Last Thoughts on <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Last Intellectuals</Emphasis>

Over twenty years ago my book The Last Intellectuals put into circulation the phrase “public intellectual.” The term unexpectedly enjoyed great success. It encapsulated a new division between a professional or academic intellectual focused on his or her specialty and an intellectual orientated to a larger public. The former tend to disappear into the university, while they latter write for the educated public. In the twenty years since its publication, my book has been sharply challenged. Moreover the emergence of African-American and women intellectuals, and well as new developments such as Internet, have possibly undermined my thesis. Yet these phenomena amount to revisions, not refutations, of my thesis. Moreover the role of intellectuals in France and Germany suggest that the same process of academization is taking place in other advanced industrial nations. What is called for is not nostalgia or its opposite, a celebration of everything that happens, but a consideration of the real shifts that affect the lives and work of intellectuals.

‘Flat and fabulous’: women’s breast reconstruction refusals post-mastectomy and the negotiation of normative femininity

The ‘pinkification’ of breast cancer culture in recent years conflates women’s empowerment with the celebration of hyperfemininity. Consistent with this trend, reconstructive surgery post-mastectomy is increasingly normalised: restoring the breasts is to restore ‘lost’ femininity. Contextualised within the pressures of this normalisation, our article explores how women who decide against breast reconstruction negotiate their non-normative ‘flat’ bodies. We examine women’s posts in a breast cancer forum about their refusals of breast reconstruction. Using thematic and feminist post-structuralist analyses, we suggest that although health and body acceptance discourses enable resistance to embodied femininity norms, pressures to conform permeate practices related to appearance. Clothes and prosthetic breasts enabled forum participants to pass as ‘healthy’, ‘whole’, and ‘recovered’. The study’s findings emphasise the limitations to agency and resistance that emanate from the ways constraining gender discourses infiltrate every aspect of a woman’s life. In line with a critical awareness approach to breast cancer education, we discuss the possibilities of resistance afforded by the safe spaces of online communities.     

Does online voting change the outcome? Evidence from a multi-mode public policy referendum

Do online and offline voters differ in terms of policy preferences? The growth of Internet voting in recent years has opened up new channels of participation. Whether or not political outcomes change as a consequence of new modes of voting is an open question. Here we analyze all the votes cast both offline (n = 5.7 million) and online (n = 1.3 million) and compare the actual vote choices in a public policy referendum, the world's largest participatory budgeting process, in Rio Grande do Sul in June 2014. In addition to examining aggregate outcomes, we also conducted two surveys to better understand the demographic profiles of who chooses to vote online and offline. We find that policy preferences of online and offline voters are no different, even though our data suggest important demographic differences between offline and online voters.     

The social semiotic of homophone phrase substitution in Chinese netizen discourse

The paper addresses an ingenious way by which Chinese netizens manage to reach their intended audiences under the radar of censors surveying the Internet in China. One specifically Chinese social use of language in this respect is the option to express criticism by using inoffensive characters that share the same or similar pronunciation with politically sensitive phrasing. We identify this type of expression as homophone phrase substitution (HPS). The device has been part of Chinese since ancient times under the name political metaphor. We address the main constraints at work in HPS, especially the role of voice (prosodic contour) that guides the construction of two divergent kinds of aboutness. Leaving aside its critical function in contemporary society, by contrasting HPS with verbal irony, metaphor, and Australian rhyming slang, and by drawing on semiologie and semiotics, indirect speech acts and implicit deixis, we suggest that this linguistic option throws new light on the semantic/pragmatic distinction.     

#Democracy: social media use and democratic legitimacy in Central and Eastern Europe

Since 1989, many of the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have made the dramatic change from communist regimes to democratic nations that are integrated in the European sphere. While these sweeping changes have given rise to a successful transition to democracy unlike any the world has ever seen, there remain issues with governance as well as citizen support for the regime. While other studies have shown that mass media can influence a person's attitudes and opinions in the region, none has explored what effect social media can have on orientations toward democracy in the region. In the following paper, I build several hypotheses based on previous studies of media effects and democratic survival. I then employ survey data to empirically test whether social media increases support for democracy. The study finds that not only does using social media increase support for democracy, but also simple usage rather than information seeking provides more consistent effects on a person's support for democracy in CEE.     

劳动关系视角下的网约用工纠纷研究

近年来,网络平台与网约工的劳动纠纷开始显现在司法实务中。面对类似纠纷,法院采取了不同的立场。尽管网约用工打破了过去"单一企业对应单一员工"的劳动关系模式,但根据现行法律,仅凭合作协议难以认定网络平台与网约工存在劳动关系。一方面应当区分网约工与网络平台签订劳动合同、网络平台与其它企业进行合作、网络平台直接与网约工签订合作协议三种形式,另一方面应当在司法实践中对"各项劳动规章制度适用"、"受劳动管理"、"从事用人单位安排的有报酬的劳动"进行统一规范解释。最后应当在司法经验基础上根据"互联网+"背景下共享经济的特点完善劳动法。     

互联网发展的主要法治问题

互联网的安全问题、网上言论表达自由、电子商务、人格权保护、著作权保护、侵权责任等问题都是信息时代的法律所面对的新挑战。从我国的法治建设全局出发,对这些法律问题进行深入研究,提出相应的立法和司法对策,是当前的一项紧迫任务。构建互联网上的法治,需要借鉴相关国家(地区)的立法,总结近年来各种特别立法和司法审判实践的经验,探索从特别法调整为主过渡到专门法律调整为主的模式。     

浅析未成年人犯罪

我国的未成年人犯罪已成为社会各界所普遍关注的问题之一。本文概括出未成年人犯罪的基本状况和心理行为的特点,着重探讨了未成年人犯罪的主客观原因,从社会、学校和家庭三方面进行了系统分析,重点分析了社会因素中的网络因素及家庭教育因素。通过预测分析未成年人犯罪的发展趋势,有针对性地提出了预防未成年人犯罪的基本对策。     

Tony Blair's 'Media' Speech: The Commentators

Tony Blair's speech challenged the media over its standards in his valedictory lecture. Many of his charges about the absence of balance, attacks on motive and a pack mentality stand up, even if some are exaggerated and also applied well before his arrival in 10 Downing Street. Mr Blair's solutions did ot match his critique. What is required is a more self‐questioning media, being held to account on the internet and on specialist blogging sites. Vigorous criticism, requiring justification, is a more credible rout than tighter regulation. Tony Blair's speech on the changing pressures on the media is both interesting and convincing in its diagnosis (although generally reported in ways that did not reveal this). It is less convincing in suggestions for change: the fact that on‐line media will fall under Of‐com, and so under its minimal ‘content regulation’ will have little impact. Effective change could begin with other types of (self or other regulation). Some steps towards change might include minimal requirements for journalists and editors to accept elementary forms of accountability, such as disclosing conflicts of interest and payments made for ‘stories’. The scale of media coverage may be crucial in determining the allocation of aid, yet the attention the media pays to particular causes is arbitrary. Many serious disasters are not reported and as a consequence do not receive adequate aid, so that the victims of the crisis will lose out. Chronic long term problems, like famine, are ignored in favour of ‘sudden emergencies’. Reporting seeks sensation and simple stories which influences the way that aid agencies respond to the media. The complex background to a faraway disaster is often overlooked and not properly reported. Tony Blair's speech describing some of the news media as ‘feral beasts’ contained one paragraph which contained an insight into his views on new media. It was known that the outgoing Prime Minister was uncomfortable with some aspects of new technology but his remarks reveal a wider disappointment with how new media has failed to deliver changes which he had hoped for in political communications.This paper records Mr Blair's problems with new media and argues that by focusing on how the new technologies might provide a better way for politicians to by‐pass the traditional media he has missed the point of their wider benefits.     

基于Internet的电子政务模拟教学软件的构建

电子政务以其丰富的信息资源、高效的管理模式越来越受到人们的普遍关注,并已成为我国政府管理信息化的关键.与此相对应,电子政务的教学与培训也成了一个热门的社会话题并引起了政府与教育机构的重视.在分析构建电子政务系统意义的基础上,阐述了基于Internet的电子政务模拟教学软件的设计目标、基本功能构成以及采用的技术路线.