Japanese civil society in global governance: the case of 2015 UN World Conference on disaster risk reduction

In 2015, the Hyogo Framework for Action on disaster risk reduction (DRR) expired, necessitating the introduction of a new international agreement. This article investigates the activities and achievements of the Japan civil society organization coalition for the 2015 UN World Conference on DRR (JCC2015) from the point of view of its involvement in the shaping of the new Sendai Framework for DRR. Although JCC2015 contributed to agenda setting and policy development processes and managed to secure recognition for its position on nuclear risk at a regional level, its participation did not translate into impact on the Sendai Framework to the extent it wished to achieve. The article’s findings testify to the on-going and active inclusion of non-governmental stakeholders in the UN-led global policy-making processes concerning reducing disaster risk, but they also illustrate difficulties that actors who aim to introduce new elements into the agenda need to tackle.     

The local news media impeding solutions to the Cyprus conflict: competing discourses of nationalism in Turkish Cypriot radio news

This paper, drawing on data from a news production study, carries out a critical discourse analysis of two stories produced by the Turkish Cypriot national news agency (TAK) and the stories produced by three local radio stations based on these texts. Both TAK and the three stations are partisan and used by owners and the elite for political self-promotion that supports what are broadly two different kinds of economic interests. One seeks to benefit from economic links with mainland Turkey and the other through relative independence yet continued isolation and separation from the Greek Cypriot-controlled Republic of Cyprus. Neither position favours unification with the Republic of Cyprus now highly popular with the majority of the population. To this end, stations recontextualise events to promote two different discourses of national identity, one that is Turkish and one that is based on an independent Turkish Cyprus. While listeners tend to accept that news broadcasts will reflect the viewpoints of owners and controllers, what is less understood is the way that even the most mundane and banal news stories are recontextualised to support these. It is this that is explored in this paper.     

Uneven local implementation of federal policy after disaster: Policy conflict and goal ambiguity

As climate change continues to increase both the frequency and intensity of environmental hazards and disasters, the need for a cohesive national mitigation policy grows. As the environmental federalism scholarship indicates, the inherent tension in federal, state, and local policy implementation highlights that despite a national need, environmental quality is a local public good. To complicate matters, there is disagreement about the optimal level of decision-making regarding the adoption and implementation of environmental policy. This study addresses this gap by considering the role of policy ambiguity and conflict in policy implementation. The analysis relies on primary qualitative data collected from open-ended interviews with 22 local government officials in 12 municipalities following Hurricane Harvey. Through the lens of policy ambiguity and conflict, we find confirmatory support for the idea that policies with less ambiguous goals are more likely to be implemented. Furthermore, we find that policy conflict arises when local governments perceive there is little for the community to gain by implementing the federal program. Thus, the level of protection afforded to citizens varies greatly between communities and is influenced heavily by politics. This research supports the Ambiguity-Conflict Model of policy implementation, an oft-cited but rarely tested theoretical framework for assessing the intergovernmental politics of policy implementation. It also demonstrates the barriers to local implementation of federal environmental policy in a nested system of government.     

Image repair in the aftermath of inaccurate polling: How the news media responded to getting it wrong in 1948 and 2016

The US presidential elections of 1948 and 2016 produced surprise outcomes when the predicted winners ended up losing the election. Using image repair theory, this article explains the strategies the media used to repair their image in light of predicting the wrong winner. Using a qualitative analysis of news coverage that immediately followed the 1948 and 2016 presidential elections, this study finds that the media utilized similar image repair strategies of offering explanations for poor information, highlighting the media’s good reporting, diminishing the harm caused by the inaccurate predictions, and justifying the inaccurate predictions of both elections. However, the media responses in 1948 and 2016 differed greatly in tone and in the utilization of a new attack strategy to deflect criticism of the media itself. These strategies suggest that media use of image restoration is limited because of the unique societal expectations placed on the press, and that the media’s inaccurate 2016 predictions and subsequent attack strategies may have been contributed to the heightened criticism of mainstream news.     

Religion,globalization and commodification in online world news slideshows: the dis/connection of images and texts

Lately, possibilities of producing and spreading news pictures have increased explosively through online media. Concurrently, religion has become increasingly salient in politics and news. Both processes are connected to globalization. This study encompasses globalization, religion and online images and aims to convey how online world news slideshows represent religion, and more particularly how linguistic and visual parts of picture paragraphs are interrelated, as well as related to representations of different religions. Methodologically multimodal analysis and discourse analysis are combined, focusing on composition of images and (dis-)connection of images and texts. Theories on globalization and possibilities and particularities of online news (pictures) and slideshows, frame the analysis. Tendencies to templates for different religions are found. Many religions appear as aesthetic commodities in images, whereas Islam in texts “sells” images of violence/destruction. Image–text relations are thus crucial both in the creation of meaning and of commodities in online news image culture. Two main image–text types are identified: “Religion in text, (potential) violence/destruction/despair in picture” (Islam) and “Spirituality/worshipping/aestheticism” (other religions). The world news slideshows have crucial roles as containers for these polarized image–text types, where they are related to and defined by each other in the genre's (cl)aim to cover the whole world.     

Across time and space: Explaining variation in news coverage of the European Union

News about the European Union (EU) looks different in different countries at different points in time. This study investigates explanations for cross‐national and over‐time variation in news media coverage of EU affairs drawing on large‐scale media content analyses of newspapers and television news in the EU‐15 (1999), EU‐25 (2004) and EU‐27 (2009) in relation to European Parliament (EP) elections. The analyses focus in particular on explanatory factors pertaining to media characteristics and the political elites. Results show that national elites play an important role for the coverage of EU matters during EP election campaigns. The more strongly national parties are divided about the EU in combination with overall more negative positions towards the EU, the more visible the news. Also, increases in EU news visibility from one election to the next and the Europeanness of the news are determined by a country's elite positions. The findings are discussed in light of the EU's alleged communication deficit.     

Intersectoral differences in public affairs: the duty of public reporting in public administration

Public reporting is a requirement for public affairs practitioners in public administration because of the democratic context in which government operates. By reporting to the public‐at‐large on agency activities, government agencies contributed to an informed citizenry, the essential foundation of a democracy. For public affairs in business administration and non‐profit administration, public reporting is desirable rather than mandatory. Public reporting was traditionally accomplished indirectly, through news media coverage of government. However, recent research suggests a diminution of interest by the media in fulfilling its role as an instrument of democracy. This means that the public reporting obligation of public affairs professionals in public administration needs to shift to direct reporting, through such products as annual reports, newsletters, TV programmes, Internet websites etc. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Party contestation and Europe on the news agenda: The 2009 European Parliamentary Elections

In this article we analyse the news coverage of the 2009 EP elections in all 27 EU member states (N = 52,009). We propose that the extent to which these second-order elections are salient to the media depends on political parties contesting the elections. Consistent with expectations, the findings suggest that the saliency of EP elections is increasing and that the degree of political contestation over Europe contributes to this development in a non-linear fashion so that only when contestation develops beyond a certain point, does media coverage increase.     

Terrorist events,emotional reactions,and political participation: the 2015 Paris attacks

The impact of terrorist events on attitude formation and change among mass publics has been well established in political research. Still, no individual-level study has examined the impact of terrorist attacks on political participation. This article aims to fill that gap. Drawing on theories of affect, it is predicted that fear stemming from a terrorist attack will increase motivation to seek out political information, yet will have a negative effect on actual participation. On the contrary, anger will hinder information seeking but will boost the intention to participate in political rallies. These hypotheses are tested using data from a two-wave panel study that collected one wave before and a second wave after the January 2015 Paris attacks, and from one cross-sectional study carried out soon after the November 2015 attacks.     

The Public Management of Risk: The Case for Deliberating among Worldviews

This article argues that the public management of risk faces inherent "wicked issue" problems which are further accentuated in the context of the contemporary regulatory state. It is suggested that in order to overcome these limitations and inevitable trade-offs, there needs to be a more conscientious effort in setting out distinct components of any public management of risk, which should be considered and discussed through the lens of distinct worldviews contrasting interpretations and solutions, as well as potential "black-spots." It is only by acknowledging limitations of any one strategy and by considering plural solutions that there is less likelihood of disappointment when dealing with crises and disasters.     

Domination,global harms,and the problem of silent citizenship: toward a republican theory of global justice

Many citizens across the globe suffer domination and injustice in silence. It is not a silence of apathy or approval, but is another sort of silent citizenship born of deep inequality. This article attempts to come to terms with the global scope of silent citizenship as a form of domination that has become increasingly common among the worst-off in society. I argue that identifying problems of silent citizenship requires us to give priority to injustice over justice in future efforts to promote global justice. To illustrate how this might be done, I broaden the scope of republican theories of nondomination to consider how they might be applied to silent citizenship from a global perspective.     

Coverage of bombings for political advantage: Turkish on-line news reporting of the 2016 Ankara attacks

On 17 February 2016, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 28 people and injuring another 61 in the “heart” of Turkey’s capital Ankara. A few hours after the attack, the Turkish government blamed Salih Neccar from the (mostly) Kurdish-Syrian People’s protection Unit (YPG). Two days later, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed responsibility and named the bomber as Abdülbaki Sömer a Turkish citizen. The bombing is part of a resumption of violence in Turkey between Turkish government authorities and Kurdish groups. In this paper, we examine how on-line news stories recontextualise the bombing. We assert that news sources multimodally recontextualise the bombing in ways which are advantageous to the news organisations’ owners, political alliances and supporters. By each news source representing their political interests unquestionably positive and opposition unconditionally negative, polarisation in Turkish politics is articulated. This does nothing to solve problems and heal wounds in a time of national crisis.     

Consuming Spaces: Clive Barker,William Gibson and the Cultural Poetics of Postmodern Fantasy

A significant trend emerges in contemporary fantasy-what might be called 'heterocosmic fantasy', as opposed to an older but still vital tradition of 'epic' high fantasy. The narrative forms of heterocosmic fantasy accord with the defining characteristics of contemporary media (particularly the Internet and contemporary television programming, and the practice of 'surfing' both of these), but this form of fantasy also rehearses certain ideological modes of behaviour. In particular, it rehearses in textual form the illusory alterity, the management of potential social unrest, and the frenetic consumption of 'late capitalist' society.     

Television and party political dissent: intra‐party competition and the formation of news agendas

This paper re‐examines the formation of political news agendas on British television. It argues that studies of news agenda formation in political communication have been overly focused on general election campaigns and the competition between the main political parties to set the news agenda. It suggests that such studies see political parties as either homogeneous or focus exclusively on the activities of communication elites and therefore miss another important aspect of the modern political communication process. Using the British party conferences as a case study, this paper argues that in order to capture the complexities of agenda formation outside election periods, political parties have to be seen as heterogeneous organisations, consisting of various ‘claim‐makers’. News agendas in certain situations have to be understood as the product of intra‐party competition between the leadership and dissenting voices. While this competition is imperfect, favouring resource rich party elites, on certain newsworthy issues broadcasting professionals act as a counterweight to leadership resource advantages, and help shape the outcome of intra‐party competition. In conclusion the paper suggests that dissenting actors within political parties, when newsworthy, can make a substantial contribution to the formation of television news agendas despite the resistance of party leaderships. Taking account of the communicative activity of these actors and of news values will provide further insights into the formation of political news agendas between general elections. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications     

Real-time biopolitics: the actuary and the sentinel in global public health

Abstract

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which experts in the field of global health work to manage the future well-being of populations. It develops a contrast between two ways of approaching disease threats: actuarial and sentinel devices. If actuarial devices seek to map disease over time and across populations in order to gauge and mitigate risk, sentinel devices treat unprecedented diseases that cannot be mapped over time, but can only be anticipated and prepared for. The paper shows that a recent controversy over vaccination in Europe in response to the H1N1 pandemic can be understood in terms of the tension between these two kinds of security mechanisms.     

Sensibility in the era of global communication: a semioethic perspective1

This article proposes a phenomenological and semiotic analysis of sensibility in the era of globalization, which is the era of global communication. How are time, space, self, others, life, death, health, illness, work, employment, unemployment, free-time, development, underdevelopment, and so forth, perceived in today's world? As vast as this excursion may seem, these different issues concerning sensibility all bear on the problem of the relation between identity and alterity. The hypothesis guiding my analysis is that the common denominator in science and sensibility today is the ideology, or ideo-logic, of identity. However, taking Europe as our societal paradigm the ideo-logic of identity reveals itself as a menace to the difficult process of forming the European Union. In Europe – indeed, in world history at large – the logic of identity and of alterity can be traced in all the important phases that have determined peoples’ historical destiny. In the current phase of development in the social reproduction system of advanced capitalism, the contrast between identity and alterity is at an extreme, at the point of exasperation. In this article I intend to explore the possibility of opening sensibility to alterity not only in Europe, but in the anthroposociosemiosic sphere at large.     

Performing the demos: towards a processive theory of global democracy

Debates on global democracy have tended to focus on the possibility of a global democratic entity based on the feasibility of institutional structures that, however inadvertently, take state-based conceptualizations of democracy as their reference point. More recently, however, some theorists have argued for a more ‘performative’ approach that focuses on the demos rather than the kratos and the capacity of political actors to ‘perform’ a role as members of a global demos (List and Koenig-Archibugi 2010 List, C. and Koenig-Archibugi, M., 2010. Can there be a global demos? an Agency-Based approach. Philosophy and public affairs, 38 (1), 76–110.10.1111/papa.2010.38.issue-1[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). While advancing global democracy debates, this ‘performative’ approach leans towards an overly mechanical, static account of performativity that defines democratic behaviour in terms of the functional requirements of political systems. Based on the ‘realist turn’ in contemporary political theory, this article argues for an alternative account of performativity. When coupled with a theory of political complexity, this implies a more processive theory of global democracy that is focused more on what it means for a demos to ‘perform’ democratically than the development of specific institutional configurations. A processive theory of global democracy concentrates more on the emergence of multilevel democratic practices that supplement existing state-based democratic procedures rather than conceiving global democracy as a new, fixed institutional configuration to replace existing democratic structures. Understood in these terms, the debate on the possibility or impossibility of global democracy, which takes as its reference point existing state-based institutional structures, deflects attention from the more pertinent and substantive matter of whether particular initiatives and processes in specific contexts are more or less democratic in global terms.     

Epidemiological accountability: philanthropists,global health and the audit of saving lives

Abstract

There have been concerns about the recent private turn and re-emergence of philanthropies in world health, with many worrying about philanthropies’ perceived lack of transparency and accountability. In contrast, I argue that while the private turn might have led to a decline in democratic or public accountability, it did not bring an end to all forms of accountability. Specifically, I suggest that philanthropists’ involvement in global health has led to the spread of another, new form of accountability: epidemiological accountability. The latter is a combination of two regimes of expertise and practices hitherto kept separate: audit and epidemiology. To substantiate this argument, I draw on my research on the Bloomberg Initiative – a global effort to reduce tobacco use spearheaded by the Bloomberg and Gates foundations.     

Disowning Fukushima: Managing the credibility of nuclear reliability assessment in the wake of disaster

This paper reflects on the credibility of nuclear risk assessment in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns. In democratic states, policymaking around nuclear energy has long been premised on an understanding that experts can objectively and accurately calculate the probability of catastrophic accidents. Yet the Fukushima disaster lends credence to the substantial body of social science research that suggests such calculations are fundamentally unworkable. Nevertheless, the credibility of these assessments appears to have survived the disaster, just as it has resisted the evidence of previous nuclear accidents. This paper looks at why. It argues that public narratives of the Fukushima disaster invariably frame it in ways that allow risk‐assessment experts to “disown” it. It concludes that although these narratives are both rhetorically compelling and highly consequential to the governance of nuclear power, they are not entirely credible.     

The Banking Crisis: Grid,Group and the State of the Debate

The banking crisis and the recession it induced provide a salient backdrop to domestic and international politics. ² The International Monetary Fund (IMF 2010) estimates that total banking losses between 2008 and 2010 exceeded US$2.3 trillion. This article uses grid‐group theory to review the existing literature on the causes of the banking crisis and, in doing so, distinguishes between hierarchical, individualist, egalitarian and fatalist accounts of what went wrong and of what needs to be done to prevent another crisis from occurring. It is argued that the existing reform agenda is underpinned by a hierarchical analysis of the causes of the crisis and that this risks narrowing the support base for the reform process.