School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 454
-
ItemNo Preview Available‘Death by Twitter’: Understanding false death announcements on social media and the performance of platform cultural capital(University of Illinois Libraries, 2019)In this paper, we analyse false death announcements of public figures on social media and public responses to them. The analysis draws from a range of public sources to collect and categorise the volume of false death announcements on Twitter and undertakes a case study analysis of representative examples. We classify false death announcements according to five overarching types: accidental; misreported; misunderstood; hacked; and hoaxed. We identify patterns of user responses, which cycle through the sharing of the news, to personal grief, to a sense of uncertainty or disbelief. But we also identify more critical and cultural responses to such death announcements in relation to misinformation and the quality of digital news, or cultures of hoax and disinformation on social media. Here we see the performance of online identity through a form that we describe, following Bourdieu as ‘platform cultural capital’.
-
ItemA field experiment on community policing and police legitimacy.(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019-10-01)Despite decades of declining crime rates, longstanding tensions between police and the public continue to frustrate the formation of cooperative relationships necessary for the function of the police and the provision of public safety. In response, policy makers continue to promote community-oriented policing (COP) and its emphasis on positive, nonenforcement contact with the public as an effective strategy for enhancing public trust and police legitimacy. Prior research designs, however, have not leveraged the random assignment of police-public contact to identify the causal effect of such interactions on individual-level attitudes toward the police. Therefore, the question remains: Do positive, nonenforcement interactions with uniformed patrol officers actually cause meaningful improvements in attitudes toward the police? Here, we report on a randomized field experiment conducted in New Haven, CT, that sheds light on this question and identifies the individual-level consequences of positive, nonenforcement contact between police and the public. Findings indicate that a single instance of positive contact with a uniformed police officer can substantially improve public attitudes toward police, including legitimacy and willingness to cooperate. These effects persisted for up to 21 d and were not limited to individuals inclined to trust and cooperate with the police prior to the intervention. This study demonstrates that positive nonenforcement contact can improve public attitudes toward police and suggests that police departments would benefit from an increased focus on strategies that promote positive police-public interactions.
-
ItemSending a message: The Australian's reporting of media policy(SAGE, 2015-11-01)As Australia's only national general newspaper, with an elite ‘political class’ audience, The Australian has been at the forefront of newspaper proprietors' attempts to influence media policy. This article analyses The Australian's reporting of two key media policy proposals affecting newspapers: the establishment of the Australian Press Council in 1975–76 and the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation (the Finkelstein inquiry) in 2012–13. While the events were 36 years apart, the paper's stance and rhetoric were remarkably similar. However, its approach to journalism and to providing information to its audience changed in several important respects.
-
ItemNews Corporation Tabloids and Press Photography During the 2013 Australian Federal Election(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2017)Academic attention has often been focused upon analysing words in journalism texts and, consequently, the impact of photographs in newspaper journalism has tended to be overlooked. This is problematic because images are a key method by which news is selected, framed and communicated, particularly in tabloid newspapers. This article focuses upon criticisms that tabloids from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation Australia were biased—against the Kevin Rudd-led Labor government and towards Tony Abbott’s conservative Liberal–National Coalition—during the 2013 federal election in Australia. Through an analysis of front pages, this article explores how photographs contributed to reporting the campaign and expressing the strong political preferences of News Corporation. The article concludes that Murdoch’s Australian tabloids shifted towards a British-style overt partisanship in their reporting of the 2013 election. Images were at the forefront of that shift as they are a powerful tool for conveying messages of newspaper support and opposition, and occupy a central place in how political issues, events and individuals are represented and understood.
-
ItemPress Photography and Visual Censorship in the Australian Parliament(WILEY, 2018-03-01)Still photography is an important medium for visually communicating — and scrutinising — the power of elected representatives. However, it has been severely restricted by parliaments. Surprisingly, the photographs taken by press photographers have been viewed as a larger threat to parliamentary dignity than other seemingly more powerful media, such as television. This article analyses parliaments’ “extraordinary sensitivity to photography” by conducting a comparative, historical examination of press photography in five national parliaments — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The article discusses historical milestones in media access for each of these parliaments, but focuses particularly upon the unusual case of the Australian Parliament and its rules on still photography. The author draws upon interviews conducted with Australian press photographers, as well as an analysis of primary material — including parliamentary guidelines on media access, photographs, newspaper reports, parliamentary debates, inquiry reports and submissions.
-
Item[Review of the book Is the American Century Over? by J.S. Nye Jr.](Cambridge University Press, 2016-08-01)
-
ItemExplaining provincial government health expenditures in China: evidence from panel data 2007–2013(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2017-07-03)Background: Since the mid-2000s, the Chinese government has increased government health expenditures (GHE) significantly to address widespread complaints about health delivery. This study examines the real per capita provincial GHE over the period 2007–2013 to identify the determinants of provincial GHE during the most recent round of health reforms. Methods: A range of theoretically grounded socioeconomic indicators were collected from the China Statistical Yearbooks and then factored to reduce the number of highly correlated indicators. Maps were drawn to visualise the spatial patterns of key variables and fixed-effects regressions were run to test relationships between the real per capita provincial GHE and various variables. GMM estimators were used to address endogeneity problems. Results: Key determinants of provincial GHE in China include the real per capita budgetary deficits, economy, and industrial structure (two factors composed from an exploratory factor analysis). Increasing 1000 yuan real per capita budgetary deficits was expected to increase the real per capita GHE by 34 yuan. A one-unit increase in the economy was associated with a 249 yuan higher real per capita GHE, while a one-unit increase in the industrial structure was expected to decrease the real per capita GHE by 33 yuan. Conclusions: The findings of this study reveal a worrisome picture: potential inefficiencies of the central government’s funding efforts and the overwhelming importance of economic development for GHE.
-
ItemThe Impact of Jihadist Foreign Fighters on Indigenous Secular-Nationalist Causes: Contrasting Chechnya and Syria(TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC, 2015-02-01)Jihadist foreign fighters have become common in civil conflicts in Muslim countries. While research exists on the impact they have upon returning home, less attention has been given to their influence on the opposition cause that they mobilize in support of. This article looks at the impact that jihadist foreign fighters on the Chechen and Syrian resistance causes, evaluating their influence on oppositional cohesion and ideology, domestic and international perceptions of the movements, and on governmental narratives regarding the conflicts the foreign fighters engage in. It is concluded that foreign fighters have overwhelmingly damaged the Chechen and Syrian opposition movements, making the likelihood of opposition success more remote.
-
ItemForeign Fighters, Human Rights and Self-Determination in Syria and Iraq: Decoding the Humanitarian Impact of Foreign Fighters in Practice(MARTINUS NIJHOFF PUBL, 2016-01-01)Foreign fighters have become inextricably linked to perceptions of human rights abuses in the Syria and Iraq wars, particularly since the Islamic State group founded its caliphate. This paper explores the human rights impact of foreign fighters in the conflicts, noting that while foreign fighters have been involved in grave human rights abuses, such behavior has not been uniform and must be differentiated by group and role. In this regard, it is argued that while foreign fighters have overwhelmingly had a negative impact on most human rights indicators, fighters in some groups have positively impacted the Right to Self-Determination. Further, the paper notes that while foreign fighters have been large-scale perpetrators of human rights abuses, one must also consider the propaganda value of such acts because foreign fighter-led violence is more newsworthy globally than local-led violence.
-
ItemThe syrian muslim brotherhood and the spectacle of hama(Middle East Institute, 2016-03-01)The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has been a key diplomatic player in the current Syrian uprising; a role that stands in stark contrast to its reputation among Western authors. This article argues that this chasm between the Brotherhood’s practice and reputation is a legacy of the 1982 Hama massacre. The slaughter has become a “spectacle,” as per the theory of Guy Debord, leading Hama to take on an exaggerated significance in portrayals of the Brotherhood.