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The article attempts to use the theory of conceptual metaphor to compare distant communicative practices of Ancient Greece and modern times. The author interprets digital communications and social media as Digital Agora, or Agora 2.0. Just as during ancient times the influence of the Agora made the Athenian aristocracy reckon with the demos, the influence of social media has significantly reshaped the modern political process, limiting the former capabilities of the elites. The use of the conceptual metaphor of Agora 2.0 allows the author to clarify similarities in the functioning of open communication systems, within which the mass dissemination of persuasive fake news and/or foreign interference in the electoral process turn out to be essentially insurmountable. Societies have to adapt in order to compensate for the potentially destructive effects of agorocentric structures. According to the author, it is still an open question of whether the Digital Agora will cope with numerous challenges, or whether the trends causing irreparable damage to democratic institutions will prevail. When examining a potential response to the challenges posed by the existence of the Digital Agora, the author makes use of a biological metaphor of an immune response, employing it to analyze most probable scenarios — from a radical ban on the Agora 2.0's very infrastructure to the introduction of subtle homogenizing institutions that prevent the unchecked growth of populist influence.

The advent of the digital revolution has introduced several means for the collection, spread, and dissemination of information within the realm of communication, thus transcending geographical and time constraints. The swift digitization and transformation of contemporary societies have created an unusual security landscape, exerting its influence across every facet of human, societal, economic, and political life. Technology stands as a pivotal variable in the dynamic evolution of terrorism. Cyberspace has emerged as a fertile domain for the amplification and continuation of terrorist activities, representing a profound "transformation" at the operational level over recent decades. Terrorists have adeptly seized upon the potential of cyberspace, strategically imitating successful tactics employed by like-minded, assimilating lessons from past mistakes, and adapting to exigencies of both the present and future. The extensive deployment of information communication and technologies (ICTs) has substantially facilitated terrorists' activities in a multitude of ways. This includes cost reduction, the generation of operational efficiencies, broader access to novel target demographics, the provision of anonymity, heightened security measures, the dissolution of organizational barriers, and the amplification of the scope and reach of their actions. The full spectrum of cyber activities conducted by terrorists can be comprehensively encapsulated within a model titled the "Digital Jihad". This paper intends to apply this model in the context of examining the activities and strategies of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

AbstractWe review findings from social psychology and related fields to examine the bidirectional relationship between the public—what are their views about climate change and the need for policies to address the climate crisis—and the politicians who are making (or not making) climate policy and beholden to electoral constraints. We illustrate social psychological pressures that influence policy support and their relevance to how policies emerge from coordinated action and how barriers impede policy progress. We review two factors that have been the focus of research within communication, political science, and psychology and that are relevant to how climate policies are promoted (or undermined): activists and the media. We examine the process by which activists amplify and transmit the preferences of the public to politicians, and how research on persuasion and social norms helps understand how this effect can be amplified or diminished. We also describe how the media environment can amplify or diminish the roles of the public and the politicians in influencing each other. As the world confronts the climate crisis, research from social psychologists, environmental psychologists, political scientists, and communication scholars has examined the interrelations between the public, politicians, media, and activists, but largely in a disconnected way. The current paper provides a social psychological framework to integrate these approaches and, in so doing, suggest new directions for research and theory‐guided ways to influence policy around climate change.

Design thinking process has two ways of on and off-line. In the online method, it facilitates communication more freely through the setting of anonymity, while the offline method allows participants to understand the comprehensive context of the workshop. This study investigates the creative possibility of a hybrid design thinking process through a workshop using "camera-off ": anonymous setting, "camera-on": open setting, and instant visualization to find solutions for children's safety in the childcare environment. In the methodology, a qualitative method of three-dimensional interviews and observations were used to collect the active participants' opinions, and then the content analysis and the descriptive analysis were conducted. Three major childcare-related problems were noted during the workshop observations: 1) safety issues from children's physical activities; 2) teachers' excessive stress in childcare facilities, and 3) communication problems between parents and teachers. It was suggested that creative smart devices and artificial intelligence technologies could be helpful to relieve these problems. In insights of the hybrid design thinking workshop, the following points were noted: 1) active participants could freely share ideas in anonymous setting with "camera-off"; 2) active participants could understand various desires of diverse fields with "camera-on", and 3) active participants could understand find core problems and solutions through instant visualization. Hybrid design thinking is an creative method for understanding problems and finding solutions.

Different understandings of what it means to be critical in the social sciences, especially in terms of the distinction between instrumental and reflexive knowledge, can be illustrated by the ongoing conceptual disputes about the critical epistemic value of public opinion and the public sphere as the main instantiations of publicness. The concept of the public sphere has gained prominence in media and communication theory, filling a void created by the decline of critical public opinion discourse, which was overshadowed by promotional publicity and opinion polls. Initially rooted in the German concept of Öffentlichkeit, this idea was revived in the English term 'public sphere'. Its adoption transcended disciplinary boundaries, sparking fresh critical perspectives in the study of publicness. Yet, this widespread adoption also brought about a certain dilution of the concept's epistemic depth. The digital age, characterized by the ascendancy of the Internet and the blurring of public–private boundaries, has greatly reshaped our comprehension of the public sphere, and expanded the scope of the concept. Today, however, the public sphere concept faces a fate reminiscent of administrative public opinion discourse following the proliferation of opinion polls. At a time when society is faced with issues related to the control of digital platforms by oligarchs, reevaluation and revitalization of the concepts of the public sphere and publicness become essential for comprehending the dynamics of modern communication.

PurposeThis study aims to examine the effects of coworker incivility on employees' behaviors using a moderated mediation model that conceptualizes coworker exchange (CWX) as a mediator and servant leadership as a moderator.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected using a multi-temporal research design. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 1,272 participants using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), hierarchical regression analysis and moderated path analysis. In addition, supervisor incivility was added as a control variable to partial out the potential influence on employees' behaviors.FindingsThe results of CFA ensured that all measures had discriminant and convergent validity. In addition, the results of hierarchical regression analysis and moderated path analysis indicated that CWX mediates the relationship between coworker incivility and employees' behaviors. Furthermore, servant leadership exacerbates the negative relationship between coworker incivility and CWX.Practical implicationsLeaders and practitioners should invest in communication training programs for developing employees' communication skills to avoid incivility. In addition to viewing incivility as inappropriate behavior, leaders and practitioners should understand the meaning beyond those incivilities.Originality/valueThis study utilized incivility spiral theory to examine how coworker incivility affects employees' behaviors. The mediated path analysis found that CWX mediates the relationship between these variables, which has been ignored by previous research. Furthermore, this study introduced servant leadership as a moderator to account for the "when" in incivility spiral theory, i.e. what kind of social context facilitates or inhibits the influence of coworker incivility on CWX.

The article examines manifestations of "communicative parasitism" as a variant of communicative alignment in Russian-language Telegram channels. It examines how the adjustment to other people's communication products begins to serve fundamentally different interests and values. The peculiarities of new media and conditions of technologically mediated communication such as interactivity, recombinativeness, multimodality, etc., as well as the specificity of high conflict nature of social-and-political discourse, which plays a significant role in the processes of using power and struggling for it, are taken into account. "Communicative parasitism" is analyzed within both the description of Telegram channel and the subscribers' posts and comments. It was found out that when "communicative parasitism" is used by a Telegram channel to build its own brand and promote itself at someone else's expense, parasitic manifestations are usually limited to elements of design. However, there are often more complex cases in the ideological confrontation of social groups, where this phenomenon is exploited to consolidate one's own group, represent it in a positive way and distance it from the opposing group, which is being discredited. Thus, "communicative parasitism" becomes an integral part of defense-attack strategies realized by a whole group of users for a long time. In this situation, a large number of customers are involved in a kind of language game with intertwining and interacting borrowings, contributing to the formation of group identity.

The quantity of teleworkers had already been rising in various work fields even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it was not until the pandemic that it spread to other sectors such as the industrial sector. There are still few studies looking at telework's impact on this important sector. This article is intended to discuss: (1) the extent of teleworking in manufacturing, (2) its adjustment to the industrial sector (challenges and benefits), and (3) its prospects for the future. To this end, 31 in-depth interviews have been conducted with four Plant Managers and seven Human Resource Directors of 11 industrial companies in Burgos (Spain) and surroundings, as well as 20 of their workers. Pre-pandemic teleworking was only active in one of the enterprises and now there are workers that work remotely in 9 out of 11. All interviewees agreed that teleworking will gradually expand. The study shows concerns and challenges when it comes to communication, trust, control, and productivity. It highlights the importance of establishing clear policies on teleworking and how to deal with remuneration, expense reimbursements, and equity between teleworkers and on-site workers. Overall, industrial-sector teleworking has brought positive results in terms of productivity and job satisfaction levels, but it has also resulted in new demands on aspects such as ergonomics, negative habits (food and physical inactivity), communication, and work–life balance.

The creative wealth of Latin American communication studies has promoted the broadening of the object of study of communication, which has now exceeded two centuries, revealing collective realities and concerns about society and the media, processes that imply rethinking the link between thought, knowledge and academia. Complexity, fragmentation, atomization and utopian pragmatism distill authors such as Antonio Pascuali, Luiz Beltrão, José Marques de Melo and Jesús Martín-Barbero, who have built a theoretical and elastic mesh to think and rethink Latin American communicational thinking within the framework of complexity and the utopian pragmatism of a mestizo science under construction. Faced with the fragmentation of the communicational field, we perceive a deeply atomized terrain A riqueza criativa dos estudos da comunicação latino-americanos tem promovido a ampliação do objeto de estudo da comunicação, que já ultrapassou dois séculos, revelando realidades coletivas e preocupações com a sociedade e os meios de comunicação, processos que implicam repensar a ligação entre pensamento, conhecimento e academia. Complexidade, fragmentação, atomização e pragmatismo utópico destilam autores como Antonio Pascuali, Luiz Beltrão, José Marques de Melo e Jesús Martín-Barbero, que construíram uma malha teórica e elástica para pensar e repensar o pensamento comunicacional latino-americano no quadro da complexidade e o pragmatismo utópico de uma ciência mestiça em construção. Diante da fragmentação do campo comunicacional, percebemos um terreno profundamente atomizado.

Communicative competence of medical and pharmaceutical workers is an integral component of professional, as it provides representation of professional knowledge in certain situations of oral or written communication, which, according to various data, takes up more than 60% of working time. The efficiency of their work depends on the ability to communicate in different production conditions, primarily in stressful situations. Therefore, these categories of specialists need to master the rules of deontology, acquire the skills of the culture of professional speech, cultivate caution in handling the word and hone the ability to use it for psychotherapeutic purposes. The purpose of scientific work is to analyze the ways and methods of communication of medical and pharmaceutical specialists with patients/clients from the point of view of their effective influence. Material. Fiction and films about the life and work of medical and pharmaceutical specialists, personal experience. Methods. Descriptive, comparative, analysis and synthesis. Conclusions. The effectiveness of the professional activity of medical and pharmaceutical workers is determined by a set of professional knowledge, skills and abilities, multiplied by the ability to think critically and speak well, to respond quickly to problems in emergency situations. Such personal qualities as upbringing, politeness and restraint, as well as mastery of psychological techniques and tactics, play a big role. In the future, the results of the study can form the basis of practical recommendations for medical workers regarding their speech culture, in particular, normative word usage.

Abstract
Social networking sites allow politicians to reach followers directly and offer citizens platforms to express their opinions. However, online discussions often lack civility, leading to increased polarization. Although existing research has brought important insights into populist effects on political trust, attitudes, or electoral behavior, we know less about how populism's use of divisive rhetoric and identity-based appeals contribute to the confrontational responses of social media users. To address this gap, we investigate the relationship between the use of populist communication in migration-related social media posts by populist and non-populist political actors and the use of uncivil and intolerant rhetoric by social media users. Focusing on the case of the Czech Republic between 2013 and 2020, we conducted a quantitative content analysis of Facebook posts about the contentious issue of migration created by political parties and comments under those posts published by social media users. Our results indicate that while different elements of populist communication bring mixed results to the responses in online discussions, the social media posts created by populist political parties are positively associated with increased online incivility and intolerance. These findings have significant implications for understanding the potential influence of populist messages on social media and its consequences for democratic societies, highlighting their relevance in addressing and mitigating crises beyond the migration crisis, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies.

AbstractAfrican American women are 10.8 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV compared with White women. This descriptive study fills a gap by examining associations among social and contextual factors and sexual communication, condom use, and safer sex negotiation among African American women. Study participants between 18 and 25 years of age and who reported recent substance use were recruited from three North Carolina counties. A risk behavior survey was administered via audio computer-assisted self-interview, and logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess associations between social and contextual variables and condom use at last sex with a main partner. Education (AOR: 2.078; 95% CI: 1.214, 3.556), sexual communication with a main partner (AOR: 1.079; 95% CI: 1.050, 1.109), and condom use relationship scale (AOR: 1.059; 95% CI: 1.023, 1.098) were positively associated with condom use at last sex, whereas living with a main partner (AOR: 0.447; 95% CI: 0.210, 0.950) and the alcohol and drug problem scale (AOR: 0.971; 95% CI: 0.944, 0.998) were negatively associated with condom use (p < 0.05). The study findings show that among young African American women at risk for HIV, contextual and personal factors may influence condom use. A socio-ecological approach combining personal empowerment, interpersonal, structural, and biobehavioral strategies is necessary in implementing holistic gender-focused HIV prevention programs.

Purpose: this work aims to contribute to the literature on strategic management in micro and small firms by identifying the main strategic behavior traits in micro and small technology-based firms.Methodology: the research method consisted of two phases: the first phase, quantitative, involved a survey of 104 micro and small technology-based firms, whose results were analyzed using the cluster analysis technique. The second qualitative phase involved five case studies, whose information was obtained through five semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the content analysis technique.Results: the results indicated which micro and small technology-based firms operate in sectors with high levels of dynamism and uncertainty, and their strategic behavior is based on the definition of competitive and innovation strategies, communication of strategic objectives to employees, allocation of organizational resources for innovation, market research and investments in R&D and development of dynamic capabilities for innovation, sensing changes in the external environment, seizing and reconfiguring resources, through strategic partnerships with external agents, especially customers, which can help these companies to adapt to market demands and obtain competitive advantages.Conclusions: the strategic behavior in micro and small technology-based firms is influenced by the definition of competitive and innovation strategies, communication of strategic objectives to employees, allocation of organizational resources for innovation, market research and R&D investments, and development of dynamic capabilities for innovation.

The paper focuses on rendering the ideological component in translation, which engenders significant difficulty for a modern translator. Taking political and gender aspects into consideration, the authors aim to emphasize the importance of correct ideological translation, which is understood as creation of authentic texts in one language based on the original texts in the other language. The material of the study is comprised of authentic German-language media publications posted on the Internet in 2022–2023 and devoted to the topics of "special military operation" and "gender". As a result, it was revealed that in most texts about the special military operation, the translation of the ideological component is carried out not through decoding, but by means of reformulating the information, which leads to its distortion. In feminist discourse, the blurring of gender identity as an element of ideology contributes to the emergence of non-equivalent lexical units, the use of which does not always correspond to the rules adopted in institutional communication in a particular linguistic culture. To implement effective communication, the authors recommend to focus on the ethical principles of interaction. It is concluded that the multiplication of incorrect ideological translation becomes a new challenge for the professional community. In order to respond to it, the translator is to have profound knowledge in the field of culture, history, linguistics and regional studies, which determines the degree of accuracy in information interpretation that occurs while working with any foreign cultural text.

The article presents the study of word-building, semantic, motivational, syntagmatic, and functional characteristics of non-usual neonominations that appeared in 2005 and have been used in Russian-language Internet communication since that time to the present, denoting the objects of social reality that are either approved or disapproved. The performed analysis has made it possible to identify internationalization, intensification, intellectualization and integration as current trends in the creative neologization of this semantic area. The most productive methods of non-usual word formation in the studied lexical subset include blending, lexicalization of an abbreviation, stem truncation; less frequent – holophrasis, graphics, the inclusion of a foreign component in the centaur word; rarely used – reduplication, tmesis, anagram, stepwise way of word formation, pluralization, creation; irrelevant – the emancipation of the morpheme, the spillage of the word. It is shown that a most creative reaction of Internet users is caused by disapproved objects of reality with a variety of rejected socially significant features; their neonominations are used in contexts with a dominant negative average tone. The dominant regular sphere of functioning of neolexemes, which are formed in unusual ways with the semantics of disapproval/approval are such genres of Internet communication as social networks, blogs and forums. Protologisms, even with a transparent internal form and a readable motivation, are rarely conventionalized. Most of the unusual neonominations of unacceptable/acceptable objects of social reality can be attributed to transnominatives, whose nominative purpose is secondary.