Search Results (1,037)

The global VTuber market is experiencing rapid growth, with VTubers extending beyond mere content creators to be utilized in various fields such as social interaction, public relations, and health. VTubers have the potential to expand the existing content market and contribute to increasing economic and public value. This study aims to investigate the perception of VTubers in South Korea and to provide insights that can contribute to the global activation of the VTuber entertainment industry. For this purpose, unstructured data on VTubers from the past three years, during which interest in VTubers has significantly grown in South Korea, was collected. A total of 57,891 samples were gathered from Naver, Daum, and Google, of which 50 highly relevant data points between VTubers and users were selected for analysis. First, key terms such as ‘Broadcast’, ‘YouTube’, ‘Live’, ‘Game’, ‘Youtuber’, ‘Japan’, ‘Character’, ‘Video’, ‘Sing’, ‘Virtual’, ‘Woowakgood’, ‘Fan’, ‘Idol’, ‘Korea’, ‘Twitch’, ‘IsegyeIdol’, ‘Communication’, ‘Worldview’, ‘VTuberIndustry’, ‘Contents’, ‘AfricaTV’, ‘Nijisanji’, and ‘Streamer’ were extracted. Second, CONCOR analysis revealed four clusters: ‘Famous VTubers’, ‘Features of VTubers’, ‘VTuber Industry’, and ‘VTuber Platforms’. Based on these findings, the study offers various academic and practical implications regarding VTubers in South Korea and explores the potential for global growth in the VTuber industry. Full article

This study focuses on two significant factors shaping university students’ perception of environmental sustainability. Those are (a) personal values, measured by the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) and (b) the usage of and proficiency in information technology. Personal values have been widely used to analyze individual perspectives toward various issues, including environmental ones. As contemporary social arrangements include significant influences from social networks and mobile phone usage, overall engagement with technology becomes an essential factor affecting university student attitudes and behaviors. While the individual impact of those factors can be found in the extant literature, we look into their interaction concerning university student pro-environmental attitudes, measured by the Revised NEP (New Ecological Paradigm) Scale, and their environmental self-efficacy. Our sample comes from the population of undergraduate business and economics students from Central and Southeast Europe, specifically Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro. We discuss our findings in the context of previous studies from the same regions and consider the unique socio-economic factors. The research results address Sustainable Development Goals 4 (quality education), 12 (responsible consumption and production), and 13 (climate action) by analyzing the factors contributing to university student pro-environmental attitudes and their self-efficacy in the context of their information technology usage and proficiency. Full article

Mainstream approaches to nutrition typically focus on diet consumption, overlooking multi-dimensional aspects of nutrition that are important to American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. To address health challenges faced by AI/AN communities, strengths-based measures of nutrition grounded in community worldviews are needed. In collaboration with AI/AN communities in Baltimore and Minneapolis, we developed the Indigenous Nourishment Scales through three phases. Phase 1 involved focus group discussions with nine community-research council (CRC) members (n = 2) and four in-depth interviews (n = 4) to gather perspectives on existing models of nutrition. Phase 2 refined scales through two additional focus group discussions (n = 2) with a total of nine participants and two in-depth interviews (n = 2). Finally, in Phase 3, we held ten (n = 10) cognitive interviews with AI/AN community members to refine the scales. Participants appreciated the measures’ ability to provoke reflection on their relationship with nutrition and suggested adjustments to better capture cultural nuances, such as incorporating concepts like “being a good relative” to land. The Indigenous Nourishment Scales represent a departure from conventional approaches by encompassing multiple dimensions of nourishment, offering a framework that addresses epistemic injustices in nutrition measurement and grounds health measurement efforts directly in community perspectives and worldviews. Full article

This manuscript presents a multidisciplinary study that proposes a methodology for delineating and categorizing vulnerability at rockfall risk areas to avoid human injuries and infrastructure damage caused by rockfalls. The presented workflow includes (i) classical geological mapping, (ii) the interpretation of high-resolution satellite data for observing the spatial distribution of fallen boulders, (iii) analytical hierarchy processing of spatial information within a Geographical Information System (GIS) platform, (iv) close-range remote sensing campaigns with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs), and (v) integrated simulation of rockfall events. This methodology was applied to Kalymnos Island, which belongs to the Dodecanese Islands complex of the southeastern Aegean Sea in Greece. It is characterized by unique geomorphological features, including extensive vertical limestone cliffs that span the island. These cliffs make it one of the world’s most densely concentrated areas for sport climbing. The results highlighted the areas that the local authorities need to focus on and suggested measures for increasing the safety of climbers and infrastructure. Full article

Population growth in Austria means that school classes—including those in apprenticeship training—are no longer homogeneous. Apprentices, too, often come from different cultural backgrounds and therefore belong to different religions and worldviews, which makes the classes “multi” in every respect. This can lead to encounters in their everyday working life that are not always smooth because they are accompanied by prejudices and misunderstandings. Can cooperative religious education based on didactics of facilitation and TCI help to gain new insights into religions/worldviews and thus reinforce social cohesion? It has been shown that cooperative religious education gives pupils an insight into religious communities to which they themselves do not belong but does not give much concrete knowledge. It creates an awareness of being different without devaluation and the importance of dialogue that leads to a better mutual understanding and consequently to an awareness of one’s own prejudices and judgements towards others. It cannot be said that the attitudes towards religions/denominations/worldviews that were foreign to the pupils have changed with KORU but effects on social interaction are recognisable. The evaluation according to Philipp Mayring (content analysis) was carried out using a triangulation of data: Observation of religious education lessons, lesson preparations and interviews with the participating teachers and two group interviews with students and their written reflections. Full article

Worldviews, the foundational assumptions guiding human behaviour and societal systems, are pivotal in shaping planetary health and human flourishing. This paper discusses two divergent worldviews that have prevailed in human populations over time and which are still evident today: the Holistic/Non-linear Worldview, which emphasises interconnectedness and harmony with nature, and the Dualistic/Linear Worldview, which prioritises human-centric activities and the more recent exploitation of nature. The characteristics of human worldviews are explored, including how these are formed in early life via the vital role of human communication and storytelling and the expressive role of the arts. To support the future of human flourishing, this paper makes the case for an integrative worldview that would enable us to embrace paradox and complexity, to seek synthesis, and to promote an integrated approach that reconciles the tensions between seemingly opposing ways of understanding our world. The principle of “Right Relationship”—fostering reciprocal, respectful, and sustainable interactions between humans and the natural world—is examined as a possible framework that could be employed to help humanity navigate today’s global crises and create the conditions for a sustainable, flourishing future. Full article

Teachers in Islamic schools are often required to navigate complex identities. They balance personal and/or school-based religious obligations with contemporary secular-based commitments to meet organisational demands for institutional compliance. Behaviourally, the motivations and attitudes of teachers play a vital role in shaping a learning environment that fosters a sense of community and caters to the needs of students. However, recent studies on Islamic education suggest a real struggle in managing such complexities. Consequently, scholars have called for specialized programs to counter such issues, focusing on the need for schools to renew their commitment to promoting educational values, principles and practices that are rooted in the Islamic tradition. Several higher education institutions have responded to this call by establishing programs in Islamic studies and Islamic education. Nevertheless, there is limited knowledge of the organisational and behavioural significance of such programs on the professional identity of teachers. Using semi-structured interviews, this article presents findings from four teachers who had completed a postgraduate qualification in Islamic education at an Australian university. The six-phase thematic data analysis, informed by Muslim identity and an Islamic worldview, revealed that secular teacher education provided participants with ‘a license to teach’ but lacked in ‘nurturing a purpose for teaching’. The findings also revealed a distinct connection between Islamic teacher education, professional learning and professional identity, whereby Islamic-based pedagogies ‘enlightened and empowered’ teachers toward becoming ‘faith-centred’ in their professional practice. While the study was limited to four teachers, it contributes knowledge to the Islamic education, organizational and behavioural fields of inquiry in two ways, by underlining that (i) the professional identities of Muslim teachers are shaped by a knowledge-seeking mindset, and (ii) Islamic teacher education and professional learning create pathways towards the renewal of teachers’ professional identities in Islamic schools. Full article

Creating a global workforce is a driving need for our time. Higher education institutions are prioritizing helping students develop an awareness of their own and other cultures, as they are expected to participate in a diverse workforce. This study examines a large data set of learning assessment data for undergraduate students from an agriculture course focused on diversity and social justice, using the Beliefs, Events and Values Inventory (BEVI) instrument to assess the multicultural awareness development of the students. The study compared the impact of the medium of instruction (face-to-face versus online) in helping students develop multicultural awareness. The results revealed that students did not differ much in multicultural awareness across the medium of instruction. Moreover, to understand the multicultural awareness of the students in the pre-COVID period, during COVID and in the post-COVID period, the pre-test BEVI scores of the students were compared using ANOVA. The goal of this analysis was to capture the change in worldview of the students from the pre-COVID period to during COVID and post-COVID periods. The results revealed that pre-test BEVI scores for the pre-COVID period showed a lower degree of multicultural awareness than students during the COVID and post-COVID times. Also, there was no significant difference in the pre-test BEVI scores for the students in the COVID and post-COVID periods. Overall, the study makes important contributions to higher education literature as it reveals that (1) medium has negligible impact on the multicultural awareness of the students, and that (2) student worldviews have shifted significantly since the height of the global pandemic. Full article

This article describes the presence of a subliminal thesis—with conspiratorial and apocalyptic content—in the discourse of the Seventh-day Adventist tradition based on a documentary analysis of Adventist publications from the 1900s to the 1990s. The history of the development of this thesis is classified into three periods: (1) Proto-Adventist Subliminal Thesis, from 1900s to 1940s, with a discourse of anti-spiritualist emphasis; (2) Adventist Subliminal Thesis’ First Wave, from 1950s to 1960s, with a discourse of anti-media emphasis in the context of James Vicary’s experiments in the 1950s; and (3) Adventist Subliminal Thesis’ Second Wave, from 1970s to 1990s, with a discourse of conspiratorial emphasis in the context of the satanic panic of the 1980s and 1990s. The Adventist subliminal thesis is configured in a way of thinking that considers (1) the human being as a “mass-man” and culture as “mass culture”; (2) the media as having the power of manipulation and mental control; (3) adherence to moral panic phenomena as reactions to media threats to traditional values; and (4) the cosmic narrative of the Great Controversy as a worldview for understanding media messages and products as part of a satanic conspiracy. Full article

This article identifies and analyzes four passages in the ancient Chinese Christian manuscript Yishen Lun (YSL) that exhibit distinct Jewish characteristics. The phrase “yizhong zuo shenghua” (lines 356–358) mirrors the Book of Acts’ theme of “sanctification of the Gentiles,” rooted in the Jewish dichotomous worldview, placing Jews, or Shihu Ren, at the center. The author’s use of this phrase distinguishes him from yizhong ren (Gentiles) and aligns him with Shihu Ren. In lines 256–263, YSL directly attributes messianic declarations to Jesus, a central issue in Jewish accusations of false Messiahship. In contrast, the Gospel accounts avoid making such direct accusations, as Jesus did not openly declare himself the Messiah. This distinction highlights YSL’s closer alignment with Jewish polemical traditions and legal concerns. Additionally, the use of “City of Judah” in lines 345–347 as an archaic designation for Jerusalem, predominantly found in Jewish traditions, contrasts with the more common “City of David” in other biblical texts. A philological analysis of lines 279–281 reveals imagery analogous to the synagogue parochet covering the Ark of the Scrolls. These four Jewish elements complement the one analyzed in the author’s earlier 2024 article, “The Parable of Wise and Foolish Builders in Yishen Lun and Rabbinic Literature.” That study concludes that the parable of wise and foolish builders in lines 146–156 of YSL aligns more closely with Jewish rabbinic traditions than the Gospel version. These new hermeneutical insights should provide interesting and fresh data for ongoing research into YSL. Full article

In the aftermath of the 2003 Casablanca bombings, the Moroccan state emphasized, through official public discourse, the components that constitute “official Moroccan Islam” to combat extremist ideologies. These religious elements include Mālikism in jurisprudence, Ashʿarism in theology, and the Sufism of Imam Al-Junayd (d. 298/910), all balanced by the pledge of allegiance to King Mohammed VI (a descendant of the Sharifian lineage), the constitutionally designated Commander of the Faithful and sole religious leader. Since the reform policy initiated in 2004, the Moroccan state has constructed a narrative on the distinctiveness of Moroccan Islam—moderate and tolerant—and promoted it among its own citizens and beyond its borders. However, while the Moroccan state claims to have a unique form of Islam, controversial arguments have been raised questioning the nature of the state’s purported Islam. Other criticisms include investigating the state’s endorsement of Sufism and its broader policy of institutionalization. Yet, this article argues that the state supports any form of Islam, not necessarily Sufism, that aligns with its religious and political leadership. Like other Arab and Muslim states, Morocco’s religious policy is impacted by the global context, where Salafism is now perceived as a threat to established worldviews. In addition, this article argues that Morocco’s support for Sufi Islam is based not merely on its perceived political passivity, but because it complements the state’s policies and gains advantages from this support. It concludes that the official narrative of Moroccan Islam, which emphasizes a Sufi-oriented approach to counter extremism, is open to question, particularly given that Salafism was the state’s preferred form of Islam in post-colonial Morocco. This highlights the complex and often conflicting relationship between political actors and religious leaders in shaping Morocco’s religious discourse. Full article

In the global public health discourse, involving men in maternal and neonatal health is regarded as crucial for positive outcomes in both health and development. In South Africa, health interventions designed to promote male partner involvement among low-income indigenous populations have been framed within social constructivist notions of masculinities and have produced mixed outcomes. This has necessitated calls to explore alternative approaches, including the need to decolonise men and masculinities studies in Africa. As part of one phase of formative research for a mixed-method project aimed at adapting a male involvement intervention for the context of Sesotho-speaking men and women in the Free State, we applied a multi-site case study research design and collected qualitative data using focus group discussions and key informant interviews. Verbatim-recorded transcripts were translated, transcribed, and thematically analysed with NVIVO 14. The results indicate that customary practices in pregnancy, delivery, and newborn care are not static and vary between families based on belief systems, socioeconomic status, geographical setting (peri-urban/rural), and kinship networks of care. Therefore, these practices and beliefs should be understood, affirmed, and contested within the complex African-centred material and immaterial worldviews on personhood in which they were generated, transmitted, rejected, or adopted. It is recommended that a decolonised approach to male partner involvement in this context must be cognisant of the intersections of racial and gendered power relations, contestations in beliefs and practices, the resilient effect of colonialism on indigenous gender systems, as well as contemporary global entanglements that inform North–South power relations on the best practices in maternal and newborn health in the public health sector in South Africa. Full article

This article explores the pervasive influence of conspiracy theories, specifically the New World Order (NWO) and Golden Billion theories, within the context of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. These theories form key narrative frameworks in Russian state media and global conspiracy communities, shaping perceptions of geopolitical events. This study dissects four pivotal episodes within the Russia–Ukraine conflict to illustrate how conspiracy theories shape public perception and policy direction, further entrenching ideological divides. In the first episode of the 2022 full-scale invasion, narratives of the Golden Billion were utilised to justify the attack, presenting Russia as a bastion against the Western elite’s plans to dominate the global economy and resources. The second episode examines the attack on Mariupol in 2022, framed by Russian propaganda as a necessary act to thwart the supposed expansion of NATO and the EU, underpinned by the NWO agenda aiming to dilute Russian influence in Eastern Europe. The third episode analyses the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage in 2022, interpreted by some conspiracy theorists as an act by the NWO to destabilise Europe’s energy security, thus consolidating control over energy routes and resources. The fourth episode delves into the 2024 Moscow terrorist attacks, which were seen by some as either a false flag operation conducted by Western powers or as a legitimate repercussion of Western encroachment orchestrated to weaken Russia’s resolve and international standing. Each episode is contextualised within a broader conspiratorial framework, highlighting the dualistic nature of the NWO and Golden Billion theories that paint the conflict not merely as territorial disputes but as a clash between fundamentally opposing worldviews and global orders. This narrative analysis not only underscores the role of conspiracy theories in shaping geopolitical discourse but also demonstrates their utility in mobilising domestic support, framing international criticism, and justifying military actions. Our findings suggest that these conspiratorial narratives provide a resilient, albeit misleading, lens through which supporters of the Kremlin’s policies can rationalise the war, attributing complex sociopolitical dynamics to the malevolent machinations of a global elite. This study contributes to understanding how modern conflicts are interpreted through ancient conspiratorial lenses, impacting national and international policy and public opinion. Full article

This paper examines personal names derived from traditional religious beliefs and practices among the Erei people in Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State in South-South, Nigeria while utilising insights from the multidisciplinary inferences of socio-onomastic theory to account for the cultural, social and situational contexts that create the religious content of the names. Data were obtained by means of participant observation and semi-structured interviews during six months of fieldwork involving 40 participants who were the name-givers, name-bearers and name-users. Our findings highlight the socio-onomastic tradition of Erei people in which personal names are bestowed through a conscious application of symbolic linguistic resources to express and perform ideologies and identities that are rooted in the traditional religion’s foundations and sociocultural practices that represent Erei people’s indigenous beliefs system and spiritual worldview. Focused on the ideals of African traditional religion, religious identities are constructed through the use of personal names related to idol worship, the mysteries of death, reincarnation and commemoration, cultural festivals and performances, symbolic objects, familial rankings and other aspects derived from their environment that also bear traditional religious significance. And because this set of personal names is now predominant among the ageing population and is losing contemporaneity due to an increasing subpopulation with a new (Christian) beliefs system, this study serves to preserve a transiting and endangered Erei socio-onomastic practice that represents the people’s traditional cosmology. Full article

Against the background of contemporary debates about the Anthropocene and the attendant danger of global warming and climate change, which is causally linked to the unchecked exploitation of the earth by humans, narratives which embody an earth-centric scientia sacra become tools of advocacy for the ‘resacralization’ of the earth. This paper explores three South Asian river narratives that offer a blueprint for mindfully inhabiting the earth under the shadow of the Anthropocene. Calling for a participatory relationship with the holiness of water, they challenge the construction of water in a rapidly globalizing, uneven society shaped by a colonial hydrology in which the ecological relationship between land and water is out of balance. Drawing attention to the multiple ways in which the human and non-human world are enmeshed in the Anthropocene, these narratives engage with environmental justice concerns and challenge the hierarchy or perspectives and worldviews regarding accepted notions of subalternity. These texts construct a triptych suggesting an embedded ecotheology of the material and the spiritual, thereby sensitising the reader to the endangered waterscapes of the Anthropocene and also to the promise of the Symbiocene through an awareness of the fluid relational field that we share with the greater-than-human world. Full article