Investigating art practitioners' responses to violence, this book considers how artists have used art practices to rethink concepts of violence and non-violence. It explores the strategies that artists have deployed to expose physical and symbolic violence through representational, performative and interventional means. It examines how intellectual and material contexts have affected art interventions and how visual arts can open up critical spaces to explore violence without reinforcement or recuperation. Its premises are that art is not only able to contest prevailing norms about violence but that contemporary artists are consciously engaging with publics through their practice in order to do so. Contributors respond to three questions: how can political violence be understood or interpreted through art? How are publics understood or identified? How are art interventions designed to shift, challenge or respond to public perceptions of political violence and how are they constrained by them? They discuss violence in the everyday and at state level: the Watts' Rebellion and Occupy, repression in Russia, domination in Hong Kong, the violence of migration and the unfolding art activist logic of the sigma portfolio. Asking how public debates can be shaped through the visual and performing arts and setting taboos about violence to one side, the volume provides an innovative approach to a perennial issue of interest to scholars of international politics, art and cultural studies.

From data-rich infographics to 140 character tweets and activist cell phone photos taken at political protests, 21st century journalism is awash in new ways to report, display, and distribute the news. Computational journalism, in particular, has been the object of recent scholarly and industry attention as large datasets, powerful algorithms, and growing technological capacity at news organizations seemingly empower journalists and editors to report the news in creative ways. Can journalists use data-along with other forms of quantified information such as paper documents of figures, data visualizations, and charts and graphs-in order to produce better journalism? In this book, C.W. Anderson traces the genealogy of data journalism and its material and technological underpinnings, arguing that the use of data in news reporting is inevitably intertwined with national politics, the evolution of computable databases, and the history of professional scientific fields. It is impossible to understand journalistic uses of data, Anderson argues, without understanding the oft-contentious relationship between social science and journalism. It is also impossible to disentangle empirical forms of public truth telling without first understanding the remarkably persistent Progressive belief that the publication of empirically verifiable information will lead to a more just and prosperous world. Anderson considers various types of evidence (documents, interviews, informational graphics, surveys, databases, variables, and algorithms) and the ways these objects have been used through four different eras in American journalism (the Progressive Era, the interpretive journalism movement of the 1930s, the invention of so-called "precision journalism," and today's computational journalistic moment) to pinpoint what counts as empirical knowledge in news reporting. Ultimately the book shows how the changes in these specifically journalistic understandings of evidence can help us think through the current "digital data moment" in ways that go beyond simply journalism.

A widespread perception exists among political commentators, campaign operatives and presidential candidates that vice presidential (VP) running mates can deliver their home state's electoral votes in a presidential election. In recent elections, presidential campaigns have even changed their strategy in response to the perceived VP home state advantage. But is the advantage real? And could it decide a presidential election? In the most comprehensive analysis to date, Devine and Kopko demonstrate that the VP home state advantage is actually highly conditional and rarely decisive in the Electoral College. However, it could change the outcome of a presidential election under narrow but plausible conditions. Sophisticated in its methodology and rich in historical as well as contemporary insight, The VP Advantage is essential and accessible reading for anyone interested in understanding how running mates influence presidential elections. -- .

This book provides a definitive overview of the relationships of influence between civil society and intelligence elites. The secrecy surrounding intelligence means that publication of intelligence is highly restricted, barring occasional whistle-blowing and sanitised official leaks. These characteristics mean that intelligence, if publicised, can be highly manipulated by intelligence elites, while civil society's ability to assess and verify claims is compromised by absence of independent evidence. There are few studies on the relationship between civil society and intelligence elites, which makes it hard to form robust assessments or practical recommendations regarding public oversight of intelligence elites. Addressing that lacuna, this book analyses two case studies of global political significance. The intelligence practices they focus on (contemporary mass surveillance and Bush-era torture-intelligence policies) have been presented as vital in fighting the 'Global War on Terror', enmeshing governments of scores of nation-states, while challenging internationally established human rights to privacy and to freedom from torture and enforced disappearance. The book aims to synthesise what is known on relationships of influence between civil society and intelligence elites. It moves away from disciplinary silos, to make original recommendations for how a variety of academic disciplines most likely to study the relationship between civil society and intelligence elites (international relations, history, journalism and media) could productively cross-fertilise. Finally, it aims to create a practical benchmark to enable civil society to better hold intelligence elites publicly accountable. This book will be of great interest to students of intelligence studies, surveillance, media, journalism, civil society, democracy and IR in general.

The practices of participation and engagement are characterised by complexities and contradictions. All celebratory examples of uses of social media, e.g. in the Arab spring, the Occupy movement or in recent LGBTQ protests, are deeply rooted in human practices. Because of this connection, every case of mediated participation should be perceived as highly contextual and cannot be attributed to one (social) specific media logic, necessitating detailed empirical studies to investigate the different contexts of political and civic engagement. In this volume, the theoretical chapters discuss analytical frameworks that can enrich our understanding of current contexts and practices of mediated participation. The empirical studies explore the implications of the new digital conditions for the ways in which digitally mediated social interactions, practices and environments shape everyday participation, engagement or protest and their subjective as well societal meaning.

Film can be a socio-political and artistic-transformative cultural practice through which acts and activism are performed. Going beyond ideological constructs of activism and legal definitions of citizenship, this book offers a novel approach to understanding the ontology of acts and activist citizenship, particularly in the context of their expression through film. The author approaches film as act and focuses on the scene of film as a space that goes beyond representation, constituting its own reality through which activist citizens emerge. By looking at autonomous creative acts through a range of directors' works from across the world, the author explores both the ontological and ontic dimensions of transformative acts of citizenship. In doing this the author poses the question of whether citizens are stepping out of dominant cultural ideologies to overcome social, ethnic, religious and economic divisions. This book is a fresh exploration of the ontology of acts and is essential reading for any academic interested in religion, theology, film and citizenship studies.

This book analyzes constructions of injustice, group identification and participation in news and social media in anti-austerity protests within the European Union (EU). Since 2008, EU member-states have witnessed waves of protests and demonstrations against the adoption of austerity measures and alignment of domestic economies with the prevailing global neoliberal order. Understanding how the media represents dissent and how it influences public deliberation is of critical importance. It is accordingly necessary to explore the strategies deployed and role played by news and social media in representing and perhaps acting upon anti-austerity protests in the Eurozone crisis. This volume undertakes such a critical exploration.

This book offers an interdisciplinary, historically grounded study of Asian cinemas' complex responses to the Cold War conflict. It situates the global ideological rivalry within regional and local political, social, and cultural processes, while offering a transnational and cross-regional focus. This volume makes a major contribution to constructing a cultural and popular cinema history of the global Cold War. Its geographical focus is set on East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. In adopting such an inclusive approach, it draws attention to the different manifestations and meanings of the connections between the Cold War and cinema across Asian borders. Many essays in the volume have a transnational and cross-regional focus, one that sheds light on Cold War-influenced networks (such as the circulation of socialist films across communist countries) and on the efforts of American agencies (such as the United States Information Service and the Asia Foundation) to establish a transregional infrastructure of "free cinema" to contain the communist influences in Asia. With its interdisciplinary orientation and broad geographical focus, the book will appeal to scholars and students from a wide variety of fields, including film studies, history (especially the burgeoning field of cultural Cold War studies), Asian studies, and US-Asian cultural relations.

Written opinions are the primary means by which judges communicate with external actors. These sentiments include the parties to the case itself, but also more broadly journalists, public officials, lawyers, other judges, and increasingly, the mass public. In Creating the Law, Michael K. Romano and Todd A. Curry examine the extent to which judges tailor their language in order to avoid retribution during their retention, and how institutional variations involving intra-chamber dynamics may influence the written word of a legal opinion. Using an extensive dataset that includes the text of all death penalty and education decisions issued by state supreme courts from 1995-2010, Romano and Curry are the first to examine the connection between retention incentives and language choices. They utilize text analysis techniques developed in the field of communications and apply them to the text of judicial decisions. In doing so, they find that judges write with their audience in mind, and emphasize duelling strategies of justification and persuasion in order to please diverse audiences that may be paying attention. Furthermore, the process of drafting a majority opinion is a team exercise, and when more individuals are involved in its crafting, the product will reflect this complexity. This book gives students the tools for understanding how institutional variation affects judicial outcomes and shows how language relates to decision-making in the judiciary more specifically.

Political Advocacy and American Politics provides a detailed explanation as to why citizens engage in interpersonal advocacy in the United States. Sean Richey and J. Benjamin Taylor eloquently show how the campaigns, social media, and personality and partisanship affect one's propensity for candidates, which often leads to arguments about politics. Using original qualitative, survey, and experimental studies, Richey and Taylor demonstrate the causes of political advocacy over time in the political environment and at the individual level. While some worry about the incivility in American politics, Richey and Taylor argue political talk, where conflict is common, is caused by high-activity democratic processes and normatively beneficial individual attributes. Furthermore, Richey and Taylor argue that advocacy-when conceptualized as a democratic "release valve"-is exactly the kind of conflict we might expect in a vibrant democracy. Political Advocacy and American Politics: Why People Fight So Often About Politics is ideal for university students and researchers, yet it is also accessible to any reader looking to learn more about the role campaigns and personal attributes play in the decision to advocate.

This study discusses salient trends demonstrated by contemporary warfare of these first years of the 21st century. The authors reinforce previous notions of Fourth Generation Warfare, but most importantly explore the workings of new components and how these have modified the theory and practice of warfare beyond the basic divisions of conventional and unconventional warfare as witnessed in the preceding century. Throughout history there has been a close interaction between politics, communication and armed conflict and a main line of investigation of this book is to track changes that are presumed to have occurred in the way and manner in which armed conflicts are waged. Using cogent examples drawn variously from conflicts of the Arab Spring, the Islamic State and Russian adventurism in South Ossetia, Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the authors demonstrate the application of Information Warfare, the practice of Hybrid Warfare, and offensive use of diplomacy, communications, economics and international law to obtain political and military advantages against the status quo states of the international community. The authors combine a theoretical framework with concrete empirical examples in order to create a better understanding and comprehension of the current events and processes that shape the character of contemporary armed conflicts and how they are informed and perceived in a highly mediatised and politicised world.

The study of news and news practice is rich in examinations of what journalists owe to society. However, this book looks at what journalists can expect from society: what roles ownership structures, colleagues, governments and audiences should play so journalists can do their jobs well - and safely. What Journalists Are Owed draws on a variety of research perspectives - legal and ethical analysis, surveys, interviews and content analysis - in different national settings to look at how those relationships among stakeholders are developing in a time of rapid and often unsettling chance to the political and economic environments that surround journalism. Journalism can be a risky business. This book opens some discussions on those risks can be described and mitigated. There's no shortage of writing about what journalists owe society - but if society wants journalism done well, what does it owe journalists in return? This volume opens a discussion on the cultural, legal-system and professional agreements that societies should provide so journalists can do their jobs in increasingly hostile political environments. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

This book furthers our understanding of the practice of propaganda with a specific focus on the RussiaGate case. RussiaGate is a discourse about alleged Russian "meddling" in US elections, and this book argues that it functions as disinformation or distraction. The book provides a framework for better understanding of ongoing developments of RussiaGate, linking these to macroconsiderations that rarely enter mainstream accounts. It demonstrates the considerable weaknesses of many of the charges that have been made against Russia by US investigators, and argues that this discourse fails to take account of broader non-transparent persuasion campaigns operating in the election-information environment that are strengthened by social media manipulation. RussiaGate has obscured many of the factors that challenge the integrity of democratic process in the USA. These deserve a much higher priority than any influence that Russia may want to exert. The book concludes that RussiaGate discourse needs to be contextualized with reference to a long-established broader competition between great powers for domination of EurAsia. This pitches the US/European Union against Russia/China and perhaps, ultimately, even the USA against Europe. This book will be of much interest to students of media and communication studies, propaganda studies, US politics, Russian politics, and International Relations in general.

In recent years, the city many hoped would help democratize China has instead become a research setting in which to study China's increasing intolerance of dissent. Since Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, China's treatment of Hong Kong could be divided into three stages: non-intervention, intervention, and securitization. If the July 1 march in 2003 is a watershed that marked Beijing's change from non-intervention to intervention, this book suggests that the Umbrella Movement in 2014 is another watershed that marked Beijing's change from intervention to securitization. This book is a theoretically driven case study of the Umbrella Movement, a massive sit-in that paralyzed key business and retail districts for 79 days in Hong Kong in 2014. Many Hongkongers believe that they have the right to a fair election of the chief executive, and Beijing's insistence on vetting candidates prompted the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement. Drawing insights from the securitization theory and fear appeal literature, the book proposes the framework of "security appeal." It argues that the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement resulted from a premature use of hard repression, that is, before the government convinced the general public that the Umbrella Movement was a threat. The eventual successful securitization entails a general acceptance of the threatening nature of the Umbrella Movement and agreement with its crackdown. This book concludes that one of the consequences of the securitization of the Umbrella Movement is Beijing's eventual switch to the policy of "patriotocracy" - a system that allocates power and resources based on one's professed patriotism - in lieu of One Country, Two Systems. The policy implications and theoretical and methodological contributions of this book will be of interest to scholars and students of security studies; Chinese politics; and various social science disciplines, including political science, psychology, criminology, and sociology.

How did the EU, US, and Canada decide and implement their electoral assistance in the Palestinian Territories (PT)? Why did the EU, the US, and Canada embark on assisting the elections in the PT, and what factors influenced their electoral assistance? What lessons can be learned for other countries approaching elections after a long period of conflict? This book answers these questions and charts the process of electoral assistance with an in-depth analysis of each transatlantic actor's electoral assistance in the PT. It shows that, despite the many institutional and operational differences between the EU, the US, and Canada, the three actors do share common interests and influencing factors which often unify their response. The book also reveals the limitations facing electoral assistance and the implications of this on the sustainability, clarity, consistency, and responsiveness of the policy. In this systematic, comparative analysis of European, American and Canadian efforts to assist elections and transform governance in conflict zones Rouba Al-Fattal greatly advances the empirical knowledge of electoral assistance and provides the first steps needed to reform electoral assistance policy to cope with the challenges of the twenty-first century.

This book investigates the ideological conditions inducing political actors to highlight corruption issues through valence campaigns. Using case studies and comparative analyses of party programmes, legislatives speeches and social media data, the author demonstrates that the more parties and/or candidates present a similar policy programme, the more they rely on valence campaigns. In other words, as the ideologies of parties have become increasingly similar over recent decades, the content of political competition has substantially shifted from policy to non-policy factors, such as corruption issues. These dynamics, and the ideological considerations underpinning them, also provide a novel perspective on recent phenomena in contemporary democracies, such as the growth of negative campaigning, as well as populist strategies based on anti-elite rhetoric. The book will appeal to students and scholars interested in political corruption, valence politics, populism and electoral campaigning.

The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking for Citizenship provides an essential contribution to understanding the politics of Israel/Palestine through the prism of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. Arabic-speakers who also know Hebrew resort to a range of communicative strategies for their political ideas to be heard: they either accommodate or resist the Israeli institutional suppression of Arabic. They also codeswitch and borrow from Hebrew as well as from Arabic registers and styles in order to mobilise discursive authority. On political and cultural stages, multilingual Palestinian politicians and artists challenge the existing political structures. In the late capitalist market, language skills are re-packaged as commodified resources. With new evidence from recent and historical discourse, this book is about how speakers of a marginalised, contained language engage with the political system in the idioms at their disposal. The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking for Citizenship is key reading for advanced students and scholars of multilingualism, language contact, ideology, and policy, within sociolinguistics, anthropology, politics, and Middle Eastern studies.

The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking for Citizenship provides an essential contribution to understanding the politics of Israel/Palestine through the prism of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. Arabic-speakers who also know Hebrew resort to a range of communicative strategies for their political ideas to be heard: they either accommodate or resist the Israeli institutional suppression of Arabic. They also codeswitch and borrow from Hebrew as well as from Arabic registers and styles in order to mobilise discursive authority. On political and cultural stages, multilingual Palestinian politicians and artists challenge the existing political structures. In the late capitalist market, language skills are re-packaged as commodified resources. With new evidence from recent and historical discourse, this book is about how speakers of a marginalised, contained language engage with the political system in the idioms at their disposal. The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking for Citizenship is key reading for advanced students and scholars of multilingualism, language contact, ideology, and policy, within sociolinguistics, anthropology, politics, and Middle Eastern studies.

Communication defines political representation. At the core of the representational relationship lies the interaction between principal and agent; the quality of this relationship is predicated upon the accessibility of effective channels of communication between the constituent and representative. Over the past decade, congressional websites have become the primary way constituents communicate with their members and a prominent place for members to communicate with constituents. Yet, as we move toward the third decade of the 21st century, little work has systematically analyzed this forum as a distinct representational space. In this book, Jocelyn Evans and Jessica Hayden offer a fresh, timely, and mixed-methods approach for understanding how the emergence of virtual offices has changed the representational relationship between constituents and members of Congress. Utilizing strong theoretical foundations, a broad historical perspective, elite interviews, and rich original datasets, Evans and Hayden present evidence that virtual offices operate as a distinct representational space, and they demonstrate that their use has resulted in unprecedented and ill-understood changes in representational behavior. Congressional Communication in the Digital Age contributes to the scholarship on representation theory and its application to the contemporary Congress. It is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in American politics, political communication, and legislative politics.

Have you ever seen a politician fiercely attacking his opponent? Sure you have. Election campaigns without attacks on the rival candidate's performance, policy propositions and traits simply do not exist. Negative campaigning makes up a substantial part of election campaigns around the world. Though heavily covered in election news, the practice is strongly disliked by political pundits, journalists and voters. Some are even concerned that negative campaigning damages democracy itself. Negative campaigning has inspired numerous scholars in recent decades. But much of the existing research examines the phenomenon only in the United States, and scholars disagree on how the practice should be defined and measured, which has resulted in open-ended conclusions about its causes and effects. This unique volume presents for the first time work examining negative campaigning in the US, Europe and beyond. It presents systematic literature overviews and new work that touches upon three fundamental questions: What is negative campaigning and can we measure it? What causes negative campaigning? And what are its effects?

In a time of global infotainment, the crisis of modern journalism, the omnipresence of celebrity culture and reality TV, and the colonization of public discourse by media spectacle and entertainment, postmodern satiric media have emerged as prominent critical voices playing an unprecedented role at the heart of public debate. Indeed, satiric media has filled gaps left not only by traditional media but also by weak social institutions and discredited political elites. In Satiric TV in the Americas, Paul Alonso analyzes the most influential satiric TV shows in the Americas-focusing on shows in Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile and the United States-in order to understand their critical role in challenging the status quo, traditional journalism, and the prevalent local media culture. Alonso illuminates the phenomenon of satire as resistance and negotiation in public discourse, the role of entertainment media as a site where socio-political tensions are played out, and the changing notions of journalism in today's democratic societies. Introducing the notion of "critical metatainment" - a transgressive, self-referential reaction to the process of tabloidization and the cult of celebrity in the media spectacle era - Satiric TV in the Americas is the first book to map, contextualize, and analyze relevant cases to understand the relation between political information, social and cultural dissent, critical humor, and entertainment in the region. Evaluating contemporary satiric media as a consequence of the collapse of modernity and its arbitrary dichotomies, Satiric TV in the Americas also shows that, as satiric formats travel to a particular national context, they are appropriated in different ways and adapted to local circumstances, with distinct consequences.

A specific look at political public relations, helping students understand how theories of public relations tie into political campaigns and what constituents see in the media. Tying into current political events, it is incredibly timely given current political atmosphere. New chapters on lobbying, activism and underrepresented groups bring the material fully up to date and relevant for today's students.

To understand the profound changes in the modes of public political debate over the past decade, this volume develops a new conception of public spheres as spaces of resonance emerging from the power of language to affect and to ascribe and instill collective emotion. Political discourse is no longer confined to traditional media, but increasingly takes place in fragmented and digital public spheres. At the same time, the modes of political engagement have changed: discourse is said to increasingly rely on strategies of emotionalization and to be deeply affective at its core. This book meticulously shows how public spheres are rooted in the emotional, bodily, and affective dimensions of language, and how language - in its capacity to affect and to be affected - produces those dynamics of affective resonance that characterize contemporary forms of political debate. It brings together scholars from the humanities and social sciences and focuses on two fields of inquiry: publics, politics, and media in Part I, and language and artistic inquiry in Part II. The thirteen chapters provide a balanced composition of theoretical and methodological considerations, focusing on highly illustrative case studies and on different artistic practices. The volume is an indispensable source for researchers and postgraduate students in cultural studies, literary studies, sociology, and political science. It likewise appeals to practitioners seeking to develop an in-depth understanding of affect in contemporary political debate.

The emergence of green parties throughout Europe during the 1980s marked the arrival of a new form of political movement, challenging established models of party politics and putting new issues on the political agenda. Since their emergence, green parties in Europe have faced different destinies; in countries such as Germany, Belgium, Finland, France, and Italy, they have accumulated electoral successes, participated in governments, implemented policies and established themselves as part of the party system. In other countries, their political relevance remains very limited. After more than 30 years on the political scene, green parties have proven to be more than just a temporary phenomenon. They have lost their newness, faced success and failure, power and opposition, grassroots enthusiasm and internal conflicts. Green Parties in Europe includes individual case studies and a comparative perspective to bring together international specialists engaged in the study of green parties. It renews and expands our knowledge about the green party family in Europe.

This book provides a solid, encompassing definition of Internet memes, exploring both the common features of memes around the globe and their particular regional traits. It identifies and explains the roles that these viral texts play in Internet communication: cultural, social and political implications; significance for self-representation and identity formation; promotion of alternative opinion or trending interpretation; and subversive and resistant power in relation to professional media, propaganda, and traditional and digital political campaigning. It also offers unique comparative case studies of Internet memes in Russia and the United States.