discourse analysis

This article explores the feminist social critique in the 'big heroine' drama, a newly emerged genre of television that focuses on empowering yet dramatic stories of urban women in contemporary China. The article theorises the genre as a site of ongoing contestations to inform and critique women's maternal reality in neoliberal, pronatalist China. The big heroine genre is situated in the postsocialist structure of feeling defined by alienation and precarity, responding to China's need to stabilise the emerging population crisis and labour shortage...

The COVID-19 pandemic has dominated the global media since 2020. To a large extent, it is via the news media that the public has learned about the risks, levels of danger, governmental regulations and mandatory actions. This article highlights the subject positions constructed by the Swedish news media from January 2020 to February 2021 in reports about the pandemic. The result shows that citizens can be active-passive or solitary solidarity, these positions appeal to individual accountability, thus potentially shaping and fostering citizens in line with the Swedish government's wider response to the pandemic...

Critical to managing a crisis such as COVID-19 is the propagation of information to all vulnerable populations. Despite guidelines regarding communicating with people with differing accessibility needs during crises, some often find their needs unmet. Following a lack of assisted communications for d/Deaf people during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Twitter hashtag campaign, #WhereIsTheInterpreter, was launched in the UK, protesting the lack of accessibility during official press briefings around the epidemic. The campaign received support from across the globe...

This autoethnography explores my experiences as a hospital entrance screener during the first wave of the pandemic in a hospital in Ontario, Canada. In April 2020, I was redeployed from my research role to a hospital entrance screener. Focused on my lived experiences, the purpose of this research is to provide a glimpse into what it was like to work in a hospital early in the pandemic, to understand these experiences in relation to sociocultural meanings, and to try to make sense of my experiences with COVID-19...

In this article, we present the results of the qualitative research and the thematic discourse analysis of discussions of Facebook groups of parents of pupils in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The aim was to identify how the parents perceived the issue of distance learning during the COVID-2 pandemic and how they approached the problems that they encountered. Parents step into the role of a teacher and of a pupil; they are participants and observers of the educational process and advisors and supporters of their children...

This article presents an analysis of European smart city narratives and how they evolved under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic. We start with Joss et al.'s observation that the smart-city discourse is presently in flux, engaged in intensive boundary-work and struggling to gain wider support. We approach this process from the critical perspective of surveillance capitalism, as proposed by Zuboff, to highlight the growing privacy concerns related to technological development. Our results are based on analysing 184 articles regarding smart-city solutions, published on social media by five European journals between 2017 and 2021...

Since the introduction of the cultivated meat burger in 2013, numerous discussions have transpired between researchers and consumers, manifesting in various forms such as academic publications, opinions on personal websites and interactions on social platforms. For Muslim consumers, a primary concern revolves around the halal status of cultivated meat, given the pivotal role of adhering to a halal diet as a divine obligation in their lives. Therefore, this article seeks to systematically review the existing literature on cultivated meat from an Islamic perspective as articulated by Muslim scholars, whether these perspectives are issued by an established fatwa organisation or representations of personal views...

This study combined ecological, environmental, nature-based, and epistemic interpretations of older adulthood to gain a previously unresearched look at how older adults feel that their relations with nature are treated by others. Sixty older adults were interviewed in-depth, and data was analyzed using the Eco-Appreciation framework and Thematic Content Analysis. The results indicate the concurrence of processes of withdrawal of older adults from spaces of nature and discourse about nature. These processes obstruct older adults' wellbeing; entail the infliction of existential epistemic injustices and "eco-ageism" toward them; and emphasize the crucial role social work can play in responding thereto...

BACKGROUND: NSCLC is a lethal cancer that is highly prevalent and accounts for 85% of cases of lung cancer. Conventional cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation, frequently exhibit limited efficacy and notable adverse reactions. Therefore, a drug repurposing method is proposed for effective NSCLC treatment. AIMS: This study aims to evaluate candidate drugs that are effective for NSCLC at the clinical level using a systems biology and network analysis approach...

The research employs a single embodied case study design with the aim to examine the discourse of men accessing and receiving mental health support alongside those who are the providers of the support. Three groups of adults were interviewed: men who had experienced mental health problems and had attempted to access mental health support; lay people who supported them, such as partners and non-mental health professionals and professionals, such as mental health nurses, social workers, clinical psychologists and general practitioners...

UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission launched the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development in 2021 to boost global and sustainable Ocean governance. The initiative resulted from historical and political dynamics at the global and lower political scales, with maritime environmental and economic concerns becoming more prominent in 2010. The Ocean Decade's pillars include science and research, sustainability, conservation, and bridging gaps for a global Ocean-Climate-Biodiversity nexus...

Pragmatic impairment is diffused in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, but the literature still debates its neurocognitive underpinnings. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to investigate the neurocognitive correlates of pragmatic disorders in schizophrenia and determine the weight of social cognition and executive functioning on such disorders. Of the 2,668 records retrieved from the literature, 16 papers were included in the systematic review, mostly focused on non-literal meanings and discourse production in schizophrenia...

Anaesthesia, crucial to surgical practice, is undergoing renewed scrutiny due to the integration of artificial intelligence in its medical use. The precise control over the temporary loss of consciousness is vital to ensure safe, pain-free procedures. Traditional methods of depth of anaesthesia (DoA) assessment, reliant on physical characteristics, have proven inconsistent due to individual variations. In response, electroencephalography (EEG) techniques have emerged, with indices such as the Bispectral Index offering quantifiable assessments...

Background: Incisor retraction is often a crucial phase in ongoing orthodontic treatment, with significant implications for alveolar remodeling mechanisms. There are two prevailing theories which seek to explain this. According to the first, teeth move with the bone, while according to the second, teeth move within the bone. This systematic review seeks to assess morphometric changes in the maxillary alveolar process resulting from incisor retraction following premolar extraction and to evaluate the potential for bone remodeling associated with orthodontic movement...

The catastrophic earthquakes that struck Southern Turkey in 2023 highlighted the pressing need for effective disaster management strategies. The unprecedented scale of the crisis tested the robustness of traditional healthcare responses and highlighted the potential of e-health solutions. Despite the deployment of Emergency Medical Teams, initial responders - primarily survivors of the earthquakes - faced an enormous challenge due to their lack of training in mass-casualty situations. An e-health platform was introduced to support these first responders, offering tools for drug calculations, case management guidelines, and a deep learning model for pediatric X-ray analysis...

A recent review of cultural and academic discourse presented evidence that some people experience attraction to two (or more) people in a preexisting relationship. This phenomenon, symbiosexuality, is understudied in the field of sexuality. Lack of recognition and validation for this attraction, including in the polyamorous community, may be negatively impacting those who experience symbiosexual attraction. I conducted an integrated mixed-methods analysis of secondary data from the 2023 The Pleasure Study to learn more about symbiosexual attraction...

OBJECTIVES: Audit and Feedback (A&F) is a widely used quality improvement (QI) intervention in healthcare. However, not all feedback is accepted by professionals. While claims-based feedback has been previously used for A&F interventions, its acceptance by medical specialists is largely unknown. This study examined medical specialists' acceptance of claims-based A&F for QI. DESIGN: Qualitative design, with focus group discussions. Transcripts were analysed using discourse analysis...

Most debates around the place of porn in the classroom focus on abstaining from porn through sex education. Any inclusion of pleasure often entails lengthy consideration of discourses of pornification and sexualization more broadly. In this study, I aimed to elicit young people's and teachers' views, concerns and suggestions about the place of porn, and pleasure more broadly, in sex education. I present a thematic content analysis of small friendship group interviews with 106 young people aged 12-16, who self-identified as boys or girls, and semi-structured interviews with six teachers in New Zealand...

The canine of saber-toothed predators represents one of the most specialized dental structures known. Hypotheses about the function of hypertrophied canines range from display and conspecific interaction, soft food processing, to active prey acquisition. Recent research on the ontogenetic timing of skull traits indicates the adult canine can take years to fully erupt, but the consequences of prolonged eruption on inferences of canine functional morphology are missing from current discourse and have not been quantified...

For decades, the European Union (EU) has been addressing issues related to climate change and ecological degradation as a self-proclaimed pro-environmental and human rights-oriented actor. Correspondingly, the topic of the so-called environmentally driven migration entered the EU discourse at the dawn of the new millennium. Considering the EU's interest in the human rights and environmental/climate issue areas, I argue it is important to ask what the Union's approach to this matter has been. Thus, this article assesses the European Union discourse related to the topic of environmental migration over the past 20-year period...