2007年世界夏季特殊奥林匹克运动会在上海成功举行

本案例是上海市民政局为了2007年世界夏季特殊奥林匹克运动会成功地在上海举行而策划和执行的一系列重大公关活动。2007年世界夏季特殊奥林匹克运动会（以下简称“特奥会”）是2007年上海的一大盛事，它汇集了世界上160多个国家和地区的7400多名运动员、教练员，2万多名运动员家长、专家和嘉宾，以及各个行业的志愿者的共同参与。同时，特奥会也吸引着全世界的目光，约有来自120多个国家和地区的1400多家媒体机构参与本届特奥会报道，80个国家和地区的电视台对特奥会开幕式进行了转播，这在特奥会历史上也是空前的。这次特奥盛会不仅是上海向世界展示自身特色和形象的舞台，更是中国向世界敞开的一扇窗口。 举办本届特奥会涉及公众多，持续时间长，媒体大量关注，社会影响巨大。从在中国推广特奥会，形成公众认知，引起社会关注，吸引市民参与；从如何向世界各国发出邀请，成功聚汇世界智慧与力量共襄盛举，到接待、开幕、比赛、闭幕……等各项活动精心策划与执行；从新闻发布活动策划、保证与运动员的有效沟通、网络等新媒体传播的成功运用，到如何借助这一盛举向世界说明中国，提升上海城市形象，提升中国的国家形象等等，每一个环节所面临的挑战都是空前的，整个活动的策划、圆满执行更是具有开创性、示范性的意义。     

对提升城市和区域发展软实力的几点思考

一、对城市软实力基本涵义的思考 自从美国哈佛大学教授约瑟夫·奈于20世纪80年代末首次提出“软实力”概念以来，软实力研究受到越来越多的关注，已经成为提升国家、产业、城市等不同层面竞争力的热门话题，软实力竞争已成为区域发展的一种基本形态。     

提升上海城市软实力的比较优势研究

软实力是城市的核心竞争力,更是建设全球城市的必要条件和动力来源。伴随着城市硬实力上升到一定水平,城市软实力在城市发展中的地位越来越重要。比较研究发现,上海城市软实力虽在国内处于领先水平,也在部分方面达到国际一流水平,但与纽约、伦敦等全球城市相比还存在较大差距,有很大的提升空间。展望未来30年,上海要成为比肩纽约、伦敦的全球城市,必须塑造国际领先的城市软实力,更要依托城市软实力实现快速崛起。为此,要注重和加强城市软实力的建设,从多方面做起,持续提升上海的软实力。     

上海提升城市文化软实力的对策建议

城市是文化的载体,文化是城市的形态。从文化层面来看,文化软实力为城市发展提供了软环境,有助于提升城市竞争力,增强城市凝聚力。从理论视角来看,文化软实力体现了一个城市的价值取向和精神文明,是历史文化和人文素养长期积淀和不断塑造的结果。“十二五”期间,上海定位于国际文化大都市建设,以提升城市的综合实力为主要目标。从实践角度来看,上海城市文化软实力建设面临着如何突破改革创新,以进一步解放和发展文化生产力,以期构建智慧城市和创新城市。     

提升文化软实力,弘扬城市精神——以贵阳市为例

文化软实力是一个国家或地区综合竞争力的重要组成部分。贵阳市委在九届三次全会中提出:"奋力打造贵阳发展升级版"。我们紧紧围绕城市发展升级,提升贵阳文化软实力,传播贵阳声音,树立贵阳形象,弘扬贵阳精神。为达到此目的,本文从提升文化软实力的价值意义,厘清提升文化软实力与弘扬城市精神的逻辑联系,最后探讨提升城市文化软实力的对策建议。     

基于灰色系统理论的澳门城市软实力评价研究——以大珠三角城市为比较

通过对城市软实力概念与内涵的分析,构建了城市软实力评价指标体系,在此基础上运用灰色系统理论建立了城市软实力评价模型,并利用该模型对澳门与大珠三角其他城市的软实力进行比较分析,以期针对澳门提出城市软实力的提升策略,推动澳门在大珠三角地区的区域合作与可持续发展。     

文化创新：提升天津城市文化竞争力的途径

进入21世纪．世界各国均注意到城市精神、创新氛围、价值取向等文化软实力已成为提升城市竞争力的重要因素．同时深切关注文化与经济合流发展的重大趋势．以及文化硬实力对城市竞争力所作出的重要贡献，因此．许多发达城市均采取了“文化立市”的重大战略措施．以应对21世纪的国际文化竞争。     

政府公关策略科学构建宁波城市品牌

以科学发展观为指导，构建宁波城市品牌建设中的政府公关策略，对提升宁波城市竞争软实力，促进城市和谐发展具有重要意义。     

发挥图书馆职能作用 提升廊坊文化软实力

提升文化软实力,才能使一个城市得到持续地发展。提升文化软实力的途径很多,文章着重介绍了如何通过发挥图书馆的职能作用,提升廊坊市文化软实力。     

国家中心城市文化软实力评价研究——以港京沪津穗城市为例

城市文化软实力是城市综合竞争力巨系统下的子系统,由文化核心价值水平、城市制度健全程度、城市政府管理效率及创新、城市国际化水平、城市文化中心影响力等指标组成。本文对港京沪津穗五大国家中心城市的文化软实力进行了分析,并就城市如何提升文化软实力提出了建议。     

Out of the Limelight: Discredited Communities and Informal Communication on the Internet

In this article we will suggest that print and related traditional media have been used more successfully in constituting a public sphere than in supporting more private and localized forms of community building (Habermas 1989; Stone 1991). The costs and control of print media, in addition to the stability of the content, have reduced the applicability of these media to the improvisatory and quotidian social processes that groups use to help keep themselves cohesive. In contrast, computer-based interactions have been and are being used extensively to support many of the informal interactions and related activities necessary to communities, giving members new tools for negotiating and rehearsing public forms of group life (Jones 1995). We hope to show how the public aspirations and problems of social groups shape their encounters with computers and encourage them to use computer interaction to manage their public representations.     

Voluntary organisations and local government: lessons from a Danish case study

The purpose of this article is to analyse the changing relationships between local government and voluntary organisations in the decentralised Danish welfare state within the field of social policy. Here major changes in public discourse have brought voluntary organisations more to the forefront in a welfare state model whose distinct public character might be fading. However, little attention has been devoted to potential problems resulting from intensified co-operation. The article explores these issues using evidence from a case study of the links between public authorities and seven voluntary organisations in the city of Aalborg in northern Jutland. This case study raises the question of whether voluntary organisations, as argued in public debate, can generally be regarded as the antithesis of the bureaucratically and paternalistically organised public social services. Rather, they seem to be co-actors, actively constructing new paradigms and practices in social policy, that cannot be captured in conventional dichotomous models. This suggests that the public bureaucracy versus altruistic voluntary organisation, or distinctions usually made between professional and volunteer motives, may be of limited use. The author wishes to thank Per Selle for his helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to Catharina J. Kristensen and Claus B. Olsen for their help with the English version.     

The Political and Civic Lives of Public Sector Workers: Unions and “Public Service Motivation”*

Public sector employees are highly engaged in civic and political life, from voting to volunteering. Scholars have theorized that this political activity stems from “public service motivation,” or the selection of publicly oriented individuals into public work. We build on this work by analyzing the role of public sector unions in shaping participation. Unions are central mobilizing organizations in political life, and one in three public sector workers are unionized. Special supplements of the Current Population Survey provide data on various forms of participation, sector, union membership, and union coverage. Logistic regressions find that unionized public sector workers have much higher odds of engaging in a range of activities compared to non‐union public workers, including protest, electoral politics, and political communication. Union membership impacts service work to a lesser extent, suggesting that unions are more central to political lives. These findings have implications for the consequences of union decline, including the class, race, and gender composition of who participates in democratic life.     

Changes in service provision in rural areas. Part 1: The use of GIS in analysing accessibility to services in rural deprivation research

Previous work has highlighted the importance of public service provision in rural areas particularly for potentially vulnerable groups such as the elderly, unemployed and single parents especially where this coincides with a lack of access to either private or public transport. Disadvantage can often be compounded by limited access to services for such groups with the superior resources of more affluent social groups enabling them to respond and adapt to the increasing centralisation and reduction of services. This paper reviews previous investigations of the implications of changing accessibility to services in rural areas and draws attention to the need for a new research agenda which uses spatial analytical techniques to gauge the current levels of (in)accessibility to key services at the community level. These techniques are illustrated in Part 2 of the paper with reference to changes in post office provision in mid Wales, and the policy significance of incorporating geographical information systems-based measures of provision into traditional area-based indicators of disadvantage is discussed.     

Voluntarism as a mediator of the experience of growing old in evolving rural spaces and changing rural places

This paper examines voluntarism as a response to the challenges faced by people growing old in rural communities that are themselves being transformed in fundamental ways, both socially and demographically. Informed by evolving theorisations within the rural aging and geographies of voluntarism literatures, we outline the key processes in space and consequent impacts in place that have affected the experience of growing old in rural communities. We identify the changes in service systems that have led to concerns about ‘vulnerable people in vulnerable places’ and explore this idea in regional contexts ranging from the agricultural heartland to the resource hinterland of Canada. We argue that a distinction needs to be made between the impacts of long and short cycles of change flowing across rural space and attention paid to voluntarism as a critical process at the intersection of broad shifts in service and settlement systems and particular changes in rural communities. Specifically, we suggest that the ‘local dynamics of voluntarism’ involving the activities of voluntary organisations, community groups and individual volunteers in particular communities can be understood, at once, as a ‘barometer of change’, a ‘mechanism of adjustment’ and a ‘space of resistance’, and we draw on recent case studies of rural voluntarism to illustrate this three-part distinction. In considering the transformative potential of voluntarism for the experience of aging in place, our findings suggest that public discourse, as reflected in media coverage, tends to romanticise voluntarism at the expense of a more nuanced and critical appreciation of its importance to the future of aging rural communities and their elderly residents. The research raises timely questions about academic-versus-popular conceptions of aging in evolving rural spaces and changing rural places.     

In sickness and in health: The politics of public health and their implications during the COVID-19 pandemic

Politics is a major player in health, sickness, and death affairs. This article reviews the role of politics in public health and its impact on health outcomes, mortality ratios, and death scenarios amongst the most vulnerable populations. Furthermore, the article explains the reasons behind the absence of politics from health and public health discourses; and examines the role of politics during the mis/management of COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Foucault's biopower, Mebmbe's necropolitics, and Butler's precarity, the article illuminates how public health policies are highly political insofar as they offer some individuals access to life but create possibilities of death for others. During COVID-19, politics enabled governors to put at risk the most vulnerable groups, the precariat, namely refugees, asylum seekers, stateless, and immigrants, the majority of whom were impoverished. The article presents COVID-19 as an example of a crisis that unmasks these politics, claiming that these politics are not new but rather a continuum of previous invisible policies that COVID-19 unmasked and intensified. The article describes how the politics of health entail privileging individuals with capital value who can benefit the state's interests and maintains its power.     

Television and Violence in the Economy of Memory

The present paper aims to consider the cultural function of television as a technology for the creation of a public memory. The television system records past images, preserves them, and broadcasts various historical programs. A viewer owns the public memory jointly, through watching/consuming programs. However, the process of production and consumption of programs is linked with the exclusion of other historical memories from the public space. After all, the creation of public memories in depth is related to social power. Through the analysis in concrete terms of a series of programs of Project X and the second episode of the Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK; Japan Broadcasting Corporation) series, Special Edition: Judging War, the relationship between the organization of public memories and social power is explored. Project X depicts the challenges of engineers of middle standing who initiated new industrial and technological developments in the 1960s and 1970s. Special Edition: Judging War is based on coverage of the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery. This program was subjected to revision on the eve of its broadcast. What forms of expression were eliminated? These two programs should help us define more clearly what the Japanese media selects for incorporation into the public memory.     

Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups

Several studies have shown that social identity fosters the provision of public goods and enhances the willingness to reciprocate the cooperative behavior of group members. Nonetheless, the question of how social identity affects negative reciprocity in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups has only received little attention. Consequently, we seek to fill this gap by examining whether social identity affects individuals’ willingness to sanction deviating group members in a public good context. Moreover, we devote particular attention to the role of anger-like emotions in negative reciprocity. To test our hypotheses, we employ one-shot public good games in a strategy method with punishment opportunity and induced social identity. Our results indicate that members of identity-homogeneous groups are prone to reveal less negative reciprocity than identity-heterogeneous groups when they face contributions smaller than their own. We also find that anger-like emotions much more strongly influence punishment behavior when individuals are matched with members of different identities than in identity-homogenous groups. These findings contribute to an increased understanding of the nature of social identity and its impact on reciprocity, improving economists’ ability to predict behavior while taking emotions into consideration.     

From the Trenches: Attacking First-Time Women Candidates for Congress

SUMMARY

Women candidates in the United States no longer enjoy a “compassion advantage” when running against male candidates. First-time women congressional candidates in open seats are especially vulnerable to excessively aggressive negative attacks from their male opponents because (1) high-tech message delivery systems make attack campaigning easy; (2) attack messages attract more attention than positive messages and get the voters to pay attention; (3) large sums of money can be raised for these attacks from national interest groups by emphasizing the national importance of Congressional races; (4) first-time women candidates who are not elected officials do not have the public record and visibility that could insulate them from the abusive distortions of their views and even of their physical appearance; (5) the press does a poor job of covering suburban-rural races and independent fact checking is virtually nonexistent; and (6) since 9/11, terrorism has become a major issue and women are apt to be portrayed as too inexperienced to be trusted with protecting the national defense.     

Race, socioeconomic status, and psychological distress: an examination of differential vulnerability

Using data from a 1985 epidemiological survey of 2,115 adults in Florida, this research has two goals: it tests the proposition that race and SES jointly influence mental health, and it examines the contribution of undesirable life events and economic problems to psychological distress across SES groups. Using multiple indicators of SES and mental health, we found that the evidence for a model of joint influence of race and SES on mental health varied with the measures being used. The most general conclusion is that SES interacts with race to increase psychological symptoms of distress. Partitioning the sample into three SES categories (low, middle, high), we examined the contribution of stressors to the greater distress among lower-SES blacks compared to other blacks and lower-SES whites. Lower-SES blacks are more vulnerable than lower-SES whites to the impact of undesirable events, but they are less vulnerable than lower-SES whites to the impact of economic problems. Lower-SES blacks are more vulnerable than middle-SES blacks to the impact of both discrete events and economic problems. Limitations of the study indicate a need for future longitudinal studies with measures of coping resources and support networks to further our understanding of the race, social class and psychological distress relationship.