Coming to America: Iranians' use of Telegram for immigration information seeking

Purpose This study examines Iran-US migrants' use of the most popular messaging application in Iran—Telegram—and shows how they use it to manage their migration information practices. Design/methodology/approach This study took a qualitative observation approach. Over the course of six months, over 80 h of observations were conducted on Iran-US migration-related settings within Telegram. Findings This work identifies the information practices that emerge as users seek and share information related to Iran-US migration. Telegram plays a vital role across the immigration stages, predominantly in the pre-migration stage. This work also shows how the constraints and features of Telegram influence users' information sharing and seeking practices. Practical implications The findings support the implication that a social media platform that provides multiple ways to interact is likely to better support niche or unanticipated uses. Originality/value This study is the first of its kind to explore Iranian Immigrants information practices in the US. The immigration information practices observed during this study represent a valuable example of end-user appropriation within extraordinary constraints, which may be of use in other information-seeking contexts where dedicated or bespoke tools are impractical or ill-advised

The Pushshift Telegram Dataset

Messaging platforms, especially those with a mobile focus, have become increasingly ubiquitous in society. These mobile messaging platforms can have deceivingly large user bases, and in addition to being a way for people to stay in touch, are often used to organize social movements, as well as a place for extremists and other ne'er-do-well to congregate. In this paper, we present a dataset from one such mobile messaging platform: Telegram. Our dataset is made up of over 27.8K channels and 317M messages from 2.2M unique users. To the best of our knowledge, our dataset comprises the largest and most complete of its kind. In addition to the raw data, we also provide the source code used to collect it, allowing researchers to run their own data collection instance. We believe the Pushshift Telegram dataset can help researchers from a variety of disciplines interested in studying online social movements, protests, political extremism, and disinformation

Prison Bed Profiteers: How Corporations Are Reshaping Criminal Justice in the U.S.

Examines concerns with the role and performance of private prisons, including reports of abuse and neglect, low pay and limited training for staff, poor government oversight, and lack of cost savings and community economic benefit. Makes recommendations

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program and Employers in Labrador

Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) represent an important resource for employers across Canada and particularly in rural areas, where labour supply is often unpredictable. This is true both for highly-skilled occupations in mining and extractive industries as well as low-skilled occupations in the service industry in small towns. The expansion and encouragement of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) by the federal government over the last 15 years has increased employers’ reliance on TFWs. Labrador reflects this trend, as the region has experienced a boom or bust cycle of economic activity and a subsequent rise in the number of TFWs employed in high and low skilled positions

INNOVATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: A STUDY OF SMEs IN JEMBER

Promotion is the key to spreading information about a business or product. Today, SMEs utilize social media for promotion. Because social media has a wider range, promotion is done by seizing social media to reach a wider market share. This research aims to analyze the utilization of social media as a promotional medium by SMEs in the Jember Regency. The research results show that SMEs utilize social media for promotion, such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Telegram. Each social media is used following the functions and features. Social media Instagram is utilized as a place to upload promotional videos, product photos, posters, booking info, and product reviews. Social Media Facebook is utilized to reach people who are in the community to sell and buy. Social Media WhatsApp and Telegram can be used for two-way communication between SMEs and consumers. Keywords: social media, Strategy, Small and medium-sized EnterprisesPromosi merupakan kunci utama untuk menyebarkan informasi mengenai suatu usaha atau produk. Dewasa ini para pelaku memanfaatkan media sosial untuk melakukan promosi, hal ini dikarenakan media sosial memiliki jangkaun yang luas sehingga promosi yang dilakukan dengan memanfaakan media sosial dapat menjangkau pangsa pasar yang lebih luas. Tujuan dari penelitian ini untuk menganalisis pemanfaatan media sosial sebagai media promosi oleh UMKM di Kabupaten Jember. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan terdapat beberapa media sosial yang dimanfaatkan oleh UMKM. untuk melakukan promosi diantaranya ialah Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram dan Telegram. Masing-masing media sosial dimanfaatkan sesuai dengan fungsi dan fiturnya, media sosial Instagram dimanfaatkan sebagai tempat untuk mengunggah konten promosi berupa video, foto produk, poster, info pemesanan dan ulasan produk. Media sosial Facebook dimanfaatkan untuk menjangkau orang-orang yang berada dalam satu komunitas jual beli. Media sosial Whatsapp dan telegram dimanfaatkan sebagai media untuk melakukan komunikasi dua arah antara dan para konsumen. Kata Kunci: Media Sosial, Strategi, Usaha Mikro Kecil dan Menenga

STATELESSNESS AND CONTESTED SOVEREIGNTY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: THE UNITED STATES, PALESTINIAN REFUGEES, THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, SYRIAN ETHNIC MINORITIES, AND THE EARLY COLD WAR, 1945 – 1954

This dissertation examines the significance of America’s interactions with stateless actors. It argues that it was groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine’s refugees, and ethnic minorities, not the U.S. and Soviet governments, nor the state governments of the region, which dictated how the Cold War unfolded in the Middle East. These groups transformed the policy decisions, strategies, and alliances of both native regimes and the superpowers. Traditionally, historians have looked at the global politics of the Cold War through the lens of state-to-state relations. How have state governments interacted with each other and how did this influence the strategies and alliances of the superpowers? However, this work challenges state-centric models and points to new factors in the history of the United States and the world. Furthermore, much of the literature on groups such as Palestinian refugees and ethnic minorities has characterized them as victims, or actors without agency. Far from victims, this study contends that the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine’s refugees, and minority groups such as the Armenians and Kurds defined the history of the period and, in key ways, were the primary agents of change. Not only does such research demonstrate the significance of non-state actors with regards to the Cold War, it also highlights the limits of postcolonialism. The non-state groups of this study did not fit into the nation-state system that developed in the Middle East after World War II. While these actors fit within imperial modes of power, the transition from Empire to nation-state left them stateless. As a result, they contested the nation-state system that came into being in the Middle East in the late 1940s and 1950s

Visa Policies and Visa Openness Scores in SADC – An Exclusion Element of Tourism Development in Southern Africa: A Critical Interjection

The objective of this paper is to critically show how visa policies in Southern Africa affect tourism development. The paper adopted a regional perspective on the dynamics of visa policies affect tourist flows. This article also discusses the implications of visa policies on tourist arrivals. Government efforts in influencing the change in visa policies are also discussed in this paper. The study identified three main reasons why visa policies are pursued; namely, border security; minimising illegal immigration and reciprocity. The paper concludes that, while visa policies may help tourist destination within the region with revenue, they have a more deterring effect as it affects destination choice and visa openness scores, thus affecting tourism development

Immigration, Minority Rights, and Catholic Policy-Making in Post-War Canada

This paper addresses the Canadian Roman Catholic episcopacy’s approach to such issues of public interest as immigration and minority rights between 1945 and 1965. The definition of the Church’s involvement in temporal matters, it is here argued, requires an understanding of the institutional interests of Catholicism and traditional Catholic approaches to governance. The conceptual framework offered by contemporary administrative and policy studies now better enables scholars of Catholicism to assess the social and political significance of the Church in this period. Catholic bishops were not indifferent to immigration or the rights of minority groups, but chose to address these matters by utilizing “discreet” channels of interaction consistent with corporatist governance. Quebec and Ontario are taken as illustrative examples of jurisdictions where Catholics were respectively the majority and a minority.Le présent article traite de la manière dont l’épiscopat catholique canadien a envisagé des questions d’intérêt public telles que l’immigration et les droits des minorités entre 1945 et 1965. La définition de l’intervention de l’Église dans les questions temporelles, soutient l’auteur, exige que l’on comprenne les intérêts institutionnels du catholicisme et les conceptions catholiques traditionnelles de la gouvernance. Le cadre conceptuel offert par les études contemporaines dans les domaines de l’administration et de la politique permet désormais aux spécialistes du catholicisme de mieux évaluer la signification politique et sociale de l’Église au cours de cette période. Les évêques catholiques n’étaient pas indifférents à l’immigration ou aux droits des groupes minoritaires, mais ils ont choisi d’aborder ces questions en empruntant des voies d’interaction « discrètes », compatibles avec la gouvernance corporatiste. L’auteur utilise le Québec et l’Ontario comme exemples de territoires où les catholiques constituaient la majorité d’un côté et une minorité de l’autre

“The Dude Abides”: How The Big Lebowski Bowled Its Way from a Box Office Bomb to Nation-Wide Fests

Since Blood Simple, the first film they wrote and directed together, the Coen Brothers have been working their way up in the film world and, in spite of their outside-the-mainstream taste for the noir and the surreal, have earned a number of prestigious prizes. After Fargo, one of their most critically acclaimed films, expectations were high, and when the Brothers released their next bizarre venture, most critics rushed to measure it against Fargo’s success. Consequently, The Big Lebowski, the Coens’ 1998 neo-noir detective comedy, was considered an incoherent, “unsatisfactory” medley of genres and styles and a box office bomb, and nothing hinted that this unorthodox story of mistaken identity, featuring a pot-smoking, unemployed character named the Dude as its “hee-ro,” would gain a following. Yet, since its 1998 DVD release, The Big Lebowski has been hailed as the first cult film of the Internet, continuously inspiring versatile cultural phenomena as nonconformist in their nature as the movie itself. This essay examines particular factors which initially might have been responsible for alienating the audience only to help The BigLebowski become a peculiar cultural event in later years. It looks at TheBig Lebowski’s characters, the historical time and place of the film’s action as well as at various external historical events, phenomena, places and people such as, for example, the Port Huron Statement, the Reagan-Bush era, Los Angeles and its immigration issues, racial minorities, civil rights activists, the Western genre and, last but not least, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Reflecting the film’s oddities, this bag of cultural idiosyncrasies appears to provide some plausible explanations for The Big Lebowski’s unexpected, against-all-odds rise from the marginal position of a critical and commercial failure to the status of a cult classic and cultural landmark