“哀其不幸,怒其不争”新读——以农民工媒介形象为例

媒介歧视现象破坏了媒体客观、公正的报道原则,给大众造成了认知上的混乱。农民工的产生为社会提供了大量的媒介资源和新闻源。大众传媒作为社会系统的一个子系统怎样应对值得深思:它既可以产生出以人文关怀为主的大众传媒的新语境,也可能由于某种利益的驱使,出现标签化、概念化污名化的现象。如何确立和保持人的尊严?如何寻找失落的自我?无论怎样,人的关怀都应是一个现代社会的基本品格。为了社会的安定和谐,为了全民素质的提高,亦为了利益最大化的实现,媒介有不可推卸的责任,我们应当对此作出理性选择。     

From Identity Verification to Behavior Prediction: Ethical Implications of Second Generation Biometrics

In this article, we will compare ethical issues raised by first and second generation biometrics. First generation biometrics use characteristics readily visible to the naked eye to ensure that the person identified is the person he claims to be, whereas second generation biometrics focus on behavioral patterns with the aim of predicting suspicious behavior or hostile intentions. While the collection of biometric features for identification is visible to the person involved, capturing biometric features from a distance may go unnoticed. Our study of a range of U.S. and European projects of second generation biometrics, particularly of Future Attribute Screening Technology and Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces, shows that if data subjects are not aware of the processing of their data, and if behavioral patterns are interpreted without any knowledge of the subject's will and motives, there are risks of discrimination and stigmatization. Thus, second generation biometrics raise some new ethical concerns besides issues of integrity, privacy, and data protection and further underscore the importance of the principle of informed consent in order to maintain public trust.     

The discourse of disability in modern China

With the collapse of the imperial system, Confucianism rapidly lost its credibility and authority. 'Nature' was now conceptualized as a set of relatively impersonal forces that could be objectively investigated. No longer were physical bodies thought of as being linked to the cosmological foundations of the universe: bodies were produced according to biological laws inherent in 'nature'. Identity and ancestry were buried deep inside the body. With the spread of an alternative epistemology based on scientific knowledge, a new medical semiology of the 'monster' appeared, in which the causes of malformation were firmly attributed to purely physical factors. Malformed infants came to be symbolic representations of racial degeneration, while freaks embodied the disfigurement of the nation. Raising the spectre of racial extinction, many writers claimed that the poor physical quality of the population was one of the key causes of the nation's backwardness. The strengthening of the population and the improvement of the race were represented as the essential prerequisites for national survival.     

Remembering the repression of the Stalin era in Russia: on the non-transmission of family memory

Research into some 30 families has revealed blank spaces in the history of many of these families, most of which date from the Stalin period. My thesis is that the internal policy of the Soviet state, with its repression and stigmatization of victims and their families, contributed to making certain pages of Soviet history disappear from family memories, or be reinterpreted within these memories. The policies of physical and symbolic stratification of the new “communist” society and stigmatization of broad social groups tended to create a gap between the social outcasts and their families. Families were impelled to “purge” their past and to eliminate the elements that could make them discreditable: to change names, surnames, and fathers’ names, to destroy the documents and photographs containing information about repressed people and to forget relatives lost from sight in the political turmoil. With the disappearance of eyewitnesses, firsthand memories that had not been transmitted to subsequent generations fell out of family history. These memory omissions result in these pages of family history being entirely wiped out, or lead to fragmented and impersonal memories.     

西方对中国的“污名化”及其应对:框架理论的视角

中国在奋力实现中华民族伟大复兴的同时,也为促进世界共同发展作出了重要贡献。然而,西方污名化中国的浪潮此起彼伏,并有愈演愈烈之势。污名化是社会舆论阴影下施污者出于特定目的、对特定个体或群体形象的负面建构。其中,施污者的框架建构是理解污名化过程的关键所在,受众的框架共鸣是评估污名化影响的基本指标,受污者的反框架是去污名化斗争的重要举措。西方对中国的"污名化",正是通过框定中国的"他者"意象及其对西方主导国际秩序的"威胁",架构种种涉华负面话语以煽动国际社会共同打压中国,进而建构一种"污名化中国"框架。这一框架虽缺乏可信度,但极大损害了中国国际形象,乃至危及中国核心利益。百年变局下,国际社会更加关注中国的一言一行,西方或将趁机加大污名化中国的力度。中国要做好进行长期去污名化斗争的准备,揭露西方污名化中国框架的狭隘性,推进中国话语和中国叙事体系建设,提升中国主体性框架的国际传播力。