Reframing Sacred Values

Sacred values differ from material or instrumental values in that they incorporate moral beliefs that drive action in ways dissociated from prospects for success. Across the world, people believe that devotion to essential or core values — such as the welfare of their family and country, or their commitment to religion, honor, and justice — are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable.
Counterintuitively, understanding an opponent's sacred values, we believe, offers surprising opportunities for breakthroughs to peace. Because of the emotional unwillingness of those in conflict situations to negotiate sacred values, conventional wisdom suggests that negotiators should either leave sacred values for last in political negotiations or should try to bypass them with sufficient material incentives. Our empirical findings and historical analysis suggest that conventional wisdom is wrong. In fact, offering to provide material benefits in exchange for giving up a sacred value actually makes settlement more difficult because people see the offering as an insult rather than a compromise. But we also found that making symbolic concessions of no apparent material benefit might open the way to resolving seemingly irresolvable conflicts.
We offer suggestions for how negotiators can reframe their position by demonstrating respect and/or by apologizing for what they sincerely regret. We also offer suggestions for how to overcome barriers by refining sacred values to exclude outmoded claims, exploiting the inevitable ambiguity of sacred values, shifting the context, provisionally prioritizing values, and reframing responsibility.     

Framing Contests and Policy Conflicts over Gas Pipelines

This paper compares and contrasts high‐conflict policy debates over the siting of three natural gas pipeline projects at different decision stages of the siting process. This paper draws on over 600 newspaper articles spanning 3 years, analyzed through Discourse Network Analysis. Drawing from the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Policy Conflict framework, this paper finds that actor framing of opposing policy beliefs involves more indirect than direct confrontations, with statements in the media waxing and waning over time. Opponents of the pipelines more often explicitly argue against pipelines, while also using a broad range of conceptual arguments, whereas proponents more often couch their arguments around the economic benefits of pipelines and use fewer conceptual frames overall. We also find evidence that opposing coalitions use similar framing across different decision contexts. This paper concludes with a commentary on the status and contributions of this paper to the study of policy conflicts and next steps in advancing similar research agendas.     

The political budget cycle across varying degrees of democracy

The political budget cycle (PBC) is a well-known theory claiming that leaders manipulate the economy in proximity to elections to improve their chances of re-election. While the existence of the phenomenon in democracies has been thoroughly discussed, little attention has been given to the theoretical justification and empirical evidence of its existence in autocracies. In this article, I present a hypothesis of the magnitude of the PBC in both autocracies and democracies, claiming that as the democracy level increases, the incentive of leaders to manipulate the economy rises, but their ability to do so is more limited. Therefore, I expect the magnitude of the PBC to be the lowest in states that are strongly autocratic (due to a lack of incentives) and in states that are strongly democratic (due to a lack of ability). The effect should be the strongest in weakly autocratic or weakly democratic states. The empirical analysis presented in the article supports the hypothesis of a non-linear correlation between the PBC and levels of democracy.     

论侦查工作的媒体监督

媒体在当代社会发挥着越来越重要的作用,特别是媒体的舆论监督作用已经触及到司法领域。因此怎样把媒体的舆论监督作用应用到侦查工作过程中来,为侦查活动服务,促进侦查活动的公开公正,对侦查工作有着极其重要的意义。     

大众传播媒介的社会责任说略

当今时代，大众传播媒介已经成为影响社会大众的重要工具之一。传媒作为传播信息的载体，承担着不可推卸的社会责任。这就同时要求传媒必须把握正确舆论导向，引导大众向健康积极的方向发展，从业人员也要实行行业自律机制，树立起良好的从业形象。大众传播媒介应成为一个集人文关怀和文化传承为一体的社会推助器，进而取得经济效益和社会效益的双丰收，为构建和谐社会作出应有的贡献。     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country-by-country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.     

中国媒体融合进程中的技术范式与政治逻辑

本文对讨论媒介变革中的两种范式--数字革命范式和媒体融合范式加以比较,并从媒体融合范式的理论框架出发,试图重新阐释中国媒体融合进程的主要特征与政治逻辑。从这一框架理解政府主导下的媒体融合进程,能够清晰地辨析出,这种政治与技术、产业间的互动可以有效地纠正技术自身发展所产生的偏向。中国的实践也反过来丰富与拓展了媒体融合范式的涵义与可能性。     

Contesting Mestizaje: Black Politics and Oral Traditions in Venezuela

Afro-descendant oral traditions are powerful modes of political expression that disrupt anti-black logics within Latin America's mestizaje. Scholarship on Afro-Latin American anti-racist mobilisation centres on large-scale, collective action. Instead, in this article, I examine songs and décimas, central forms of Afro-descendant cultural subjectivity. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in La Guaira state, Venezuela, I show how oral traditions are place-based forms of resistance against anti-black racism. This research calls on scholars to attend to oral traditions and their geographies as a tool of anti-racist political mobilisation.     

自媒体时代公安机关应对公关危机的策略探讨——以辽宁大连“刘巍巍下跪维权事件”为例

近年来,随着以微博为代表的自媒体技术的兴起和发展,打破了传统新闻媒体对舆论的控制以及对信息的垄断,往往推动突发事件快速形成并使事态发展难以预测,继而引发公关危机,给公安机关应对和有效处置涉警危机带来难度。本文以大连市公安局处置2013年＂刘巍巍下跪维权＂事件为例,就公安机关应对自媒体时代突发事件引发的公关危机策略作一些探讨。     

传媒审判与司法裁决——传媒式司法的法律、社会与政治后果

传媒在判决结果确定之前的倾向性报道和评论,受到法律形式主义的广泛批评,泸州二奶继承案的判决,不同于法律推理结论以致被认为是媒体审判的结果。法律效果、社会影响和政治后果是中国司法需要考量的三个要素,判决的社会影响和政治后果具有比法律效果更高的权重,因此在三者存在冲突的情况下,传媒式司法应当舍弃法律推理的结论,作出偏重于社会影响和政治后果的判决。媒体审判的功能在于提供判决的参考意见,而法院则需要在考量此种意见的法律、社会和政治后果的基础上作出裁决。