Putting the medium back into mediation

Abstract

The dominant theoretical paradigm in contemporary South African media studies is one which encourages scholars to focus on questions of representation: on the content of media texts, on how accurately they portray the world, and on how individuals or groups react to those portrayals. While acknowledging the value of this orthodox approach, we argue that attention to the non-representational or material dimensions of mediated experience raises important new issues for the discipline, doing greater justice to the intimate material role the media play in the world and also serving as a first step towards reconceptualising human subjectivity in a way that goes beyond the traditional subject–object epistemology of modern humanism. We use an example from film melodrama to illustrate how the affective and phenomenological dimensions of the film-viewing experience can promote a positive pre-discursive engagement with (human) being – with what Deleuze characterises as ‘a life’. In this case we link affective engagement to the possibility of a regenerative politics that may begin to challenge and supplement the increasingly suspect modern political tropes of agency and identity.     

Contested views of expertise in children’s care and permanence proceedings

In this article, we consider different perspectives on who is best able to provide relevant and helpful expertise in public law cases where the long-term care of children is under consideration. Opinions vary and sometimes conflict on the respective importance of legal, child development, and lay understandings. These opinions relate to views on rights, appropriate procedures, decision-making processes, and the effects of decisions on children. Firstly, we summarise literature relevant to the knowledge and skills of three key groups of decision-makers within the Scottish child care system: legal professionals, child care professionals and lay decision-makers, and outline literature about guardians ad litem and their counterparts. We then discuss issues of expertise emerging from a study exploring the reasons for, and impact of, the appointment of safeguarders (who, in Scotland, perform a similar role to guardians). We conclude that there may be an increasing tendency for disagreement and a lack of clarity about who brings the most relevant and helpful expertise to hearings; this may have negative effects for children.     

Yea or Nay: Do Legislators Benefit by Voting Against Their Party?

This article asks whether legislators are able to reap electoral benefits from opposing their party on one or more high‐profile issues. Using data from a national survey in which citizens are asked their own positions on seven high‐profile issues voted on by the U.S. Senate, as well as how they believe their state's two senators have voted on these issues, I find that senators generally do not benefit from voting against their party. Specifically, when a senator deviates from her party, the vast majority of out‐partisans nonetheless persist in believing that the senator voted with her party anyhow; and while the small minority of out‐partisans who are aware of her deviation are indeed more likely to approve of and vote for such a senator, there are simply too few of these correctly informed citizens for it to make a meaningful difference for the senator's overall support.     

Collateral damage: do gender quotas undermine party discipline?

Quotas are the most disputed instrument to promote equal representation of women. Today, political parties in more than 90 democracies apply them. Essentially, gender quotas are a manipulation of the electoral rules. Scholars of legislative politics have created an impressive knowledge of the effect of electoral rules on political behaviour. So far, this literature remains unconnected to the literature on gender quotas. Our study contributes to closing that research gap.     

Decomposing Human Blood: Canine Detection Odor Signature and Volatile Organic Compounds

The admissibility of human “odor mortis” discrimination in courts depends on the lack of comprehension of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) during the human decay process and of the lack in standardized procedures in training cadaver dogs. Blood was collected from four young people who died from traffic accidents and analyzed using HS‐SPME/GC‐MS at different decompositional stages. Two dogs, professionally trained, were tested to exactly locate blood samples, for each time point of the experiment. We found a long list of VOCs which varied from fresh to decomposed blood samples, showing differences in specific compounds. Dog performance showed a positive predictive value between 98.96% and 100% for DOG A, and between 99.47% and 100% for DOG B. Our findings demonstrated that decomposing human blood is a good source of VOCs and a good target for canine training.     

The Prevalence of Female Representation in Supervisory and Management Positions in American Law Enforcement: An Examination of Organizational Correlates

Increasing gender diversity in American policing has long been a focus of reform efforts since the 1960s. Although the proportion of women in the profession improved initially and research has focused on the gender breakdown of police organizations in general, less scholarly and empirical attention has been directed to female representation in positions of power (i.e., supervisory and management roles). Using data from the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey, the current study examined the prevalence as well as the organizational correlates of female representation in supervisory (e.g., sergeants), mid-level management (e.g., lieutenants) and chief executive roles in departments across the United States. The findings indicate a number of factors associated with female representation in supervisory and mid-level management positions, including the size and type of agencies, geographic region of the country, and potential indicators of professionalism. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Do competitive districts get more political attention? Strategic use of geographic representation during campaign and non-campaign periods

MPs are elected as delegates of their electoral district to represent their constituents' interests. Geographical representation is considered a central quality indicator for legislative systems. Yet whether the strategic use of geographic representation is affected by tactical campaign considerations has received less attention. The availability of social media data on a fine-grained level allows us to fill this gap by studying the following question: To what extent do politicians strategically use geographic representation during electoral campaign and non-campaign times? I combine literature comparing campaign and non-campaign periods with studies on strategic incentives for MPs to geographic representation. Empirically, I rely on quantitative text-analytical tools to study German politicians’ tweets from the entire 19th legislative period (2017–2021). My findings have important implications for the geographic representation literature as they imply that MPs use geographic references strategically, especially during campaign periods. Prospective competitive districts receive substantially more political attention already during non-campaign periods, yet further amplified during electoral campaigns.     

‘Just Thinking:’ Attitude Development,Public Opinion,and Political Representation

The role of public opinion polls in electoral democracy is undeniable because, for good or for bad, they affect, in part, the kinds of laws and policies elected officials enact. But the voices measured in polls are not perfectly representative of their populations of interest. More precisely, polls generally sing with a more “knowledgeable” accent than those they represent because of the greater tendency of the less knowledgeable to remain silent. This distortion, however, can be palliated by providing conditions more propitious to attitude development. By relying on survey-experiments conducted in Brazil and in the U.S., I present evidence that inducing people to think more carefully before answering attitude questions reduces substantially the likelihood of the less knowledgeable, which compose most of the Brazilian and American populations, to express a nonopinion response. Thus providing people with greater opportunity to think about politics—something most of them do not do very frequently—makes for more representative measures of public opinion. But the analyses also suggest that increased thought induces greater uncertainty or ambivalence among the most knowledgeable. As a whole, this paper improves our understanding on how people come to develop political attitudes and on the conditions that lead to greater attitude uncertainty or ambivalence. It also carries important lessons and implications for survey design more generally.