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High levels of child obesity alongside rising stunting and the absence of a coherent food policy have deemed UK’s food system to be broken. The National Food Strategy (NFS) was debated intensely in media, with discussions on how and who should fix the food system.

Using a mixed methods approach, the authors conduct framing analysis on traditional media and sentiment analysis of twitter reactions to the NFS to identify frames used to shape food system policy interventions.

The study finds evidence that the media coverage of the NFS often utilised the tropes of “culture wars” shaping the debate of who is responsible to fix the food system – the government, the public or the industry. NFS recommendations were portrayed as issues of free choice to shift the debate away from government action correcting for market failure. In contrast, the industry was showcased as equipped to intervene on its own accord. Dietary recommendations made by the NFS were depicted as hurting the poor, painting a picture of helplessness and loss of control, while their voices were omitted and not represented in traditional media.

British media’s alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system. Media firms should move beyond tropes of culture wars to discuss interventions that reform the structural causes of the UK’s broken food systems.

As traditional media coverage struggles to capture the diversity of public perception; the authors supplement framing analysis with sentiment analysis of Twitter data. To the best of our knowledge, no such media (and social media) analysis of the NFS has been conducted. The paper is also original as it extends our understanding of how media alignment with free market economic thinking has implications for food systems reform, as it deters the government from acting and relies on the invisible hand of the market to fix the system.

Aging is a complex and multifactorial process. This study aims to is focus on mattering in older people. Mattering is the feeling of being important to others in ways that give individuals the sense that they are valued and other people care about them. However, for many, aging brings about the loss of self-esteem, and they feel useless, deprived and unwanted. The authors have adopted the partial least square structural equation modeling technique and Self-Esteem Scale of Rosenberg for evaluating the level of self-esteem in senior citizens of Pakistan. The results reveal a strong association between the predictor and the criterion variables, supporting the view that the communal integration construct is the strongest determinant in old age. Based on the results, the authors can argue that socioeconomic status, social relationships and daily activities and have a direct association with the elderly people’s self-esteem.

The Self-Esteem Questionnaire by Rosenberg (Rosenberg, 1965) and the Quality of Life Questionnaire by Bowling (Bowling, Banister, Sutton Evans and Windsor (2002) are two tested tools that were used to collect the sample data from various neighborhoods of Peshawar. The sample consisted of respondents who were 60 years of age or older. The current study only included men who were 60 years of age or older because men make up a higher number of retirees in the district (84%) than do women. A total of 312 male volunteers, representing a various cadre of job, were recruited at random. The research population’s data were gathered through convenience sampling. Only volunteers who appeared to be healthy in both body and mind were chosen as participants. When older people were unable to complete questionnaires, researchers helped them read the questions and then helped them write down their answers. Out of the 500 survey forms that were sent, 312 were properly completed and used for the analysis.

The results of this study suggest that the happiness and well-being of retired seniors are not only influenced by their general activities, health and socioeconomic status but also more strongly by their psycho-social integration, such as their close and intimate relationships with friends, family and relatives. The findings, therefore, urge the incorporation of social integration aspects in mental health treatment programs and public health policies to support the psycho-social well-being of the elderly. Social relationship variables might become a common aspect of practice through medical, psychiatric and psychological screening and examination.

Due to the fact that research participants were selected from just one city – Peshawar – the results cannot be generalized. As a result, findings are less likely to apply to older persons who reside in other provinces due to sample selection. Future research will be conducted all around the nation, though, and it could produce more precise and broadly applicable findings. Only male respondents applied to the second limitation. Only male participants were sought due to socioeconomic differences, social and cultural obstacles and the small number of female retirees. Therefore, it limits the spectrum of the study.

An individual’s self-esteem is made up of intrapersonal and interpersonal elements. Regarding policy intervention, the present effort will be a crucial step in helping the elderly understand the value of maintaining social networks and will encourage them to maintain close relationships with family and friends to safeguard their well-being in later life. On the other side, this research will help academics, politicians and thinkers better comprehend aging, perspectives of conduct and psychological and emotional viewpoints. One of the most important aspects of life that affects how old people feel about themselves is the support from social networks. Therefore, through raising awareness and fostering a favorable environment for the welfare and self-worth of senior individuals, politicians and society are expected to care for enriching the lives of the elderly. By highlighting the importance of communal support from a multidimensional aspect of a person, this study offers a wider perspective on self-esteem. With this in mind, the authors advise academics to adopt a fresh perspective on interpersonal mechanisms that ultimately aim to improve self-esteem and social support. Social support is a key factor in fostering or inhibiting self-esteem in the elderly and is a strong predictor of mental health. A society must take action to boost older people’s communal integration to improve their quality of life.

This study makes the case for a broader perspective on self-respect or esteem by suggesting that self-esteem may be seen in a broader context rather than in terms of limited characteristics. The authors offer an integrated model of self-esteem that conceptualizes it as an interpersonal phenomenon influenced by multiple vital aspects using various metrics of old age. Self-esteem was envisioned as the result of a number of factors, including social position, activities and interpersonal interaction “relationships with relatives, family, and friends.” The authors’ conceptual framework’s goal is to comprehend the different ways that senior citizens’ lives affect their sense of self-worth.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

This article reviews 69 press releases published by the Norwegian Økokrim from June 2022 to November 2023. The presented research applies the theory of focal concerns to identify the main themes in the press releases.

Serious fraud offices such as the Norwegian national authority for investigation and prosecution of economic and environmental crime (Økokrim) are facing many challenges when combating white-collar and corporate crime. Press releases represent an element of facing such challenges, as the messages are an important vehicle for the organization to disclose organizational activities to the public.

Three themes emerged: offender conviction, impression management and crime deterrence. Offender prosecution followed by offender conviction is at the core of Økokrim's business. Impression management serves the purpose of emphasizing the important role of the national authority in society. The subjective perception of detection and prosecution by potential offenders can be influenced by crime deterrence messages.

Press releases are signals that may be interpreted in other ways.

When politicians are to review national authorities, they may want a slightly different serious fraud office.

The deterrence effect is often not real for alleged white-collar crime.

Understanding a national authority in terms of its focal concerns based on press releases from the authority.

To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and how they support their assessments by drawing on evidence acquired from diverse sources of information.

Descriptive quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 128 reports written by the fact-checkers of Snopes – an established fact-checking organisation – during the period of 24 February 2022 – 28 June, 2023. For the analysis, nine evaluation grounds were identified, most of them inductively from the empirical material. It was examined how the fact-checkers employed such grounds while assessing the validity of claims and how the assessments were bolstered by evidence acquired from information sources such as newspapers.

Of the 128 reports, the share of assessments indicative of the invalidity of the claims was 54.7%, while the share of positive ratings was 26.7%. The share of mixed assessments was 15.6%. In the fact-checking, two evaluation grounds, that is, the correctness of information and verifiability of an event presented in a claim formed the basis for the assessment. Depending on the topic of the claim, grounds such as temporal and spatial compatibility, as well as comparison by similarity and difference occupied a central role. Most popular sources of information offering evidence for the assessments include statements of government representatives, videos and photographs shared in social media, newspapers and television programmes.

As the study concentrated on fact-checking dealing with political information about a specific issue, the findings cannot be extended to concern the fact-checking practices in other contexts.

The study is among the first to characterise how fact-checkers employ evaluation grounds of diverse kind while assessing the validity of political information.

The concept of “participation” has become a buzzword in contemporary public governance models. However, despite the broad and significant interest, defining participation remains a debated topic. The aim of the current study was to explore how participants perceived and interpreted the meaning and scope of participation.

This study is part of a four-year (2019–2022) longitudinal research project investigating stakeholder participation in the context of developing and establishing a strategic regional plan in Region Skåne in southern Sweden. The research project has a qualitative approach and uses interviews with different stakeholder groups such as municipal politicians and public officials and a survey as empirical material.

The authors developed a participation spectrum including eight types of participation: to be open, to be informed, to be listened to, to discuss, to be consulted, to give and take, to collaborate and to co-create. The authors also identified four different purposes of participation: creating a joint network, creating a joint understanding, creating a joint effort and creating a joint vision. The spectrum and the purposes were related through four characteristics of participation, i.e. involvement, interaction, influence and empowerment.

The study rests on a single case, and so the results have limited transferatibility.

Researching participation in terms of the participants' perceptions contributes a new perspective to the existing literature, which has commonly focussed on the organizers' perceptions of participation. Moreover, in order to clarify what participation meant to the participants, the study puts emphasis on untangling this from the why question of participation.

This study aims to investigate connections between the development of robotic and artificial intelligence (AI) and green crypto investments. The author also explores the influences of global uncertainty shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic and international conflicts on the role of each channel.

In this research, the author uses a cutting-edge model-free connectedness approach to investigate the relationships between the development of Global X Robotics and AI (BOTZ) and the volatility of green crypto investments from November 9, 2017 to March 24, 2023.

In the sample duration, the findings reveal a two-way link between AI and green/nongreen cryptocurrencies. Throughout the examined period, BOTZ has been a net receiver of shocks as determined by the net total connectedness. Among the main spillover shock carriers in the system, green cryptocurrencies are the most significant. The net pairwise directional connectivity reveals that green cryptocurrencies controlled BOTZ throughout the analyzed time, particularly during the COVID-19 era as well as the Ukraine–Russia crisis. According to the findings, the proposed system is vulnerable to a high level of indication influence.

The results have important policy implications for investors and governments, as well as methods from the spillovers across the various indicators and their interconnections. Sharp information on the primary contagions among these indicators aids politicians in designing the most appropriate policies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to look at the link between AI, technological advancement and green cryptocurrency investing. Second, this study developed a methodology for examining instability links between various factors that is more appropriate for investigating these linkages. This study investigates the links between AI, technical advancement and green digital currencies using a cutting-edge model-free connectivity method. This work is also the first to examine the interconnection between volatility derived from AI, technological development and green cryptocurrency investments in light of unknown events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian–Russian conflict. Finally, this study includes a daily database from the BOTZ fund, which attempts to invest in firms that stand to gain from rising robotics and AI use. Cardano (ADA), IOTA, NANO (XNO), Stellar Lumens and Tron are examples of green cryptocurrencies, whereas Bitcoin is an example of a nongreen cryptocurrency. These virtual currencies are being used to investigate the relationship between investor mood and green and nongreen digital currencies. The data set spans the period from November 9, 2017 to March 24, 2023.