALBA) – is characterized by a social justice-driven agenda that refutes US neoliberal hegemony, whereas the peculiarity of Eurasian regionalism – as represented by Shanghai Cooperation Organization – lies in its security-oriented focus that confronts US interventionism and international terrorism. An underlying commonality of both Latin American and Eurasian experiences is that they constitute a multi-front struggle centered on four main areas: culture, economy, financial cooperation, and regional defense. They both hinge on a strong normative framework and firm commitment in the regionalization of an endogenous culture, educational cooperation, and defense system. They all accord primary importance to social, financial, and infrastructural development. Overall, these experiences suffer from unresolved tensions between national sovereignty and supranationalism alongside the predominance of charismatic leaders inhibiting institutionalization. The limitations and contradictions of post-hegemonic transformations also include Latin America’s inability to resolve the question of extractivism, Eurasia’s neglect of the question of democratic participation, and both regionalism’s failure to offer a coherent alternative model of economic development to US hegemonism.

This chapter will situate the global paradigm shift toward Post-Education-For-All (Post-EFA) not only in the policy trends in the field of international education development, but also in the academic context of international relations and comparative education.

The chapter highlights three dimensions which characterize the paradigm shift; namely, discourse on norms, diversifying actors, and the changed mode of communication and participation in the global consultation processes. The existing formal structure of the EFA global governance is based on multilateralism which recognizes sovereign nation-states, representing national interests, as the participants. However, such an assumption is eroding, given that there is a growing number of state and nonstate actors who influence decision-making not only through conventional formal channels, but also informally. Urging the revision of theories of multilateralism, the chapter introduces the attention given to nontraditional donors and horizontal networks of civil society actors in this volume.

The introduction also shows that that the widening basis of participation in the global consultation processes on post-EFA and advanced communication technology have changed the ways in which discourse is formulated. While the amount and the speed of exchanging information have been enhanced and different types of actors have been encouraged to take part, it also obliges scholars to adopt innovative methods of analyzing discourse formation.

The chapter also demonstrates the importance of the focus on the Asia-Pacific region, which is composed of diverse actors who often underscore Asian cultural roots in contrast to Western hegemony. By focusing on the discourse, actors, and the structure through which the consensus views on the post-EFA agenda were built, the volume attempts to untangle the nature of the post-EFA paradigm shift, at the global, Asia-Pacific regional, and national levels.

Facebook “likes” are often used as a proxy of users’ attention and an affirmation of what is posted on Facebook (Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015). To determine what factors predict “likes,” the authors analyzed Facebook posts made by the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, the top three candidates from the 2016 US primary election. Several possible factors were considered, such as the types of posts, the use of pronouns and emotions, the inclusion of slogans and hashtags, references made to opponents, as well as candidate’s mentions on national television. The results of an ordinary least-squared regression analysis showed that the use of highly charged (positive or negative) emotions and personalized posts (first-person singular pronouns) increased “likes” across all three candidates’ Facebook pages, whereas visual posts (posts containing either videos or photos) and the use of past tenses were liked more often by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ followers than by Trump’s followers. Television mentions boosted likes on Clinton and Sanders’ posts but had a negative effect on Trump’s. The study contributes to the growing literature on digitally networked participation (Theocharis, 2015) and supports the emerging notion of the new “hybrid media” system (Chadwick, 2013) for political communication. The study also raises questions as to the relevance of platforms such as Facebook to deliberative democratic processes since Facebook users are not necessarily engaging with the content in an organic way, but instead might be guided to specific content by the Facebook timeline algorithm and targeted ads.

This study is dedicated to universities' strategic social media communication and focuses on the fan engagement triggered by Facebook postings. The study contributes to a growing body of knowledge that addresses the strategic communication of universities that have thus far hardly dealt with questions of resonance and evaluation of their social media messages.

Using the Facebook Graph API, the authors collected posts from the official Facebook fan pages of the universities listed on Shanghai Ranking's Top 50 of 2015. Specifically, the authors retrieved all posts in a three-year range from October 2012 to September 2015. After downloading the Facebook posts, the authors used tools for automated content analysis to investigate the features of the post messages.

Overall, the median number of likes per 10,000 fans was 4.6, while the number of comments (MD = 0.12) and shares (MD = 0.40) were considerably lower. The average Facebook Like Ratio of universities per 10,000 fans was 17.93%, the average Comment Ratio (CR) was 0.56% and the average Share Ratio (SR) was 2.82%. If we compare the average Like Ratios (17.93%) and Share Ratios (2.82%) of the universities with the respective Like Ratios (5.90%) and Share Ratios (0.45%) of global brands per 10,000 fans, we may find that universities are three times (likes) and six times (shares) as successful as are global brands in triggering engagement among their fan bases.

The content analysis was solely based on the publicly observable Facebook communication of the Top 50 Shanghai Ranking universities. Furthermore, the content analysis was limited to universities listed on the Shanghai Ranking's Top 50. Also, the Facebook posts have been sampled between 2012 and September 2015. Moreover, the authors solely focused on one social media channel (i.e., Facebook), which might restrict the generalizability of the study findings. The limitations notwithstanding, university communicators are invited to take advantage of the study's insights to become more successful in generating fan engagement.

First, posts published on the weekend generate significantly more engagement than those published on workdays. Second, the findings suggest that posts published in the evening generate more engagement than those published during other times of day. Third, research-related posts trigger a certain number of shares, but at the same time these posts tend to lower engagement with regard to liking and commenting.

To the authors’ best knowledge, the automated content analysis of 72,044 Facebook posts of universities listed in the Top 50 of the Shanghai Ranking is the first large scale longitudinal investigation of a social media channel of higher education institutions.

The purpose of this study is to examine how social disclosures are influenced by the adoption of integrated reporting (IR), focusing on the three social capitals in the international IR framework, namely, intellectual, human and social and relationship capital.

This study takes the form of a single case study involving content analyses of annual reports and integrated reports from 2009 to 2017 (i.e. before and after IR adoption in 2013), as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key preparers of the integrated report at New Zealand Post, to study changes in disclosures towards different stakeholder groups, from an internal organisation perspective. The empirical evidence is analysed through the lens of stakeholder theory.

This study provides empirical evidence that contributes to our understanding of IR’s influence on the disclosure of social information and enhanced stakeholder relations in a public sector context. The study shows that the IR framework promoted a materiality assessment approach with stakeholders, which led to a reduction in social disclosures, while the materiality focus led to the disclosure of social matters more relevant to stakeholders.

IR led to meaningful stakeholder engagement, which led to social disclosure that are more relevant to stakeholders.

This study assesses the influence of IR on social disclosures. The findings will be of interest to organisations seeking to enhance stakeholder relations and/or undertake IR and/or social disclosures.

This study aims to examine entertainment TV shows' social media accounts to theoretically and practically explore the relationship between social media engagement and the performance (represented by ratings) of such shows.

By using the data of a popular TV show in the USA, The Voice, the present study examined the messages on the Facebook fan page of the show and how these messages correlated with the ratings of the show. Social media usage data in the course of three seasons (Seasons 10–12, 82 episodes in total) were collected from Facebook (N = 1,192,722 messages). Both regression and sentiment analysis were performed.

Overall, the findings revealed positive relationships of TV show ratings with both passive social media engagement (Facebook likes) and the number of official posts. However, active social media engagement was not positively related to show ratings.

By enhancing understanding of audience engagement with social media, our research extends knowledge related to the nature and development of viewer involvement with entertainment across different media platforms. Our results also help clarify how interpersonal communication (social media comments) and mass communication (TV programs) intersect. Practically, the findings could be applied to improve the interaction of TV audiences with show content, provide insights into the future of social TV development and inform decision-making amongst TV industry professionals.

Understanding bottom-up approaches including local coping mechanisms, recognizing them and strengthening community capacities is important in the process of disaster risk reduction. The purpose of this paper is to address the questions: to what extent existing disaster policies in Nepal support and enable community-based disaster resilience? and what challenges and prospects do the communities have in responding to disaster risk for making communities resilient?

This paper is based on policy and academic literature reviews complimented by field research in two communities, one in Shankhu, Kathmandu district and another in Satthighare, Kavrepalanchowk district in Nepal. The author conducted in-depth interviews and mapped out key disaster-related policies of Nepal to investigate the role of communities in disaster risk management and post-disaster activities and their recognition in disaster-related policies.

The author found that existing literature clearly identifies the importance of the community led initiatives in risks reduction and management. It is evolutionary phenomenon, which has already been piloted in history including in the aftermath of Nepal earthquake 2015 yet existing policies of Nepal do not clearly identify it as an important component by providing details of how communities can be better engaged in the immediate aftermath of disaster occurrence.

The author conducted this research based on data from two earthquake affected areas only. The author believes that this research can still play an important role as representative study.

The practical implication of this research is that communities need to understand about risks society for disaster preparedness, mitigation and timely response in the aftermath of disasters. As they are the first responders against the disasters, they also need trainings such as disaster drills such as earthquakes, floods and fire and mock practice of various early warning systems can be conducted by local governments to prepare these communities better to reduce disaster risk and casualties.

The mantra of community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM) is community engagement, which means the involvement of local people to understand and prepare against their local hazards and risks associated with disaster and haphazard development. CBDRM approaches motivate people to work together because they feel a sense of belongingness to their communities and recognize the benefits of their involvement in disaster mitigation and preparedness. Clearly, community engagement for disaster risk reduction and management brings great benefits in terms of ownership and direct savings in losses from disasters because the dynamic process allows community to contribute and interchange ideas and activities for inclusive decision making and problem solving.

This research is based on both primary and secondary data and original in case of its findings and conclusion.

The economic growth and women’s empowerment nexus features prominently within United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). While the gendered view of inclusive economic opportunities has received significant attention in recent years, the gap between men and women in developing countries remains significant. Under the assumption that there are fertile prospects to bridge social responsibility and SDGs judiciously, this chapter explores the question: ‘what insights into women’s employment and empowerment can be generated from the state of cooperative enterprises in Nepal?’ The focus is on aspects of women’s employment and empowerment under goal 8, which promotes inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all. Learning from the Nepalese experiences, the chapter contends that cooperative enterprise social responsibility (CESR) needs to be approached as the vital link between the internal and the external interests of cooperatives to achieve SDGs.