Murder in Mexico: are journalists victims of general violence or targeted political violence?

Journalists in Mexico face hundreds of attacks each year, ranging from online harassment and physical intimidation to outright murder. The official narrative typically claims that murdered journalists are the victims of general criminal violence. This article finds that despite the rampant violence in Mexico, the murder of journalists cannot be attributed to the country’s general criminal violence problem alone. Instead, the evidence points to the targeting, and even political targeting of journalists. First, journalists are at a much higher risk of being murdered than the general population. Second, the divergence between homicide rates among the general population and among journalists varies considerably between Mexican states. While recent scholarship has shown that subnational governments can successfully remain authoritarian despite democratization at the central or federal level, this literature has largely ignored the use of political killings in subnational undemocratic regimes. This article attempts to understand the murder of journalists not just as a problem of criminal violence, but also of political violence, and thereby connects the findings to the existing scholarship on subnational authoritarianism.     

Minority Interest Nation: The Changing Contours of Reporting Scotland on BBC and STV

Scotland's media has traditionally provided one of the central aspects of Scottish distinctiveness, autonomy and identity. This has often historically been viewed unproblematically and uncritically, but in recent times, the selective discourses of the mainstream media have come under increasing scrutiny and challenge, particularly in the recent independence referendum. This article examines the changing output of BBC and STV, considering in detail the evening news and current affairs programmes of both channels, and charting how they have evolved in media content and output. It also examines wider output and representation by BBC and STV, and concludes by addressing the evolving political and media environment.     

Intraparty Hostility: Social Identity,Subidentity, and the Hostile Media Effect in a Contested Primary

The hostile media effect (HME) has generally been tested in terms of in-groups and out-groups, with a “neutral” story in between. This ignores the nature of many social groups as comprising subgroups, often but not always sharing feelings of connectedness and purpose. In cases when bounded subgroups are at odds with one another, HME provides little guidance. A contested partisan primary provides such a case. This study takes identity centrality, candidate favorability, and perceived social network homogeneity as measures of partisanship and involvement, hypothesizing relationships between each and perceived bias against one’s candidate and party. Findings show that markers of candidate-focused social identity predict greater perceived bias against one’s candidate during the 2016 primary season, while party-focused identity fails to predict perceived bias against one’s party. This suggests that candidate support identity overrides plain partisanship during primaries, supporting concern that a heated primary might damage general election party unity. Subsequent postconvention findings suggest that the salience of candidate-focused identity fades, while homogeneity of one’s network regarding party support helps to make perceived hostility toward one’s party identity more salient. However, as campaigns become more candidate-centered, the contestation between nested candidate and party identities may grow fiercer.     

Interrogating the Interface of Partisan Public Security Forces,Cynical Electorate,and the Hazards of Electioneering in Nigeria

Elections in Nigeria are usually ferociously contested. Thus the risks of violence are always high, particularly for the electorate. Violence becomes such a seeming permanent feature of political competition in the country that electioneering is seen as the equivalent of war and political gladiators as combatants. The intervention of public security forces to enforce sanity in the process appears counterproductive because of their level of partisanship. The voters become victims in such circumstances such that they are precariously hooked in between the choice of endangering their lives in a country riddled with impunity or exercising their voting rights for good governance and a better future. The essay argues that as much as the relevance of security forces in electioneering may not be underestimated, their presence often undermines the process, fueling an atmosphere of violence. The article submits that a more civil approach/strategy should be factored into their operations with a view to ensuring a level playing ground and safety for all stakeholders in the electoral process.     

Doctrine and violence: The impact of combatant training on civilian killings

Military theorists and practitioners have long argued that training shapes how combatants treat civilians during war. Yet there is little systematic evidence regarding the impact of training on wartime behavior, and almost none for non-state armed groups, despite the fact that such groups intensively train their fighters in order to shape their behavior towards civilian populations. This article argues that among insurgent groups that emphasize the strategic and tactical importance of restraint towards civilian populations, political training can reduce civilian killings. We test the observable implications of our theory in the case of Colombia, using survey data on former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgents and sub-national data on civilian killings. We find support for our hypothesis, with results that are robust to a range of model specifications and controls, including alternate sources of combatant discipline and obedience, such as military training and punishment.     

The Resource Curse Reconsidered: Cash Crops and Local Violence in Kyrgyzstan

It is often noted in resource curse literature that agricultural economies are less conflict-prone than countries managing mobile, high-value resources. In the vast literature linking resource endowment and conflict, cash crop economies are often considered immune to civil violence, believed to stand apart from the many horrific episodes of violence and civil war centered on “lootable” wealth (such as alluvial diamonds, tin, tungsten, or other conflict minerals). But many incidents of violence—especially local violence—are in fact occurring in cash crop economies. Drawing on newspaper accounts, policy analyses, ethnographic interviews, and in-depth reports by international organizations, I examine an episode of local violence in 2010 in Kyrgyzstan. Through this case study, the article provides a better understanding of local violence in cash crop economies that can apply to other weak states.     

Labelling and Legitimization: Justifying Political Violence in the Basque Country

This article focuses on the role of labelling in the discourse employed by the Left-Wing Nationalist movement in the Basque Country to legitimize the use of violence for political ends. The approach in this article goes beyond classic labelling theory. I demonstrate that radical Nationalists do not passively undergo their being labelled as deviants (fanatics, terrorists) by society, but develop counter-labels instead to define their opponents and re-label themselves.     

(Re)centering street harassment – an appraisal of safe cities global initiative in Delhi,India

Abstract

In 2012, New Delhi (India) was catapulted into the global limelight for the brutal gang rape of a 23-year old woman travelling in a bus. This wasn’t the first time that sexual violence had been perpetrated on the streets of Delhi and nor would it be the last. Yet this universal fact of everyday violence in public spaces particularly streets, though acknowledged by activists and feminists, has been examined minimally in academic scholarship. Further, even though the United Nations has been instrumental in foregrounding gender-based violence as a critical human rights issue, it has only recently turned its attention to street harassment through its ‘Safe Cities Global Initiative’. Therefore, in this paper, we trace how a routine but understudied form of violence becomes central to United Nations’ agenda to eliminate violence against women. By specifically, analysing the Delhi Safe Cities programme as a case study, our second contribution lies in examining the adequacy of the contemporary Safe Cities framework as a model for addressing sexual violence in public space. We conclude the paper by offering critical conceptual and methodological recommendations to further strengthen the framework.     

‘Feel what I feel’: making da(r)ta with teen girls for creative activisms on how sexual violence matters

Abstract

Inspired by feminist new materialist and posthuman activist philosophy, this paper speculates on what happens when data entangles with arts-based methodologies in a school-based participatory activist project with six teen girls (age 15) on gender-based and sexual violence. Mapping the journey of how data become da(r)ta and how da(r)ta become d/artaphacts, the paper follows how the Runway of Disrespect, the Shame Chain, the Ruler-Skirt and the Tagged Heart ripple through peer cultures, school assemblies and national policy landscapes. Each journey provides a small glimpse into how bodies, space, objects, affects and discourse ‘intra-act’ in dynamic assemblages to produce d/artaphacts crafted from and carrying experience. The paper concludes to consider the ethical-political affordances of how participatory arts-based methodologies and the im/personal vitality of objects might support young people to safely and creatively communicate and potentially transform oppressive sexual cultures and practices.     

“Violence is everywhere!” An analysis of children's narratives on violence

Exposure to violence is a threat to the health and well-being of society, especially for children. Previous research on youth exposure to violence has focused primarily on the implications for victims or the treatment of the offenders. While some research has concentrated on the lived experience of the children subjected to violence, it has generally been defined within a specific domain such as domestic violence or bullying. Using student essays available from the “Do the Write Thing” (DtWT) Challenge, this research explored significant issues of violence as experienced by middle school children in southeast Texas. This research used a thematic approach for a qualitative analysis of 132 essays submitted during the 2015 school year. Essays were coded and categorized to identify major themes of how children describe their experience of violence and assign meaning to violence in their lives. Several themes within three domains (cognitive, social and moral) arose including the pervasiveness of violence, feelings of helplessness, and violence as “wrong.” Results indicate that students wrote most about personal experiences and how violence permeates their daily lives. Implications for practice and services to children are discussed.