Suchergebnisse

Cities have become the chief place of residence and work of the majority of the worlds' citizens and engines of regions' prosperity. Understanding how city reputation – a key intangible good- is constructed is an important challenge for academics and a range of other stakeholders. Politicians and officials seek to position and manage their cities in ways that win legitimacy and trust for themselves and prosperity for their citizens and other stakeholders. This study develops understanding of the concept of city reputation through a multi-methods empirical study of two medium-sized Spanish cities where earlier research has shown there are gaps between government performance (as attested to by performance data on a series of city services), city communicators' accounts of their communication strategies and policy priorities and citizens' perceptions of their cities' reputation and performance. Based on semi-structured interviews and focus groups, the reasons for these gaps are explored. The paradox of a less wealthy Malaga more content with the information it receives from its government and a more wealthy Vitoria critical of what citizens consider the government´s self-congratulatory messages suggests that more research should be carried out to understand both how government communication can achieve a better balance between information and persuasion and the importance of expectations and perceptions in citizens' satisfaction with government communication and governments themselves.

This paper reviews the information management aspects of the early months of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Coronavirus 19 outbreak. It shows that the transition from epidemic to pandemic was caused partly by poor management of information that was publicly available in January 2020. The approach combines public domain epidemic data with economic, demographic, health, social and political data and investigates how information was managed by governments. It includes case studies of early-stage information management, from countries with high and low COVID-19 impacts (as measured by deaths per million). The reasons why the information was not acted upon appropriately include "dark side" information behaviours Stone et al. (2019). Many errors and misjudgements could have been avoided by using learnings from previous epidemics, particularly the 1918-19 flu epidemic, when international travel (mainly of troops in World War 1) was a prime mode of spreading. It concludes that if similar outbreaks are not to turn into pandemics, much earlier action is needed, mainly closing borders and locking-down. The research is based on what was known at the time of writing, when the pandemic's exact origin was uncertain, when some statistics about actions and results were unavailable and when final results were unknown. Governments faced with early warning signs or pandemics must act much faster. This is one of the first analyses of information management practices relating to the pandemic's early stages.

Why is it importam to study politicians' perceptions of populism? The way in which something is regarded and understood is of the utmost importance for its impact on politics and society in general. Given the complexities in defining 'populism' and understanding its meaning, and in view of it being commonly referred to as a 'vague', 'slippery', 'elusive' concept (e.g., Canovan, 1981, 1984; Taggart, 2000; Barr, 2009; Lucardie, 2009; Woods, 2014), this study addresses the concept and its potential implications through the views of politicians who represent some of the most importam politicaI parties in 11 European countries and who are therefore important opinion-makers. The main objective is to discern what politicians from the various countries and different types of politicai parties understand by populism and how they perceive the causes and implications of these phenomena in their countries, and, more broadly, in European and global contexts. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion