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• Competitive elections and the challenges of the concept of competitiveness

  37-52

  Anna Unger

  Views:

  67

  The paper relates to the literature on contemporary non-democratic systems with multi-party elections. It aims to prove that electoral competitiveness is a key concept for understanding these systems, but this concept is currently underdeveloped. It first reviews the main approaches of competition and competitiveness, then, using the widely accepted type of competitive authoritarian hybrid regime, argues that the concept developed by its inventors does not provide sufficient support to detect competitiveness, because the factor of uncertainty used by the concept creators to justify its existence is not accompanied by any real indicators. The conclusion of the article is that competitiveness should therefore be derived not from the unidentifiable uncertainty factor, but from the concept of electoral integrity, which indicates the existence or the absence of genuine (competitive) elections, and from the concept and characteristics of electoral manipulations.

• Online activities of Alzheimer Cafes in the 6 months preceding and following the coronavirus outbreak

  19-41

  Csaba Kucsera

  Anna Holpert

  Views:

  46

  Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people li­ving with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, inclusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social dis­courses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, ca­talysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.

  The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.

  This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alzhe­imer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between Septem­ber 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.

  This first part of the paper, which briefly overviews the Alzheimer Café concept and its his­tory in Hungary, and then presents the methodology of the study and the first half of the re­search results. The second part of the paper will continue to present the results, and will make recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.

• Online activities of Alzheimer Cafes in the 6 months preceding and following the coronavirus outbreak

  42-64

  Csaba Kucsera

  Anna Holpert

  Views:

  58

  Alzheimer Cafés may play an important psychosocial supporting role in the life of people living with dementia and of their family caregivers by providing a community of understanding, in­clusion, solidarity and mutual support. They can promote policy-, professional- and social dis­courses, the recognition of dementia as a social reality, and overall awareness of this complex challenge. They can also foster transdisciplinary collaboration among professionals as well as between professionals and lay people affected by dementia based on mutual understanding, cat­alysing the formation and operation of acting communities and networks of interest.

  The active and purposeful presence and activities of Alzheimer Cafés on Internet platforms, in the increasingly prominent channels and fields of social discourse and community life in the 21st century, can be an important tool in the realization of these benefits.

  This two-part paper analyses the publicly accessible online footprint and behaviour of Alz­heimer Cafés from this perspective as measured by a list of 10 possible functions. It scrutinizes the realisation of possible benefits and advantages offered by Internet platforms between Sep­tember 2019 and August 2020, with a special focus on technology-based adaptive responses to the coronavirus-outbreak midway through that period.

  The first part of the paper (Kucsera – Holpert 2021) briefly overviewed the Alzheimer Café concept and its history in Hungary, presented the methodology of the study and the first half of the research results. This second part of the paper presents the rest of the results, and makes recommendations for making more effective use of the potential of online platforms to realise the goals.