Search Results (108)

The regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright in the European Union has proceeded almost entirely within the domain of economic rights, systematically overlooking the moral rights of authors whose works are ingested into AI training datasets and reproduced in AI-generated outputs. This article examines why this omission constitutes not merely a regulatory gap but a normative failure and proposes a framework for addressing it. Through doctrinal analysis of the DSM Directive’s text and data mining exceptions, the AI Act’s general-purpose AI obligations, and the AI Code of Practice, the article identifies a four-dimensional regulatory gap—substantive, jurisdictional, structural, and institutional—and situates it within the broader architecture of EU fundamental rights law. Drawing on the personhood theory of authorship, international human rights instruments, and the first European judicial engagement with AI-related moral and personality rights claims in GEMA v OpenAI (Regional Court of Munich I, November 2025), the article develops a rebuttable presumption model as the organising principle for author-centred AI regulation. Two complementary regulatory pathways are proposed: EU harmonisation of moral rights with AI-specific provisions, and the integration of moral rights obligations into existing AI compliance frameworks. The article concludes that in the algorithmic age, human creativity must be valued—not merely accommodated—by the legal systems that claim to protect it. Full article

Intimate partner violence-related brain injury is the most recent condition in a 150-year arc in which biological brain injury has been misattributed to psychological or moral causes before formal clinical recognition emerged. Earlier conditions in this pattern were each recognized only after decades of delay. In each prior case, that delay was constrained by limits in available diagnostic technology. Intimate partner violence-related brain injury is the first condition in which diagnostic technology, including computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, and neurocognitive assessment, has been continuously available throughout the period of non-recognition. This review identifies three structural barriers that sustain this recognition gap: a diagnostic barrier that leaves the injury without formal criteria, an administrative coding barrier that leaves it absent from ICD architecture, and a population surveillance barrier that leaves it indistinguishable from broader assault categories. Each barrier reinforces the others, limiting visibility, resource allocation, and access to care. Across these conditions, this review argues that deferred recognition reflected an institutional dynamic that shaped which injured populations became clinically legible. Recent neuroimaging and cognitive studies make the biological imperative explicit. A cognitive entrapment framework reframes the reduced capacity to engage the cognitive and material resources leaving requires as injury-driven rather than as ambivalence or motivational deficit. The framework offers a mechanistic account of how brain injury may disrupt the multistep planning that leaving demands. Intimate partner violence-related brain injury is not only underdiagnosed but structurally underserved; correcting the mechanisms of recognition failure is necessary for access to treatment and rehabilitation. Full article

Confucian ethics are widely credited with shaping Guangfu ancestral halls, yet existing scholarship approaches their façades from two disconnected ends: macro-cultural studies treat the façade as an undifferentiated emblem of lineage order, while craft studies document individual motifs without asking how the composition addresses a viewer. This study bridges the two with a transparent, auditable, and replicable semiotic-coding framework, demonstrated on the main ceremonial façade of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall in Guangzhou [广州] (1894). A semiotic reading identifies three legibility bands: a doorway band at eye level that regulates entry, a mid-register readable from the forecourt, and a crown that frames the long view. MAXQDA-assisted coding then classifies 88 carrier items screened by explicit inclusion rules. Confucian themes dominate (59.1%) over Taoist-related (22.7%), local Guangzhou (13.6%), and foreign (4.5%) repertoires; textual carriers are confined to the doorway band, narratives concentrate in the mid-register, emblems dominate the crown, and cross-validation shows each reading band is met by its coded distribution. Theoretically, the analysis reveals the façade as a graduated moral curriculum that reserves threshold and skyline for Confucian claims while domesticating other repertoires into subordinate positions; methodologically, the framework gives every value claim a traceable carrier, rule, and audit trail; practically, it equips heritage interpretation, conservation prioritisation, and cross-site comparison of Guangfu ancestral hall façades. Full article

Religion continues to play a role in many contemporary wars and conflicts, despite its professed commitment to peace and non-violence. A key feature of religion is the demand for sanctification of its members. This raises a paradox: why do religious communities that emphasize individual sanctification often produce or justify selfish forms of action, and why do sanctified individuals consent to them? In traditional frameworks, sanctification refers to the disciplining of human instincts and affects according to a moral code established by the religious community, in order to bring the individual closer to God. In 1881, Nietzsche identified the core of the problems stemming from collectivism, including religion, in what he calls “the properties of the organism”: the tendency of a whole to functionally organize its parts for its own preservation. While it is condemned as egoism at the individual level, it is often justified in religious communities as devotion to God or as an altruistic act for the benefit of the collective. From this perspective, our focus must shift from the individual as part of an organism to the self as an organism, exemplified by the Übermensch. This paper argues that, within traditional religious communities, sanctification functions as a mechanism of control and preservation. Inspired by Nietzsche’s philosophy, it proposes “New Sanctification” as a form of individual self-formation. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the Übermensch serves as a model of New Sanctification. Such sanctification does not require the individual to lose the self in the collective. Rather, it is a process through which the individual returns to the self, confronts the world directly, and affirms one’s life in the most active and life-affirming way possible. That is the new sanctification that a healthy individual continually realizes through self-overcoming. Full article

This article examines how contemporary domestic noir fiction and its online reception relate to the pathologization of women’s testimony. Combining feminist narratology, critical phenomenology, and Ian Hacking’s concept of “making up people,” we analyze Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train and A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window alongside Goodreads reviews of both novels. We argue that these texts mobilize women’s psychological distress—addiction, agoraphobia, depression, trauma, and gaslighting—as sources of narrative suspense while simultaneously casting doubt on women’s credibility as witnesses to their own experiences. Drawing on a thematically coded corpus of Goodreads reviews, we identify a spectrum of reader responses, ranging from diagnostic and moralizing readings that reproduce testimonial injustice to empathic and feminist readings that challenge pathologizing assumptions. By bringing textual analysis and reader-response research into dialogue, the article demonstrates that the credibility of female narrators is not determined by narrative form alone but is negotiated through broader cultural assumptions about women’s reliability and authority. Domestic noir thus emerges as a key site where women’s suffering becomes a contested object of interpretation in contemporary reading culture. Full article

Ethical conflicts are an inherent—yet often invisible—dimension of occupational therapy practice. Most available evidence remains qualitative or conceptual, and the empirical articulation of ethical conflicts in Spain is still limited. This study examines the nature, distribution, co-occurrence patterns, and meanings of ethical conflicts reported by occupational therapists in Spain. A concurrent convergent mixed-methods design was used. From a broader national sample of 596 valid responses, the analytical sample consisted of 160 practitioners (84.4% women, reflecting the gender composition of the profession in Spain) who reported having experienced ethical conflicts and provided open-text information. Data were collected via an online questionnaire combining closed items and open-ended narratives. Quantitative analyses included descriptive statistics and Jaccard-based co-occurrence estimates derived from a non-mutually exclusive thematic coding matrix. Narratives were analyzed inductively with a descriptive phenomenological orientation (Giorgi), using thematic procedures as an analytic scaffold (Braun and Clarke). Findings were integrated through joint displays and meta-inference. The most frequently selected primary conflict categories concerned professional competence and practice (19.4%), relationships with family members/caregivers (14.4%), and the user–therapist relationship (12.5%). Co-occurrence analysis indicated that conflicts rarely occurred in isolation and tended to cluster across relational, structural, and professional domains. Integration of quantitative patterns and narrative meanings supported a preliminary interpretive three-dimensional framework (relational, structural, professional) for understanding ethical tensions in practice. Across narratives, participants described experiences interpreted as consistent with moral distress, economic and workload pressures, limited professional recognition, and normative gaps. Ethical conflicts in occupational therapy practice in Spain are best understood as recurrent, situated tensions shaped by relational dynamics and organizational conditions, rather than isolated dilemmas. Supporting moral agency requires organizational supports, spaces for collective ethical deliberation, and context-sensitive ethics education. Full article

This article examines how Ecuadorian national digital newspapers represented adolescents and youth-coded young adults associated with crime during 2025, with particular attention to lexical labeling, moral attribution, visual framing, editorial prominence, news values and the near-presence or absence of educational discourse. The study is based on qualitative content analysis of Spanish-language digital press coverage published in El Universo, El Comercio, Extra, La Hora, GK, Primicias, Vistazo, El Mercurio and Expreso across seven journalistic genres: news, note, feature article, report, editorial, interview and chronicle. The article argues that media discourse does not merely describe youth violence; it actively constructs public intelligibility about who young people are, how danger is recognized and whether social responses are imagined in punitive, preventive or restorative terms. Grounded in media framing theory, news values, moral panic studies, child-friendly justice, critical sociology, school push-out scholarship and philosophies of education and human development, the article shows the inferential route from media representation to educational reintegration: when coverage individualizes adolescent violence, minimizes school interruption and masks structural conditions, it narrows the policy imagination through which young people are understood as educable, rights-bearing and recoverable subjects. The paper ultimately argues that the long-term reduction of violence in Ecuador requires not only security responses but also an integral reintegration agenda centered on education, dignified work, child-sensitive justice and restorative social policy. Full article

Background and Objectives: Patient safety at hospital interfaces is shaped by organisational fragility, ethical obligations, and anticipated legal exposure. Reporting, disclosure, and speaking up have been studied separately, yet the way these pressures converge in ordinary hospital work remains insufficiently described. Materials and Methods: We conducted a qualitative study in a public hospital in Romania using semi-structured episodic interviews and the critical incident technique. Twelve clinicians participated: six nurses and six physicians working in intensive care, emergency medicine, general surgery, paediatrics, oncology day care, anaesthesia, obstetrics, and internal medicine/cardiology. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim in Romanian, anonymised, and analysed with the framework method from a critical realist perspective. A secondary cross-case coding of all 12 episodes was used for descriptive analytic displays. Results: Four mechanisms organised the material. First, local stop rules and cross-checks created temporary stability at fragile interfaces such as high-alert medication, patient identification, specimen labelling, and transfer documentation. Second, consent and confidentiality were repeatedly compressed by urgency, compromised capacity, public space, and family pressure; legitimacy depended on explicit reasoning rather than documentary completion alone. Third, speaking-up and near-miss reporting were governed by protocol-backed legitimacy, leader response, and the informal cost of interruption. Formal incident reporting was present in one episode, partial in one, and absent in 10. Fourth, documentation and disclosure redistributed accountability. Notes that recorded reasoning supported continuity of care, whereas protective opacity concealed near misses, infrastructural weakness, and interactional pressure. Documentation or disclosure pressure appeared in all 12 episodes. Conclusions: Safety in everyday hospital work was assembled through local barriers, moral triage, and selective visibility. Interface redesign, protected near-miss reporting, psychologically safe escalation, and structured support for urgent consent and post-incident communication would make transparent safety work more sustainable. Trustworthiness was strengthened through reflexive memoing by the physician-interviewer, an audit trail of coding decisions, comparison across professional groups, active attention to negative cases, and iterative assessment of meaning saturation at the level of explanatory mechanisms. Full article

This qualitative study examines how menstruation structures the lives and futures of married adolescent girls in the Centre for Girls’ Education’s Married Adolescent Safe Spaces (MAS) program in rural northern Nigeria. It addresses a key gap by focusing on married adolescents and treating menstruation as a social process linked to early marriage, schooling, mobility, and sexual and reproductive health, rather than only a hygiene issue. Guided by an intersectional social ecological and menstrual health-and-rights framework, the study draws on three years of ethnographic fieldwork. Methods include participant observation in MAS clubs, in-depth interviews, informal group discussions, and Hausa field notes from multiple rural communities, analyzed through iterative thematic coding and collaborative memoing. Findings show that menstruation operates as a “catalyst of constraint.” Menarche signals sexual maturity, intensifying moral surveillance, prompting threats or realities of school withdrawal, and accelerating pressure toward marriage. Girls describe menstruation as a “joy killer” and becoming “a shadow of myself,” as stains, pain, and shaming by teachers and peers lead to absenteeism and, at times, permanent dropout. Silence and stigma mean that asking questions can be read as promiscuity, pushing girls away from parents, religious leaders, and male teachers and toward sisters, peers, and mentors for incomplete guidance. Structural deprivation further individualizes the burden of menstrual management. Poverty, lack of affordable pads and underwear, and inadequate WASH facilities compel girls to “make do” with cloths and other unsafe materials, restrict movement during bleeding, and engage in small income-generating activities or kin negotiations to obtain basic supplies. MAS safe spaces partially disrupt these patterns by offering rare venues to discuss menstruation openly, learn cycle tracking and hygiene, and build peer solidarity and self-advocacy. However, the analysis underscores that program benefits remain constrained when poverty, weak school infrastructure, and restrictive gender norms remain intact. The study highlights how equitable sexual and reproductive health interventions must integrate menstrual health centrally, combining safe-space programming with subsidized products, improved WASH infrastructure, protective school policies, and norm change efforts. Full article

Background/Objectives: Healthcare workers play a critical role in vaccination programs, yet vaccine hesitancy has been widely reported even among this group during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Previous studies have primarily focused on identifying factors associated with vaccine acceptance, offering limited insight into the processes underlying decision-making. This study aimed to synthesize qualitative studies on healthcare workers’ COVID-19 vaccination experiences to develop a comprehensive understanding of their decision-making processes. Methods: A qualitative meta-synthesis was conducted using the thematic synthesis approach proposed by Thomas and Harden. Electronic databases including PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL were searched for qualitative studies published up to February 2026. Thirteen studies were included following PRISMA guidelines. Data were analyzed through line-by-line coding, followed by the development of descriptive and analytical themes. Results: Four analytical themes were identified: (1) vaccination as a dynamic risk–benefit negotiation process, (2) trust as a central mechanism shaping information interpretation, (3) socially embedded and relationally negotiated decision-making, and (4) moral identity as a driver of vaccination behavior. Healthcare workers’ vaccination decision-making was not a static choice but an evolving process shaped by continuous appraisal of risks and benefits, filtered through trust in information and institutions, influenced by social interactions, and guided by professional identity and ethical responsibility. Conclusions: Healthcare workers’ vaccination decision-making is a multidimensional process embedded in cognitive, social, and ethical contexts. Interventions should move beyond individual-level approaches and instead focus on building trust, leveraging social networks, and reinforcing professional identity with implications for future public health crises. Full article

Objective: The professional competence level of pre-service childcare teachers influences the quality of future childcare services. However, due to the lack of necessary assessment tools, this study aims to develop a professional competence scale for pre-service childcare teachers in China. Methods: First, the qualitative data, including domestic and international policy texts, field interviews, and existing research findings, were subjected to three-level coding using Nvivo14 software to construct the dimensions of the perceived professional competence scale for pre-service childcare teachers in China and a preliminarily draft the items. Second, the expert consultation method was employed to test content validity. Two rounds of consultations were conducted with 22 experts using A Delphi 12.0 software to refine the item content. Finally, item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, reliability testing, and convergent validity testing were performed on data from 558 pre-service childcare teachers using SPSS 27.0 software, while confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on data from 534 pre-service childcare teachers using Mplus 8.0 software. Results: The perceived professional competency scale for pre-service childcare teachers in China comprises four dimensions—competence of practice teachers’ morality, responsive caregiving competence, early development support competence, and health management competence—with a total of 48 items. Content validity testing indicated that the scale items are comprehensive, clearly worded, and expressed in accessible language, effectively covering the professional competency requirements of pre-service childcare teachers. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated good model fit for the scale. The average variance extracted (AVE) for each factor exceeded 0.500, composite reliability (CR) exceeded 0.700, and factor loadings ranged between 0.750 and 0.917. The scale achieved Cronbach’s α of 0.988, and all split-half reliability coefficients were above 0.700, meeting established psychometric standards. Conclusion: The perceived professional competency scale for pre-service childcare teachers in China demonstrates stable psychometric properties and is suitable for use as a measurement tool for assessing the professional competence of pre-service childcare teachers. Full article

This article investigates the discursive construction of populism in the Portuguese digital public sphere, focusing on the communicative strategies of two party media outlets linked to the populist radical right party CHEGA: Folha Nacional and CHEGA TV. Drawing on Entman’s model of framing functions and the literature on populist communication and digital propaganda, the study examines how these outlets articulate simplified, moralized and emotionally charged narratives to mobilize public opinion and legitimize the party’s political agenda. The empirical corpus consists of 4915 video titles and descriptions published between 2024 and 2025 (CHEGA TV, n = 2476; Folha Nacional, n = 2439). Each unit was coded according to five macro-frames characteristic of populist discourse: (1) appeal to the people and antagonism, (2) messianism, (3) moral restitution, (4) anti-system and anti-elite rhetoric, and (5) exclusion of the other. The research combines qualitative frame analysis with quantitative frequency and co-occurrence analysis, enabling the identification of dominant discursive patterns and their temporal evolution. The study contributes by offering a systematic analysis of populist framing in Chega’s party media, an under-explored field, and by proposing a replicable methodological approach to examine the hybridization of propaganda, emotionality and digital political communication in Europe. Full article

Background/Objectives: The aim of this investigation was to determine postgraduate orthodontic students’ moral reasoning ability and evaluate their opinions on professionalism and the Dental Board of Australia’s (DBA) tribunal outcomes. Methods: Students undergoing postgraduate orthodontic specialist training in five Australian universities were invited to participate in a three-part electronic questionnaire survey. Part 1 related to participant demographic details. Part 2 invited responses to a series of statements related to professionalism and 10 DBA tribunal outcomes, and Part 3 was a validated moral reasoning assessment instrument [Defining Issues Test (DIT-2)]. Results: A response rate of 80.4% (n = 37) was recorded. The mean DIT-2 Post-conventional Schema (P) score was 31.14 (SD = 13.25). All respondents (n = 37; 100%) were aware of the DBA’s Code of Conduct (Code). Respondents were broadly supportive of the statements related to professionalism although 15.4% reported that being bound by the Code meant they could not fully value the student experience whilst at university. Most respondents considered that most DBA tribunal outcomes were fair or tended towards being lenient. However, one outcome regarding dishonest evidence by a dentist in court related to an employment dispute was considered harsh or very harsh by 53% (n = 20). There was little correlation between P scores and responses to most professionalism statements/DBA outcomes. Conclusions: The moral reasoning scores were lower than what might be expected from individuals in the provision of healthcare. The introduction of formal training in moral reasoning may develop postgraduate moral reasoning skills and DIT-2 scores. Full article

Abusive relationships are too often explained solely in terms of individual behaviour, as if a woman’s decision to stay were simply a matter of psychology or poor judgement. In South African communities, however, the reality is considerably more complex. The reasons women remain are situated within what can be described as a distorted process of care: a network of relational, material, and structural forces that alter the very meaning of care itself. This study aimed to explore these interconnections. Guided by an ethics of care framework, we employed multimodal qualitative methods to engage participants from four South African communities between August 2024 and July 2025. Participants (n = 262) were recruited through snowball, purposive, and convenience sampling. Data were coded using ATLAS.ti V8 and analysed thematically. Five interconnected themes shaped the framework. Distorted care described how caregiving could become coercive, shaped by fear, rigid gender roles, intergenerational abuse, and substance misuse. Care under constraint highlighted the material limitations, financial dependency, daily survival challenges, and self-sacrificing caregiving, that left women depleted. The silence of care captured emotional withdrawal, isolation, and the disabling effect of shame on help-seeking. Reclaiming care traced the tentative routes towards healing through ethical self-care, faith, forgiveness, and a conscious effort to disrupt harmful patterns. Woven throughout was structural failure, including absent family networks, the moral decline of communities, and institutional systems that consistently failed women. Remaining in an abusive relationship is not a sign of weakness. It is a negotiation, profoundly constrained, within systems of care that have been fundamentally distorted. Effective intervention should move beyond framing gender-based violence as an individual problem and address it as a collective one, restoring care as a shared social and political responsibility. Full article

Background: The role of religion and faith-based organisations in public health is increasingly examined through the framework of religious health assets (RHAs), defined as resources located in or held by religious entities that may be mobilised for health and development. Within this framework, church health assets (CHAs) are conceptualised as congregationally specific expressions of RHAs, namely, the tangible and intangible resources recognised within local church settings and interpreted by church leaders as relevant to adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health (AYSRH). Despite growing interest, there remains limited empirical work examining how such assets are perceived in relation to young people’s sexual and reproductive health, particularly from an emic perspective in sub-Saharan Africa. Aim: This study explored how pastors in South Africa’s Vaal Triangle perceive church assets relevant to AYSRH. Methods: The article presents findings from a qualitative study based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with eleven purposively selected pastors from Vanderbijlpark, Vereeniging, and Sasolburg. Data were collected between August 2019 and February 2020, prior to the COVID-19 restrictions that later altered face-to-face engagement in South Africa. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis informed by interpretive description, employing iterative coding, constant comparison, memoing, and a clearly defined audit trail. Results: The findings identified ten perceived CHAs, comprising five tangible assets, interaction spaces, community resources, normative teaching materials, networks and partnerships, and financial resources—and five intangible assets—reputation, voice on sexuality, mission and vision, a ready audience, and embodied messages. Across these themes, pastors predominantly framed AYSRH in moral and pedagogical terms, emphasising abstinence, guidance, and restoration, rather than a broader continuum encompassing information, prevention, care, rights, and service access. Conclusions: The study concludes that pastors perceive churches to possess substantial AYSRH-related assets; however, the analysis reflects perceptions rather than demonstrated implementation or measurable impact. The findings highlight both potential and limitation, indicating that the same assets may function as facilitators or barriers depending on their interpretation and application. The study contributes a pastor-centred, emic account of CHAs within a South African context and underscores the need for future multi-stakeholder research to assess how faith-sensitive AYSRH interventions operate in practice. Full article