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We report new data from a survey of loneliness in Australia during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020–21, in order to identify those age groups most at risk of increased loneliness. Counter-intuitively, proportionately fewer elderly Australians experienced increased loneliness as a result of lockdowns, as compared with 44% of those aged 19–29 and 31% of those aged 40–49. To explain this pattern, we investigated how lockdowns disturbed the complex connections between types of place affordance and the age-specific cultural scripts that normally give rise to a sense of belonging. For younger age groups, such scripts demand their identification with future orientations and a sense of belonging tied to the more distant and wide-ranging places of career advance, meeting, play, and pleasure that lockdown inhibited. By contrast, older retired cohorts were more inclined to frame their sense of belonging in the past through the maintenance of community connections and closer place-bonds of their locality, cultural places of memory and return that they were more happily confined to during lockdowns. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

From an Ancient Egyptian plague to the Black Death and Spanish flu, epidemics have often spurred societal transformations. Understanding why can help us create a better world after covid-19

From an Ancient Egyptian plague to the Black Death and Spanish flu, epidemics have often spurred societal transformations. Understanding why can help us create a better world after covid-19

Abstract In the last few years, the notion of applied history has seen a notable rise in interest among historians. Arising out of questions related to contemporary concerns, such as political extremism and Covid-19, several projects have taken up the challenge to address these questions and other issues by looking to the past, thereby furthering the idea that applied history warrants the attention of professional (academic) historians. The concept of applied history itself is, however, not new, begging questions of how these new projects use the term and how this usage relates to older definitions and methods associated with the term. This article shows that much of the most recent ‘wave’ of applied history has tended to present itself as closely related to history and policy, distinguishing itself by either drawing a hard line between public and applied history or by ignoring public history altogether. On the other hand, some have defined applied history as an approach or sub-field of public history, sometimes leading public historians to assume that these new groups are merely, and unhelpfully, putting a new logo on an old brand. This article offers a thorough overview of these contending developments and argues that the current conceptual and methodological confusion about applied history is detrimental to anyone relying on the term. Essentially, when a non-historian seeks the assistance of an applied historian and asks the logical question “and what do you do, exactly?,” the current uncertainty can result in major and off-putting confusion about what the term actually means.

Debates about the increase in digital payments during COVID-19 have primarily focused on behavioural change among consumers. Using India as a case study, this article documents how supply-side actors (political, economic, financial and technological) used the pandemic to generate a new public consensus about digital payments. The article argues that these actors framed the agenda to draw public attention on cash and digital payments during the COVID-19 pandemic, that this new consensus extended and deviated from narratives created during the Digital India (2015) and demonetisation (2016) debates, and that trade bodies and businesses unrelated to banking, finance and technology were active in setting this new agenda. Agenda-setting in the pandemic era continues to mould the payments trajectory in both India and elsewhere. In India, we argue, it has challenged aspects of cash that previously elicited trust: its materiality and associated social interaction. Consequently, older agendas have been promoted, and digital (and especially contactless) payments have assumed a new level of importance to economic life in India.

We are living in a world which is severely crisis-ridden and faces some major challenges. The fact that we are currently facing a genuine global pandemic (COVID-19) brings about even more uncertainty. The social and political institutions, which emerged and consolidated during the 20th century, and which created stability, have become fragile. The young generation born in the 1990s and onwards have experienced 9/11 and the ‘war against terrorism’, the financial crisis of 2008, changes to climate, environmental degradation, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. The generation born between 1960 and 1990 have had the same experiences along with severe economic crises in the 1970s and 1980s and the Cold War. Some of these challenges are in different ways intertwined with capitalism and its crises, while others are linked to the rapid development of new technologies, in particular innovations within communication and information technologies. This introduction lists the most important grand challenges facing the world as they have emerged more recently. The five articles following this introduction address some of these challenges, with particular attention to the problems of capitalism and democracy and the relation between these two areas. Most authors agree that climate change and the destruction of the environment are the biggest and most pertinent problems to address, but it is their stance that we can only meet these challenges if democracy is functioning well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Thesis Eleven is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we analyze and compare Croatian and Polish Twitter datasets. After collecting tweets related to COVID-19 in the period from 20.01.2020 until 01.07.2020, we automatically annotated positive, negative, and neutral tweets with a simple method, and then used a classifier to annotate the dataset again. To interpret the data, the total number as well as the number of positive and negative tweets are plotted through time for Croatian and Polish tweets. The positive/negative fluctuations in the visualizations are explained in the context of certain events, such as the lockdowns, Easter, and parliamentary elections. In the last step, we analyze tokens by extracting the most frequently occurring tokens in positive or negative tweets and calculating the positive to negative (and reverse) ratios.

International audience

In winter 2020, the Covid-19 emergency explodes. From the earliest days, the Italian online magazine MaddMaths!, devoted to teaching and popularizing mathematics, decides to focus its attention on the mathematical aspects of the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic. The editorial choice is not to propose data and graphics but to publish articles for reflection, analysis, and dissemination on mathematical models as interpretative and political decision tools. Understanding the epidemic in order to combat it, is a scientific citizenship issue: citizens must have the tools to understand what is happening. In this article, we analyze how MaddMaths! and its readers interacted during the first year of Covid-19. We apply textual analysis methodologies and techniques to about ten articles per month that MaddMaths! has dedicated to an in-depth study of the mathematical aspects of Covid-19. And then we do a quantitative analysis to understand the interest they have found in the public. In contrast to the belief that the Internet is the place for fast and superficial communication, the existence of readers interested in deepening and understanding the mechanisms, including mathematical ones, of an epidemic, emerges. Although MaddMaths! does not usually cover health issues, its audience appreciated that the magazine has focused much of its work on communication. Communicating the mathematical models of a pandemic is a relevant form of health prevention. Understanding how Covid- 19 evolves means learning to manage the risks associated with the Sars-CoV-2 virus.

This edited volume investigates for the first time the impact of conspiracy theories upon the understanding of Europe as a geopolitical entity as well as an imagined political and cultural space. Focusing on recent developments, the individual chapters explore a range of conspiratorial positions related to Europe. In the current climate of fear and threat, new and old imaginaries of conspiracies such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism have been mobilised. A dystopian or even apocalyptic image of Europe in terminal decline is evoked in Eastern European and particularly by Russian pro-Kremlin media, while the EU emerges as a screen upon which several narratives of conspiracy are projected trans-nationally, ranging from the Greek debt crisis to migration, Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. The methodological perspectives applied in this volume range from qualitative discourse and media analysis to quantitative social-psychological approaches, and there are a number of national and transnational case studies. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of extremism, conspiracy theories and European politics.