Research at Webster Vienna

Associate Professor, Dr. Antonakakis to Present at VI International Meeting of Economics/VI Encuentro de Economica

Business & Management Department Head, Dr. Nikolaos Antonakakis, will be delivering a keynote speech at this year’s 6th International Meeting of Economics, hosted by the Department of Quantitative Economics of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Ecuador.

The topic of the presentation is "Telling more with less: Proposing Productivity as a new metric of global competitiveness ranking,” based on continuing research with fellow WVPU professor Dr. Menbere Workie. Researchers, academics, students, and professionals will join virtually this Sept. 1-3 for the annual conference. The topics covered will include environmental and ecological economics, effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, welfare economics, and economic policy.

Additional keynote speakers will be Anil K. Bera (author of the Jarque-Bera test), Corinne Autant-Bernard (University of Lyon), Juan Pablo Chauvin (Interamerican Development Bank) and Georgina Gómez (University Erasmus Rotterdam).

For more information, click here. 

Faculty - Business and Management

Faculty and Staff

A new publication of Professor Jozef Bátora, PhD, is soon to appear in the European Foreign Affairs Review: The article is titled: "Dynamics of Differentiated Integration in EU Defence: Organizational Field Formation and Segmentation".

Abstract:

This article analyses the dynamics of differentiated integration in EU defence. It contributes to assessing what Pernille Rieker (2021) terms "broader European capacity on the global stage" involving both the EU’s defence structures and processes as well as those beyond the EU’s formal remit. The main argument in this article is that Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) is bringing about two different and mutually complementary dynamics of integration: organizational field formation and segmentation. The preliminary practical result is a dual dynamic of growing standardization of the EU’s defence industries across all twenty-five PESCO Member States in defence project development and continued reliance on Western European defence industrial actors (including the UK after Brexit) in defence R&D and production.

This means that while PESCO provides space for new joint defence projects across the participating Member States, the established structure and capacities of defence industries in the EU today set up conditions for what may be termed structural leadership by Western European defence industrial actors. Overall, this means that there is a particular – segmented – kind of differentiated integration in the field of EU defence industries in today’s EU.

Dr. Anatoly Reshetnikov, Assistant Professor of International Relations, has been awarded the European International Studies Association 2021 Best Article Prize in European Journal of International Relations for an article that he co-authored with Xymena Kurowska (CEU).

In their article “Trickstery: pluralising stigma in international society,” Kurowska and Reshetnikov introduce the concept of the ‘trickster’ as an international role, a cultural archetype, and a situational script utilized by some stigmatized international actors and characterized by non-decidable plurality. The award recognizes the importance of theory and theoretical pluralism in European International Relations. It is allotted to outstanding articles that combine theoretical rigor and novelty with thorough empirical analysis, and make a significant contribution to the existing debates.

European Journal of International Relations is the flagship journal of the European International Studies Association and the European Consortium for Political Research. It has been described as the leading journal of European International Relations. The journal publishes cutting edge analysis of international politics, while keeping its commitment to methodological, theoretical, geographic, and ideological pluralism. Read the award committee praise for Kurowska and Reshetnikov’s article here.

Dr. Marco Bocchese, professor of Political Science and newest IR faculty member has published an article in the current issue of the United Nations' academic quarterly journal “Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations”.

Abstract:

This article investigates the stark variation in elite appraisals of the performance of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Based on an online survey of diplomats posted to the UN headquarters, this article determines which country situations under ICC scrutiny respondents regard as successes or failures and, in turn, what parameters underpin their views. It also asks about negative cases; that is, country situations that never made it to The Hague due to political considerations. This article makes a two-fold contribution to the study of international law and politics. First, it shows that diplomats conceptualize international justice in terms of ongoing prosecutions and convictions obtained. Thus, they downplay indirect effects such as positive complementarity. Interestingly, scholars and diplomats agree on the court’s fiascos, yet dissent on successes. Finally, diplomats have proved tired of political considerations obstructing international justice. Survey data reveals that they want the court to investigate situations involving major powers.

Marco Bocchese: “In the Eye of the Beholder. Elite Assessments of the ICC’s Performance”, in: Global Governance 27 (2021) 275–297.

Read the article here. 

Faculty - International Relations

Faculty and Staff

WVPU at the 8th European Communication Conference

Webster Vienna provides insight into some of its ongoing research projects at the grand conference of ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA), held online September 6-9, 2021, with research projects that matter and make a difference.

Department Head Bradley Wiggins plans on presenting an analysis of a sample of TikTok videos with the hashtag #comingout. TikTok has quickly become a platform embraced by LGBT individuals, but there has not yet been much research on TikTok despite it becoming the most downloaded app in recent years.

Titled "I'm coming out": Patterns and themes of using TikTok as a social platform for coming out', Dr. Wiggins' presentation examines the seemingly emerging and viral new genre of coming out videos as well as general supportive commentary directed at the larger LGBTQ+ community. Originally launched in September 2016, TikTok has emerged as one of the fastest growing social apps in recent years with approximately 500+ million active monthly users and 1.5 billion downloads into 2019. Its users gravitate toward the younger end of the spectrum with approximately 41% in the range between 16 and 24, with a daily average use of about 52 minutes, and the app’s availability in at least 155 countries. Zuo and Wang (2019) note that most users tend to fall into one of three groups of popular culture: producers, disseminators, or consumers.

One of TikTok’s main advantages over other visually-heavy mediums may be due to its emphasis on “people, highlighting the desire of contemporary young people to express themselves, helping them realize their personal values and enhance their creativity” (Yang, Zhao, & Ma, 2019, p. 341). This study will examine patterns of coming out on the platform as it appears to be a nascent space for LGBTQ individuals to express their sexuality but also to receive both support and enmity from other TikTok users.

Further, this contribution uses qualitative discourse analysis to identify themes of solidarity, support, expressions of anxiety, worry, etc. in coming out and related videos collected for the study.

Webster Vienna's Dr. Anthony Löwstedt and media communications alumna Diana Igropoulou together present 'How can the regulation of communication serve to help achieve more sustainable development?', a critical look at ways in which the media can play either facilitating or opposing roles in the quest for sustainable development.

To promote and safeguard sustainable development, the mass media need to improve in several regards. If not, they may soon find themselves facing charges of complicity in serious crimes (as argued by Hertsgaard and Pope in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2019). Not that the media will or should be policed about prioritizing sustainable development, but if media gatekeepers or politicians knowingly cover up (or lie about profiting from) unsustainable developments they may even be charged with crimes against humanity, for endangering the biosphere. The authors look at how media logic, media effects, mediatization, common journalistic practices, framing, cultural cognition, ideology, and prevailing political and cultural economies have acted and interacted to create a global media environment which is still unhelpful or hostile to sustainable development. Sustainable development is defined as development which does not result in or lead to a net loss of biodiversity and cultural diversity, the latter not only because of its importance for the media.

However, the media also produce crucial information, critical analysis, whistleblowing, positive examples of eco-narratives, and other hopeful signs that need to be encouraged and supported rather than held back by media regulation systems that encumber and present obstacles to communication, and thus also to sustainable development. These systems need to refocus their justifications and legitimacy on more than human rights, which have so far dominated media regulation on national as well as transnational levels. Of course, basic human rights such as freedoms of expression and information or the right to privacy need to be at the center of law and morality, but so do sustainability of development, biodiversity, and cultural diversity, including media diversities: of ownership, content, perspective, employment, linguistic pluralism and more. Anthropocentrism (like ethno- and androcentrism previously) is no longer sustainable, not even in the fields of media regulation.

In the long run, the authors maintain, rights will mainly benefit from being associated more closely with diversities and with sustainable development. According to Igropoulou and Löwstedt, like the First Amendment to the US Constitution (1791) or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) until now, media law and ethics should make more use of and more references to the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015), among other recent developments of regulation pertaining to both communication and sustainable development.

Faculty - Strategic Communication

Faculty and Staff

Effect of the Islamic headscarf on interpersonal behavior: A comparison between three European cities

 The Islamic headscarf has been in the middle of heated debates in European society, yet little is known about its influence on day-to-day interactions. The aim of this randomized field experiment (n = 840) is to explore how the generally negative views that surround the hijab in Europe manifest in the behavior that people direct to hijab-wearing women in everyday situations.
 
Using a helping scenario and videotapes of the resulting interactions, we measured whether passengers offered assistance and also various details of behavior that indicate interpersonal involvement. We predicted that in interaction with the covered confederate less help would be offered, that women’s level of nonverbal involvement would increase but men’s decrease, and that responses would be stronger in Paris, intermediate in Brussels, and weaker in Vienna. We analyzed the data using Generalized Linear Models estimated with Bayesian inference.

While the headscarf does not produce concluding differences in “overt” helping, it does affect “subtle” cues of interpersonal involvement. In response to the hijab, women across sites increase, but men in Paris decrease, the level of involvement that they show with their nonverbal behavior.
 
Citation: Aranguren M, Madrisotti F, Durmaz-Martins E, Gerger G, Wittmann L, Méhu M (2021). Responses to the Islamic headscarf in everyday interactions depend on sex and locale: A field experiment in the metros of Brussels, Paris, and Vienna on helping and involvement behaviors. PLoS ONE 16(7): e0254927. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254927
 
This research was funded by a FWF International grant to Dr. Marc Méhu.  

Faculty - Psychology 

Faculty and Staff