Res Humanitariae

The article deals with the issues related to the specifics of the incantation as a genre of oral folklore, history of collecting, publishing and the beginning of their studying in Russia. The main emphasis is put on the first monographic work dedicated to conspiracies. Scientific portrait of the author is represented, his work, translations and reprinting are analyzed. Features that have made the book classic are established.

In most cases the internet has a positive effect on its users – it offers unrestrained communication, expression of opinions and sense of openness. On the other hand, excessive usage leads to internet addiction. The most important features of the internet include rapid spread of information and news, access to tremendous amount of information, personalization and anonymity. After the literature review of theoretical research of authors from Lithuania and abroad, and application of theoretical analytical, resumptive, analogical, deductive and comparative methods, the features of XXI century media literacy were identified. A questionnaire allowed to examine the internet’s specifics and nature of users’ media literacy online. Empirical research was conducted to analyse the internet users’ behavior based on age groups as well as to identify their level of literacy. A big part of today’s daily activity and free time is related to usage of the internet media. Many services take an online form. Therefore, the issue of Lithuanian users’ online behavior becomes a concurrent to the development of welfare society, and media literacy gets to be one of the necessities for future skills. Instead of searching for and passively using the given information, internet users start to make their own, evaluate it and spread further. The users are enabled to fashion their private social networks, they become responsible for organization of the whole personal communication infrastructure. This research points out the main reasons of Lithuanian internet users not using e-services: the lack of media literacy and insufficient spread of the service-related information. The biggest difference in literacy among age groups was noticed while evaluating personal predisposition to internet addiction. Levels of literacy based on age groups were significantly different in terms of ability to critically evaluate online information.

The prospective health care consumers are increasingly using the Internet websites for communication with potential health care service providers and decision-making regarding choice of the travel destination for receiving particular health care services. Therefore, it is important for health care providers to present themselves and their services efficiently online in order to attract foreign patients and thus facilitate medical tourism. The objective of this study is to evaluate the website content of Latvian health care providers who offer services to medical tourists in order to evaluate their status-quo and identify opportunities to improve website design. Authors used the framework by Huerta et al. (2016) as a basis to develop a modified framework suited for medical tourism-related website evaluation. 21 active websites associated with a medical tourism and provision of health care services to foreign patients were identified and selected for analysis. Each website was evaluated using a 10-factor assessment on 4 dimensions that include website accessibility, content, marketing, technology on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. Results: Scores of 21 website evaluation ranged from 54 to 91 point across all 4 dimensions with 80 and above points being considered as excellent result. Conclusions: Study findings indicated that the main improvements should be related to accessibility dimension and enabling text resizing function for improving experience for patients with poor sight, information dimension in terms of developing a separate main level section with information exclusively for foreign patients, and marketing dimension to improve effectiveness of search engine optimization (SEO) for medical tourism related keywords.

Stones where mythical creatures carry out work connected with wearing apparel appear in publications on the mythological stones of Lithuania and Belarus. This theme is not so widely considered in Latvian research literature. The aim of this work is to show that in Latvian folklore, by natural (stone, tree, stump, water, cave, etc) and man-made objects of the cultural space (threshing barn, cemetery, hill-fort, etc), mythical creatures tailor, spin, knit and mend for people or for themselves.

Lake Sauka is the largest lake in the district of Augšzeme in Latvia. It features very often in tales and legends, which mostly relate the story of its flight and its settling down in its present location. The nearest place from where it might have flown is approximately 30 kilometres away, but the most distant place is about 70 kilometres away. The places of origin, flight routes and conditions of settling down mentioned in numerous tales, when confronted with modern knowledge about the layout of archaeological sites, allow us to see yet unknown connections between the mythical world reflected in tales, and the real world represented by the relief and by archaeological sites.