POLITICAL ACCEPTABILITY OF PRIVATELY FINANCED MOTORWAYS IN HUNGARY

Based on a few research analyses, M1/M15 concession motorway project has been analysed, which was the first tolled and shared financed project in the CEE region with more or less success. The objectives of this analysis were to find answers to institutional questions about how to involve private capital into road infrastructure development in politically acceptable way, using a psycho-economic model. This paper starts with introduction and overview of the Hungarian concession motorway project´s history. After the short description of the applied model, key actors are identified and described, as the politicians/regulators, transport providers and their interest groups, the public with interest groups and the media. This is followed by findings of in-depth analysis of the motivations and decisions, to be able to set up the stakeholders´ characteristics and a way of decisions. This systematic description and the positive analysis of the different key actors lead to explanations of the situation and the causalities in occurrence of the Hungarian concession motorway project. The analysis criteria are problem perception, goals, information provision, effectiveness, equity/fairness issues, social environment, implementation process and finally the political and institutional setting. The conclusion attempts to give lessons to be learned, answers to institutional and regulatory questions and policy recommendations for decision-makers

Newsbots That Mediate Journalist and Audience Relationships

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. News media organisations are experimenting with a new generation of newsbots that move beyond automated headline delivery to the delivery of news according to a conversational format within the context of private messaging services. To build the newsbot, journalists craft statements and answers to users’ questions that mimic a natural conversation between a journalist and user. In so doing, journalists are experimenting with styles of communication that reflect very particular journalistic personas. We investigate the persona of the news chatbot created by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), the better to understand how the public broadcaster’s forays into social media service delivery and automation are shaping new relationships between public service broadcasters and their audiences. We find that, for a section of the audience that uses it, the friendly newsbot contrasts favourably with their previous experience with news and the journalists who produce it. The public service journalists who operate the bot are, in turn, using the bot to try to reach new audiences by experimenting with a more informal, intimate relationship with citizen users. The supposedly “intelligent” (but in actual fact very much human-crafted) newsbot is the vehicle through which this new relationship is being forged

Strategi Komunikasi Melalui Media Visual Penyuluh Agama Hindu Pada Masa Pandemi Covid-19 di Kota Mataram

The Covid-19 pandemic has a large influence on the social interactions of Hindu religious counselors to communicating  Hindus religious teachings. This is due to government policies that apply social distancing or keep a distance of one to two meters, and do not involve large numbers of people who can cause crowds. This policy has led to changes in the social interaction of a Hindu religious counselor in carrying out his duties as an instructor in communicating Hindu"s religious teachings.This study used a qualitative research method that took place in the city of Mataram, with the object of research being Hindu religious extension workers who had a duty area in the city of Mataram.The communication strategy carried out by Hindu religious counselors during the Covid-19 pandemic was to use visual media in the form of pictorial messages containing religious teachings, animations containing stories containing moral messages and religious teachings, and spiritual videos from Hindu saints. This visual media is channeled using whatshap social media because it is considered very effective in disseminating information, is widely used and known to the public. Information is disseminated through group messages, then discussions and questions and answers are held in each group to find out the audience or communicant's feedback. Group communication through whatshap group chat is able to bridge communication between Hindus religious counselors and the assisted community during a pandemic where direct contact and mass gathering in large numbers cannot be carried out

Understanding knowledge sharing activities through the use of social media tools in higher educational institutions

Knowledge sharing is a process where individuals mutually exchange their knowledge and jointly create new knowledge. Several of the previous studies found that besides face-to-face interactions, students also share their knowledge through social media tools. Social media tools are currently considered as the key value in the campus to facilitate knowledge sharing and the main tasks in order to support the daily communication. Although the importance of using these tools among the students in educational institutions, many dimensions of knowledge sharing in social media environments have not yet been examined. Furthermore, many questions are still unanswered and need to be explored across different social media tools. Additionally, literature also stressed the need to focus more on use the social media with education in developing countries. For this purpose, this empirical study sought to explore the knowledge sharing activities among local and international postgraduate students at one of public universities in Malaysia, as well as find the benefits and barriers through using social media tools during sharing knowledge. With regard to data collection, the best manner to understand the perspective of the students about some of the new phenomena through harness qualitative approach. Data were collected through qualitative approach. More specifically, a total of 12 postgraduate students were interviewed and received answers from them through semi-structure interviews. Interpretive analysis method was used to find the themes via using NVivo qualitative data analysis software. The results for this study included four sections based on Nonaka and Takeuchi theory. The findings indicated that, the activities for students include exchange experience and perspective as well as confirmed the importance of social media in overcome time, geographical distance and cost that is a barriers to share knowledge as well as provide more confident to share ideas for students.This study contributed by using the Nonaka and Takeuchi model with higher educational institutions. In the same context, there are few empirical studies focused on the Information technology with knowledge sharing, therefore this research sought to add valuable information into the literature by shedding light the barriers and the benefits through utilize the new technologies to share know among the team work

New Media, New Influencers and Implications for Public Relations

Marketers and public relations professionals today are confronted with an astounding array of new communications channels. Internet-based social media tools like blogs, podcasts, online video and social networks are giving voice to the opinions of millions of consumers. While mainstream media continues to play a vital role in the dissemination of information, even these traditional channels are increasingly being influenced by online conversations. The "new influencers" are beginning to tear at the fabric of marketing as it has existed for 100 years, giving rise to a new style of marketing that is characterized by conversation and community. Marketers are responding to these forces with a mixture of excitement, fear and fascination. They're alarmed at the prospect of ceding control of their messages to a community of unknowns. Yet at the same time they're excited about the prospect of leveraging theese same tools to speak directly to their constituents without the involvement of media intermediaries.The Society for New Communications Research set out to conduct an examination of how influence patterns are changing and how communications professionals are addressing those changes by adopting social media. The goals were to discover how organizations:Define new influencers;Communicate and create relationships with them;Use social media to create influence; andMeasure the effects of these efforts.Another goal of the study was to use these discoveries to offer a set of recommendations to professional communicators

Cultures in Community Question Answering

CQA services are collaborative platforms where users ask and answer questions. We investigate the influence of national culture on people's online questioning and answering behavior. For this, we analyzed a sample of 200 thousand users in Yahoo Answers from 67 countries. We measure empirically a set of cultural metrics defined in Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions and Robert Levine's Pace of Life and show that behavioral cultural differences exist in community question answering platforms. We find that national cultures differ in Yahoo Answers along a number of dimensions such as temporal predictability of activities, contribution-related behavioral patterns, privacy concerns, and power inequality.Comment: Published in the proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT'15

Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide

Most foundation and nonprofit communicators can speak at length about the work they do and what it's intended to achieve. But when it comes to describing exactly what their efforts are achieving, few can offer specifics.This guide helps foundation and nonprofit communicators learn whether their communications are effective and what is being achieved -- and determine if any course corrections are necessary.Among the reasons stressed for evaluating communication efforts are these:Evaluation improves the effectiveness of communications.Evaluation can help organizations more effectively engage with intended audiences.Situations change - strategies and tactics may need to change as well.Evaluation ensures wise allocation of resources.The guide points out that evaluation need not be limited to large-scale campaigns or major outreach activities, but should also conducted for efforts to raise awareness of an organization or an issue. And once an evaluation is underway, the guide suggests findings be shared with those who may benefit from what is learned, such as team members, the board, colleagues and peers.The guide includes:Background on why evaluation can contribute to good communications.Four case studies of evaluation in action from the Lumina Foundation for Education, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Neimand Collaborative, and the California HealthCare Foundation.A worksheet for creating an evaluation plan