The Ur-History of Media Space: Walter Benjamin and the Information Industry in Nineteenth-Century Paris

This essay is primarily concerned with Walter Benjamin’s analysis of the newspaper as a media space with reference to privatization of urban space, industrialization of public communication, and mediazation of public space in nineteenth-century Paris. I seek to show how the information industry brought about the fundamental changes in literary practice, intellectual activity, and the formation of a new social subject. I also demonstrate how Benjamin’s rich illustration of the complex dynamics of media space in the nineteenth century largely avoids the shortcomings of oversimplification embedded in the analysis of the bourgeois public sphere. In doing so, I argue Benjamin’s critical analysis that the newspaper provides a systematic framework by which to examine the intersection between the media space and the urban experience in a digital age.

儒家和谐治理观与国家治理的制度化--从制度文明视角扬弃传统和谐治理观

儒家和谐治理观对历史中国和现代东亚国家的巩固和发展起了重要作用,并可以为当今中国和谐社会的建设和国家治理提供可资借鉴的思想资源。但由于其存在着理论与制度不同构、制度资源太少的根本性缺陷,不能作为解决当今社会政治问题的现成方案。欲实现社会和谐和长治久安,必须重构现代治理观,走出重“政治人”建设轻政治制度建设的历史误区,开辟一条靠制度执政、靠制度治国的新路。制度建设和创新的核心是民主与法治,其中又以党和政府的制度改革为重点。对战略策略作出理性化的选择,则是制度变革成败的关键。     

Al-Qaeda’s Propaganda Decoded: A Psycholinguistic System for Detecting Variations in Terrorism Ideology

We describe a novel hybrid method of content analysis that combines the speed of computerized text analysis with the contextual sensitivity of human raters, and apply it to speeches that were given by major leaders of Al-Qaeda (AQ)—both in its “core” Afghanistan/Pakistan region and its affiliate group in Iraq. The proposed “Ideology Extraction using Linguistic Extremization” (IELEX) categorization method has acceptable levels of inter-rater and test-retest reliabilities. The method uncovered subtle (and potentially non-conscious) differences in the emphases that Usama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri put on the various components of their ideological justification for terrorism. We show how these differences were independently recognized as the crux of the rift in AQ, based on documents that were confiscated in Abbottabad following Usama Bin Laden’s assassination. Additionally, several of the ideological discrepancies that we detected between AQ “core” and its Iraqi affiliate correspond to schisms that presumably led to the splintering of AQ Iraq and the rise of ISIS. We discuss IELEX’s capability to quantify a variety of grievance-based terrorist ideologies, along with its use towards more focused and efficient counter-terrorism and counter-messaging policies.     

“伊斯兰国”对中亚地区的安全威胁:迷思还是现实?

对于"伊斯兰国"是否会对中亚地区安全构成威胁以及这种威胁的程度如何,国内外学术界的看法存在诸多分歧。"伊斯兰国"通过招募中亚地区的人员和对各国的边界进行袭扰,并通过意识形态宣传扩大其价值观在中亚地区的影响力等方式,的确对该地区安全形势带来了一定的冲击。不过,"伊斯兰国"对中亚安全形势的影响是有限的。这主要是因为,"伊斯兰国"在国际反恐联盟的打击下,地面作战部队被限制在叙利亚一伊拉克境内,无法在中亚地区开展直接的攻击。此外,由于中亚伊斯兰特殊的发展经历,使"伊斯兰国"的意识形态在当地缺乏群众基础。这些因素,决定了"伊斯兰国"对中亚安全的影响主要体现在促进该地区部分极端势力思想的进一步激进化或激励部分恐怖分子发起"独狼式"恐怖活动等。随着"伊斯兰国"的战场失利,部分"圣战"分子回流中亚,需要对"伊斯兰国"与中亚安全之间的关联性予以更多关注,并尽早研究对策。     

Criminalising Academia: The Protection of State Information Bill and Academic Freedom

This article assesses the implications of the controversial Protection of State Information Bill for academic freedom in South Africa, specifically for communications, media and journalism studies. The Bill requires the security cluster to classify sensitive documents on national security grounds. Academic teaching and research can help citizens to understand whether the security cluster is acting in the universal interest, rather than the interest of a political elite; it can also be used to assess media performance in reporting on national security matters. Using a critical approach to the concept of national security, I argue that the Bill favours secrecy over openness, and South Africa’s embrace of the human security definition of national security has contributed to the problem. This overemphasis on secrecy is likely to reduce the few spaces that exist in academia for critical, emancipatory work on security issues, which could hobble the sector’s attempts to understand the deeper processes at work in the security cluster. If such enquiry is marginalised, then the higher education system risks becoming an instrument for continuity rather than change in South Africa’s existing, highly unequal power relations: relations that are being maintained increasingly by force.     

澳大利亚网络安全战略的新内涵与新动向

澳大利亚致力于打造公私部门间"共同领导""共同责任""自我约束"和"自主治理"的网络安全治理新模式,以维护网络空间的安全与稳定、保证国家网络安全、实现数字经济效益的最大化。当前,澳大利亚的网络安全战略正处于转型期,特恩布尔政府在继承既有战略的基础上,对澳大利亚的网络安全战略进行了适时调整,包括增加对"印太地区"的网络安全投入、保持澳美网络安全战略的联动性、提高网络进攻能力以适应互联网军事化需要等。目前,网络空间无政府状态下中美权力的竞争态势正在加剧,澳大利亚的网络安全战略会带有一定的干预主义性质,并向"前沿防御"方向发展。受此影响,澳大利亚的对华网络安全政策可能会面临冲击。但是,中国与澳大利亚的网络安全合作仍在向前发展。虽然中澳网络安全合作仍处于起步阶段,但澳大利亚对中国建设网络强国持欢迎态度,愿意与中国就制定网络行为规范、维护网络空间秩序开展合作。     

“Les catholiques sont l’élite!”: représentations de l’espace politique par une minorité religieuse au Burkina Faso

Abstract

The Catholic Church occupies a privileged position in the religious arena in Burkina Faso. Having invested very early in the public arena of the country, it constitutes a vital actor in the socio-political landscape of the country as attested to by its involvement in the domains of education and health and its positioning as mediator in times of crisis. Based on a field survey conducted among members of the Catholic community (members of the clergy, religious and lay), this article studies the manner in which Catholics in Burkina Faso portray themselves as a religious community in the country’s political arena. It reveals that in Burkina Faso the Catholics portray themselves as a dominant religious minority in terms of politics due to their disproportionate engagement in the apparatus of the state. The article also shows that the Catholics in Burkina Faso see their dominant position as under threat, on the one hand, from competition by the Protestants and, on the other, by the rise of Islamism.     

Limits of regulatory governance change in the post-developmental state: Korean telecommunications market restructurings from a comparative perspective

This study explains the limits of institutional transformation in Korea from the developmental state to a post-developmental state, in terms of regulatory institutions instead of developmental institutions. The Korean state has taken advantage of the government's discretionary policy changes and power formed by both informal state institutions and informal policy networks, while the regulatory state has placed a special emphasis on social consensus as well as political support for changes of market institutions. New market rules and laws have also been inefficient and ineffective for fair market competition. Limits of regulatory governance change have occurred due to misalignments between informal regulatory institutions in the developmental state and formal regulatory institutions in the post-developmental state. State managers have created discretionary state intervention in policy implementation, politicized the roles of regulatory agencies, and brought ministry-type regulatory state institutions back in. The establishment of effective market institutions has failed due to informal market institutions (unfair and illegal market practices) that have interfered with the policy implementation of new formal market regulations.     

西安坊上回族居住空间与言语社区的分化

居住空间的分化是族群内部分化的外部表征。20世纪90年代以来,西安坊上回族社区的居住空间分化为自建房和单元楼两种形式,并形成了相对独立的两个子社区。对调查数据的量化和质化分析发现,居住空间的重置引发了坊上回族社区语言使用和语言认知的分化,回族通过不同语言变体的选择及其价值判断,强化子社区内部的言语规范和身份认同。研究表明,从居住空间视角深入探索语言变体社会意义的演变,有助于揭示说话人新的身份认同的构建机制。     

The consequences of supply gaps in two-dimensional policy spaces for voter turnout and political support: The case of economically left-wing and culturally right-wing citizens in Western Europe

Parties with left-wing positions on economic issues and right-wing (i.e., authoritarian) positions on cultural issues have been historically largely absent from the supply side of the policy space of Western European democracies. Yet, many citizens hold such left-authoritarian issue attitudes. This article addresses the hypotheses that left-authoritarian citizens are less likely to vote, less satisfied with the democratic process and have lower levels of political trust when there is a left-authoritarian supply gap. Using data for 14 Western European countries from the European Social Survey 2008 in the main analysis, it is shown that left-authoritarians are less likely to vote and exhibit lower levels of satisfaction with democracy and political trust. A supplementary analysis of national election studies from Finland before and after the electoral breakthrough of the left-authoritarian True Finns Party in 2011 indicates that whether left-authoritarians participate less and believe less in the efficacy of voting is contingent on the presence of a strong left-authoritarian party. This study illuminates how constrained party supply in a two-dimensional policy space can affect voter turnout as well as political support, and has broader implications for the potential further rise of left-authoritarian challenger parties.