TY - JOUR A1 - Köstler, Verena A1 - Wolff, Monika-Sybille ED - Sabitzer, Barbara ED - Hörmann, Corinna T1 - Promoting digital competencies in pre-service teachers : the impact of integrative learning opportunities JF - Education Sciences N2 - Offering learning opportunities for developing digital competencies in pre-service teacher education remains challenging despite its growing importance in preparing future educators. This study investigates the effectiveness of integrative learning opportunities, called “digitally enhanced courses”, which combine subject-specific and digital learning objectives. Implemented at a German university (2019–2023). These courses aimed to promote digital competencies required for technology-supported teaching. Using survey data from 312 pre-service teachers, the research examined students’ self-assessed digital competencies, technology acceptance, and value–cost assessments through multiple measurement instruments, including TPACK scales, the Technology Acceptance Model, and Expectancy–Value beliefs. Results revealed significantly higher self-assessed digital competencies in private contexts compared to teaching situations. While mere course participation showed no significant impact, both the frequency and number of attended courses positively correlated with higher self-assessed digital skills across all TPACK dimensions. Additionally, increased technology acceptance and higher success expectations were associated with enhanced teaching-related digital competencies. The findings emphasize that the effectiveness of digitally enhanced courses is contingent upon systematic implementation and student engagement, highlighting the need for structured curricular integration of digital competency development in teacher education through comprehensive, spiral-curriculum approaches rather than isolated interventions. However, this study’s reliance on self-reported data may introduce social desirability and subjective estimation bias, and its cross-sectional design limits causal interpretations. Future research should employ longitudinal approaches to examine competency development over time, incorporate objective performance-based assessments, and explore how instructional design and curricular integration influence digital competency acquisition. KW - pre-service teacher education KW - digitally enhanced courses KW - TPACK KW - technology acceptance KW - expectancy value KW - curriculum integration Y1 - 2025 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-16854 SN - 2227-7102 VL - 15 (2025) IS - 3 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ungruhe, Christian A1 - Agergaard, Sine T1 - Postcareer precarity : occupational challenges among former West African footballers in Northern Europe T2 - Sports in Africa : past and present (Ohio University Press Open Access Books. 42; https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/42/) N2 - When Benoît Assou-Ekotto’s former coach Harry Redknapp announced that the Cameroonian international had decided to end his professional football career and become an adult movie actor, the story generated astonishment and amusement in social media networks and received widespread attention from the mass media. Although the French-born footballer denied the story’s validity shortly afterward, claiming Redknapp was joking, it entertained football fans and the wider public during the spring of 2017. However, while this was one of the very few occasions on which an African footballer’s postcareer trajectory was a matter of public debate, it also revealed that former African professional footballers’ whereabouts, occupations, and living conditions are widely unknown and remain an underresearched topic. KW - Football migration Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-14897 SN - 978-0-8214-4696-6 N1 - "Sports in Africa : past and present" ist unter einer CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0-Lizenz erschienen und unter https://ohioopen.library.ohio.edu/oupress/42/ verfügbar. Die Veröffentlichung des Einzelbeitrags erfolgt mit freundlicher Erlaubnis des Verlags. SP - 190 EP - 203 PB - Ohio University Press CY - Athens ER - TY - THES A1 - Hagen, Pamina T1 - The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as a City and Nation Branding Tool: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Image of International Opinion Leaders N2 - This dissertation examines the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as a tool of city and nation branding, analyzing their role within China's broader soft power strategy and their impact on international perceptions of Beijing and China. Drawing from urban geography, political geography, international relations, and marketing theory, the study explores how mega-events contribute to the construction of national identity and global image. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines qualitative interviews with 16 international diplomats in Beijing and an online survey of 40 foreign journalists who lived and worked in China during the Olympiad. The analysis focuses on two dimensions of image: the city of Beijing and the nation of China. The findings indicate that the 2008 Summer Olympic Games did not fundamentally alter China's international image. While the event successfully projected an image of modernization, efficiency, and confidence, pre-existing concerns about political control and human rights persisted. For Beijing, the Olympics enhanced its visibility as a global city but also highlighted tensions between its traditional identity and its modern aspirations. The media's framing played a decisive role in shaping these perceptions. Overall, the study concludes that the Beijing Olympics functioned as a significant yet limited instrument of soft power. They reinforced China's global presence and urban development goals but fell short of transforming its international reputation. The research contributes to understanding how mega-events operate as strategic tools of geopolitical communication and branding in the context of globalization. KW - Beijing 2008 Summer Olympic Games KW - Nation Branding KW - City Branding KW - International Image KW - Public Diplomacy Y1 - 2025 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-19052 ER - TY - THES A1 - Kling, Julia T1 - Social Networking Sites as Intermediaries of Authoritarian State Propaganda: How Facebook and VK Disseminated Predominantly Kremlin-Friendly Political Content Before and During Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine N2 - Previous research on Russia’s use of social networking sites to influence foreign audiences has primarily focused on US-based platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, the activities of Russia’s “troll farms”, as well as Russia’s foreign broadcasters, RT and Sputnik, and their audiences. By contrast, little research has examined the global reach of Russia’s state-aligned domestic news content, specifically on US- and Russia-based social networking sites that significantly differ in the level of the Kremlin’s control over information flows, and how the activities of novel Russian disinformation production organizations support this reach. In my dissertation, I addressed these gaps in the extant research literature in the fields of political communication, social media, and Russia studies in four distinct research papers focusing on the reach of and engagement with Russian-speaking political content, including Russia’s domestic news content, and the activities of ANO Dialog, Russia’s novel disinformation production organization with close links to the Russian government, on US-based Facebook and Russia-based VK. To do so, I used innovative qualitative, quantitative, and computational research methods to create knowledge on Russia’s informational influence on the two platforms before and after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The findings highlight that, despite differing levels of Kremlin control, both of the social networking sites studied functioned as conduits for the dissemination of Russian-speaking, predominantly Kremlin-friendly political content, including state-aligned domestic news. This content reached audiences both within Russia and abroad in the lead-up to and during the full-scale war in Ukraine. While VK primarily served Russia’s users, Facebook disseminated Russia’s state-aligned news mostly to audiences outside Russia, particularly in former Soviet countries, in the lead-up to the invasion. During the war, Facebook continued to host critical perspectives on Russia’s war crimes, in contrast to VK, where such content was blocked. However, Facebook was banned in Russia in March 2022, limiting domestic access to dissenting views. With the war ongoing as of May 2025 and organizations such as ANO Dialog intensifying their efforts to influence both domestic and foreign audiences on platforms such as VK and Facebook, it is likely that Russia will further strengthen its information control. KW - social networking site KW - Russia KW - propaganda KW - platform governance Y1 - 2025 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-19601 ER - TY - THES A1 - Fischer, Liliann T1 - An exploration of professional self concepts in science communication N2 - The dissertation explores emerging professional self concepts in the field of science communication. It integrates theories and concepts from a diverse range of disciplines from the sociology of professions to science and technology studies. It also considers organisational contexts and country specifics as major influencing factors and includes these in comparative frameworks. By triangulating data from different sources the dissertation offers broad insights not only into science communication but professionalisation more widely. T2 - eine Untersuchung beruflicher Selbstverständnisse in der Wissenschaftskommunikation KW - science communication KW - professionalisation KW - professional identity Y1 - 2025 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-19817 ER - TY - THES A1 - Hackl, Veronika T1 - The Literate Human in the Loop: AI Feedback in Higher Education N2 - This cumulative dissertation, titled "The Literate Human in the Loop: AI Feedback in Higher Education," investigates the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) feedback systems within academic settings and the critical role of user competence. KW - AI Literacy Y1 - 2026 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-19982 ER - TY - THES A1 - Ryzhova, Anna T1 - The Transnational News Diets of Russian Speakers in Germany: what news they use and trust N2 - The present cumulative dissertation consists of four articles, and is based on more than 70 semi-structured interviews with the Russian speakers in Germany. Forty two interviews were conducted before of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the other twenty nine right after its beginning (out of which I used only twenty five for the final analysis, as I focused only on the Russian speakers, associated with agressor or neutral countries in Russia’s war in Ukraine). The dissertation addresses a variety of issues, related to the media use of the Russian speakers in Germany, which was previously understudied both in general and from political communication perspective (Panagiotidis, 2023). In the strand of migrants and media research, scholars point the following gaps: the lack of political element in studies of how migrants use media (Leurs and Smets, 2018), the lack of studies how homeland and host society media are used simultaneously, not in isolation from each other, and the lack of studies on the influence of homeland media on migrants as such (Ramasubramanian et al., 2017), and finally, communication scholars not using migration studies frameworks in their research on migrants, which leads to fields existing in parallel (Leurs & Smets 2018). This dissertation addresses all these gaps. Being the first study to apply the concepts of “news repertoires” and the latest theorization of “news literacy” for studying the migrant populations, as well as looking in-depth in the mechanisms of trust, I analyze the media diets of Russian speakers in Germany in their entirety, considering the contexts and roles, attributed to the German quality, Russian opposition, Russian state sponsored and other types of media, i.e. not analying them in isolation, and also looking at the motivations to use different media for different domains of their lives. Besides, for analysing the transformations of media diets of the Russian speakers in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I use the concept of “sense of belonging” to Russia to examine the deep, underlying reasons for why news repertoires of these audiences changed, or did not change in the light of Russia’s war crimes. As for the contribution to the German-language and Germany-focused literature on the Russian speakers, this is the first comprehensive study to scrutinize the media diets of Russian speakers in-depth with a special emphasis on their motivations, political affiliations and differentiating between the media these audiences “use” and the media they “trust”, as previous research on Russian speakers in Germany and their media use was largely focused on integration, largely ignoring the political aspect and Russia’s repetitive attempts to influence Russian speakers abroad (e.g.Hepp et al., 2011) or lacked nuance in their results (e.g. Boris Nemtsov Foundation Survey, which posed questions about “Russian media” without defining what it is, i.e. is that opposition media, Kremlin-sponsored media, etc. Finally, this thesis provides a comprehensive case study of audiences from an authoritarian context (or a former authoritarian context, for those, who migrated from Ukraine, but were socialized in the Soviet Union) who migrated to democracy and their media use, and also sheds light on the spectrum of motivations of audiences abroad to continue consuming media from an authoritarian homeland (in our case, Kremlin-sponsored media), which can provide important foundation for future research on other migrant groups from authoritarian contexts in democracies, such as Chinese migrants in Europe. Among the results of the present dissertation is an article on three types of news repertoires that these audiences have, and how political beliefs underpin them; an article on how they view the “truth” in media and why it is a concept of crucial importance for their news trust patterns; an article on news literacy and how migrant audiences need transnational news literacy knowledge in order to navigate complex media landscapes, in which authoritarian states actively try to reach them with their narratives; and finally, how a major crisis event, such as war in Ukraine, changed (or did not change) the news repertoires of the Russian speaking audiences in Germany and why the “sense of belonging” is at the core of these changes. KW - news use KW - Russian media KW - Kremlin media KW - propaganda Y1 - 2026 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-19867 ER - TY - INPR A1 - Wehner, Stefanie T1 - Regional and gendered aspects of migration: Data-exploration from a multi-local field survey in Ghana (Northern, Eastern and Greater Accra Region) N2 - This study assesses the perception of migrants and migrant households on drivers and structures of translocal mobility and their consequences for livelihoods in Ghana. A bi-local survey was conducted to collect data on households and migrants in the area of origin (AoO) and individuals in the area of destination (AoD). The survey at the AoO was conducted in two research areas (Gushiegu Municipal District in the Northern Region and Fanteakwa District in the Eastern Region). Thesample then covered 75% migrant households and 25% non-migrant households, both randomly selected. The collected data provides information on almost 1,000 migrants and 2,000 non-migrants. Since Greater Accra Region was identified as one major destination, this region was selected as an Area of Destination. In Accra, 50 migrants from Eastern and Northern Region each were randomly selected from the previous survey database. The perception of migrant households and migrants themselves on migration was assessed using descriptive statistics. Over 95% said migration is essential to secure their livelihood and that migration improves the standard of living of the households. The study elucidates the challenges encountered by rural households in agriculture and the strategies implemented to address these issues. The predominant challenges confronting farmers include the escalating costs of agricultural inputs, the prevalence of pests and diseases, and fluctuations in environmental conditions. Moreover, the research highlights robust translocal networks that extend beyond mere financial remittances, encompassing an intangible web of communication, emotions, and aspirations. By traversing spatial and gender dimensions, the study unveils the extensive diversity of migration aspects, demonstrating that migration exerts markedly different impacts on women compared to men and has varying implications for households in the Northern Region versus the Eastern Region. It is evident that female migrants from Northern Ghana constitute the most vulnerable group, grappling with severe food insecurity. In contrast, translocal networks in the Eastern Region facilitate families in leveraging remittances for diversification of their economic base, thereby enhancing their capacity for future development, while those in the Northern region are essential for addressing the existential needs of families. T3 - Migration, translocality and development in times of climate change. Mitra|WA Working Paper Series - 7 KW - migration KW - area of origin KW - area of destination KW - livelihood KW - remittances KW - food security Y1 - 2026 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:739-opus4-20299 ER -