"This guide does not require prior knowledge or experience in behavioral science. It will be relevant for you if you are an actor in a humanitarian setting look to: 1. Design a Theory of Change for a program aiming to change people’s beliefs or behaviors: This guide can be used by several actors.
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For instance, program managers seeking to increase the uptake of COVID-19 vaccinations by countering scientifically incorrect information can rely on the insights provided here. Or it can also be used by a humanitarian who is developing a Theory of Change for promoting preventive health behaviors. This guide offers practical entry points to take into account when identifying what factors will influence how your information might develop the impact you are hoping to have and ultimately achieve the change you are pursuing. 2. Design communication strategies or information campaigns: This guide can be used by anyone who is grappling with the question of how to make an information campaign more effective by outlining concrete steps that new or existing communication interventions can take to effectively change people’s perceptions, beliefs and behaviors, within humanitarian settings. 3. Think about how to contextualize behavioral insights to design better information campaigns: It is necessary to ask afresh in each situation how exactly context influences the behavioral insights that determine uptake or dismissal of information. This guide provides a checklist for how to contextualize behavioral insights to specific social, political and cultural situations of humanitarian settings. In program design phase, where feedback is gathered from communities for co-created solutions, this checklist can help with deeper and behaviorallyinformed contextualisation." (How to use this guide)
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"Natural language processing (NLP) is a rapidly evolving field at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, which is concerned with developing methods to process and generate language at scale. Modern NLP tools have the potential to support humanitarian action a
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t multiple stages of the humanitarian response cycle. Both internal reports, secondary text data (e.g., social media data, news media articles, or interviews with affected individuals), and external-facing documents like Humanitarian Needs Overviews (HNOs) encode information relevant to monitoring, anticipating, or responding to humanitarian crises. Yet, lack of awareness of the concrete opportunities offered by state-of-the-art techniques, as well as constraints posed by resource scarcity, limit adoption of NLP tools in the humanitarian sector. This paper provides a pragmatically-minded primer to the emerging field of humanitarian NLP, reviewing existing initiatives in the space of humanitarian NLP, highlighting potentially impactful applications of NLP in the humanitarian sector, and describing criteria, challenges, and potential solutions for large-scale adoption. In addition, as one of the main bottlenecks is the lack of data and standards for this domain, we present recent initiatives (the DEEP and HumSet) which are directly aimed at addressing these gaps. With this work, we hope to motivate humanitarians and NLP experts to create long-term impact-driven synergies and to co-develop an ambitious roadmap for the field." (Abstract)
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"Narratives and frames have greater influence on policy change than facts and figures. They have a critical role to play in leveraging political will for transforming the humanitarian system. Humanitarian organisations have greater power to shape narratives than they are willing to admit. The consta
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nt need to raise funds has given rise to a master frame of exceptionalism. Dominant narratives represent crises as exceptional events that require humanitarian aid as a self-contained solution. The label ‘humanitarian’ is used both to forge a collective identity and to exclude other actors. This frame has Western roots and is increasingly contested by donors, affected governments, national and local aid groups, and international activists who are excluded from it. It helps fuel narratives used to delay transformations towards a more people-centred and locally led model, in particular assertions that the system needs money more than reform." (Key messages)
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"Wer KI als Lösung präsentiert, muss auch Beweise dafür liefern. Wir zeigen in der zweiten Ausgabe unseres SustAIn-Magazins, dass KI-Systeme in der Energieversorgung durchaus den Einsatz von erneuerbaren Energien verbessern können. Aber ihr Potenzial kann nur ausgeschöpft werden, wenn eine daf
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r geeignete Infrastruktur existiert. Auch ist immer wieder zu hören, dass autonom fahrende Kleinbusse gut fürs Klima sind. Meistens wird dann aber nicht erwähnt, dass für den Betrieb dieser Kleinbusse viele Ressourcen benötigt werden. KI-Hoffnungsfantasien bringen uns nicht weiter. Wir müssen uns den ganzen Lebenszyklus von KI-Systemen anschauen, wenn wir ihre Nachhaltigkeit bewerten. Wir müssen aufhören, nur nach den CO2-Emissionen zu fragen, wenn wir die Auswirkungen der Systeme auf die Umwelt untersuchen. Und wir müssen KI-Systeme genau, umfassend und unvoreingenommen analysieren, wenn wir ernsthaft versuchen wollen, KI nachhaltiger zu gestalten." (Editorial)
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"La malnutrition résulte en partie de pratiques alimentaires inappropriées : des repas peu diversifiés souvent en raison du manque de disponibilité ou d’accessibilité d’aliments variés et nutritifs, des connaissances insuffisantes ou un manque de temps pour élaborer des repas sains. Des a
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pproches innovantes de communication pour le changement social et comportemental (CCSC) se développent depuis plusieurs années pour permettre non seulement de comprendre et retenir les comportements promus en matière de nutrition, mais aussi d’encourager et de motiver leur adoption. Celles-ci s’appuient également de plus en plus sur les sciences comportementales et sur la place de l’émotion comme moteur au changement de comportement. Quelles sont les méthodes et les activités permettant de favoriser les interactions et de tester les comportements promus lors des séances de sensibilisation ? Comment mobiliser toutes les personnes concernées et notamment intéresser les hommes aux sujets de nutrition/santé ? Quelles sont les atouts des médias de masse et des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) ? Cette note apporte quelques éclairages sur ces questions à travers des retours d’expériences à Madagascar, au Burkina Faso, au Niger, au Mexique, et au Malawi, qui ont été partagés au cours d’un webinaire." (https://gret.org)
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"[...] this short document is a bite-size exploration of a number of training delivery methods, which aims to help organisations choose which approaches are most suited to their aims. In order to do this, it provides a set of considerations for this decision-making process, as well as six brief case
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studies. The guide emphasises humanitatian work, which reflects the activities of the TPF member organisations. However, the contents are also applicable to development and other contexts." (https://www.intrac.org)
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"What is transdisciplinarity - and what are its methods? How does a living lab work? What is the purpose of citizen science, student-organized teaching and cooperative education? This handbook unpacks key terms and concepts to describe the range of transdisciplinary learning in the context of academ
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ic education. Transdisciplinary learning turns out to be a comprehensive innovation process in response to the major global challenges such as climate change, urbanization or migration. A reference work for students, lecturers, scientists, and anyone wanting to understand the profound changes in higher education." (Publisher description)
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"As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, bringing the transgression of the ontological boundary between the narrated world and the world of the recipient in
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to focus. These diverse transgressions - medial and ontological - are the subject of this transdisciplinary compendium, which covers the subject in an interdisciplinary way from various perspectives: game studies and media studies, but also sociology and psychology, to take into account the great influence of storytelling on social discourses and human behavior." (Publisher description)
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"Spiele sind durch Produktion, Distribution und Konsumption in politische Strukturen eingebunden. Sie spiegeln nicht nur ihre Umwelt wider, sondern werden auch maßgeblich durch diese geformt. Die Beiträger*innen fragen transdisziplinär nach der Analyse solcher "Politiken des Spiels": Innerhalb we
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lcher rechtlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen Regeln findet das Spiel statt? In welchen Machtverhältnissen stehen die am Spiel beteiligten Akteur*innen? Und wie geht die Branche mit aktuellen politischen Diskursen um? Dabei betrachten sie zahlreiche Formen des Spiel(en)s in diachroner sowie synchroner Perspektive und machen deutlich: Spielen ist ein hochpolitischer Akt." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Development communications for the past seventy years have followed two paradigms grounded in mass communication and marketing theories. The aim of development communication is changing behaviour, which is much closer to the definition of learning. Therefore, this article proposes a new learning pa
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radigm and conceptual model for development communications that are more audience-centric than the current dominant paradigm and more operational and sustainable than the current participatory paradigm. Twelve in-depth interviews with four categories of development communication professionals were conducted to substantiate the model. The advertising experts, public relations professionals, campaign funders, and NGO executive managers concurred with the suggested conceptual model envisioning the potential for applying the learning paradigm's seven principles to support sustainable and inclusive development. The article briefly reviewed the literature to introduce the two current paradigms, their underlying theories, and their critiques before proposing the new Learning Paradigm and the Sustainable Learning Conceptual Model associated with it. The findings and discussion open a new potential stream of future research in development communication and beyond." (Abstract)
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"Comment la Covid-19 a-t-elle été saisie de manière à faire sens tant pour l’action publique que dans les espaces médiatiques ? Les contributions révèlent une production discursive de différente nature (prescriptive, anxiogène, critique), que s qu’en soient les acteurs : représentants
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de l’action publique, experts de la santé et de l’économie, journalistes et consultants des médias classiques, infl uenceurs et usagers des médias socionumériques…. La pluralité des discours témoigne ainsi de la fragmentation des espaces publics en Afrique. Dans ce contexte qui a vu abonder les fausses informations et autres discours complotistes, la question de l’expertise s’est retrouvée posée, tant dans les médias classiques que sur les réseaux socionumériques. L’analyse révèle par ailleurs des formes d’appropriation culturelle locale de la pandémie relevant de la résilience des populations." (Description de la maison d'édition)
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"This study has identified myriad potential benefits of AI and automation solutions in agri-food systems, with the largest being significant enhancements in agricultural productivity and outputs. Data collected from sensors, satellites, or drones can help SSPs prepare and use their available land op
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timally. Data-generated insights can identify which farm areas are most suited to which crops, and automated input provision like automated irrigation systems can optimize resource use. AI and automation solutions can also improve extension advisory services, resulting in better, more contextualized and real-time advice for farmers, improving yields. Other solutions can predict, identify and mitigate against pests and diseases to reduce spoilage. Enhancing the improved productivity of SSPs is critical for global food security, and the economic and social empowerment of SSPs and the communities in which they live." (Executive summary, page 8)
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"Journalism education, being heavily focusing on experiential learning and face-to-face interaction, is particularly challenged when it comes to remote teaching and learning. This manual aims to provide journalism instructors the resources to improve their teaching in digital spaces. The subject mat
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ter includes: planning a new online course from scratch or transitioning an existing face-to-face course to online delivery; strategies to curb academic dishonesty in online courses; creating a student-centered learning environment; ways to support diversity in the virtual classroom; the future of online journalism education, drawing on what the pandemic period has taught." (Short summary)
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"An ongoing partnership between UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report and the Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project, hosted by the Sustainability and Education Policy Network (SEPN), has developed 80 country profiles on CCE policies and practices
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. These are available on the MECCE Project website (www.mecce.ca) and on the GEM Report Profiles Enhancing Education Reviews website (PEER, www.education-profiles.org) which also hosts country profiles on other themes at the core of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. The 80 country profiles provide a comparative perspective of countries’ progress in relation to Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, through Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE); and on SDG Target 4.7, which focuses on education for sustainable development. The profiles cover all regions of the world, all income levels. The countries they cover are home to 75% of the global population [...] The GEM Report and MECCE Project teams have developed several measures to identify global trends in policies and practices in the country profiles (Figure 1). The measures can support countries to learn from peers. They can also support global target-setting and benchmarking in diverse contexts – particularly when used in combination with global indicators, regional and national surveys and polls, and qualitative Information. Some of the measures are illustrated in the following pages." (Pages 2-3)
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