While the 1950s in Canada were years of social conformity, it was also a time of political, economic, and technological change. Against a background of growing prosperity, federal and provincial politics became increasingly competitive, intergovernmental relations became more contentious, and Canada's presence in the world expanded. The life expectancy of Canadians increased as the social pathologies of poverty, crime, and racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination were in retreat. 1950s Canada illuminates the fault lines around which Canadian politics and public affairs have revolved. Chronicling the themes and events of Canadian politics and public affairs during the 1950s, Nelson Wiseman reviews social, economic, and cultural developments during each year of the decade, focusing on developments in federal politics, intergovernmental relations, provincial affairs, and Canada's role in the world. The book examines Canada's subordinate relationship first with Britain and then the United States, the interplay between Quebec's distinct society and the rest of Canada, and the regional tensions between the inner Canada of Ontario and Quebec and the outer Canada of the Atlantic and western provinces. Through this record of major events in the politics of the decade, 1950s Canada sheds light on the rapid altering of the fabric of Canadian life.

The rapid development of democracy and political freedoms has created new and sophisticated psychology-based methods of influencing the way voters choose, as well as political systems based on free market principles. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior uses advanced empirical testing to determine whether the behavior of voters in established and emerging democracies around the world is predictable. The results of the testing suggest the theory is a ground-breaking cross-cultural model with theoretical and strategic global implications. This unique book examines the many facets of political marketing and its direct relationship with the voter. A comprehensive theory meticulously tested in the dynamic political waters of the U.S. and Europe, this text bridges the latest theoretical developments in the emerging and advanced democracies. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior offers an innovative and seldom seen international perspective that integrates up-to-date literature in political science with advanced political marketing to provide readers with useable, unified information. In addition, the text is replete with detailed references and illustrated with a wealth of informative tables and graphics to made pertinent data accessible and easily understood. Some of the topics discussed in A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior include politics in an age of manufactured images, partisanship and party identification, candidate-centered politics, political cognition, social categorization of politicians, the role of advertising and emotion, among others. An ideal text for students, academics, and researchers, the information presented in A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior is also a vital resource for political practitioners such as consultants, candidates, lobbyists, political action committees, fund-raisers, pollsters, government officials, ad specialists, journalists, public relations executives, and congressional aides.

Moscow, 1937: the soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin s dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlogel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the Great Terror during which 1 1/2 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlogel s historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.

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 edited collection examines various aspects of the explosive abortion issue in the United States and Canada. In both countries, decisions of the national supreme court have made access to legal abortion easier than had previously been the case. This volume looks at the aftermath of Roe v. Wade in the U.S. and Morgantaler v. Regina in Canada. Individual chapters deal with the rhetoric of public discourse, public opinion at the mass level, political reasoning on the part of religious and pro-life activists, and the role of religion in political socialization on the abortion issue. Methodologically, the volume includes survey research, content analysis, participant observation, and political theory. The list of contributors includes some of the leading political scientists and sociologists working in the field.

The rapid development of democracy and political freedoms has created new and sophisticated psychology-based methods of influencing the way voters choose, as well as political systems based on free market principles. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior uses advanced empirical testing to determine whether the behavior of voters in established and emerging democracies around the world is predictable. The results of the testing suggest the theory is a ground-breaking cross-cultural model with theoretical and strategic global implications. This unique book examines the many facets of political marketing and its direct relationship with the voter. A comprehensive theory meticulously tested in the dynamic political waters of the U.S. and Europe, this text bridges the latest theoretical developments in the emerging and advanced democracies. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior offers an innovative and seldom seen international perspective that integrates up-to-date literature in political science with advanced political marketing to provide readers with useable, unified information. In addition, the text is replete with detailed references and illustrated with a wealth of informative tables and graphics to made pertinent data accessible and easily understood. Some of the topics discussed in A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior include politics in an age of manufactured images, partisanship and party identification, candidate-centered politics, political cognition, social categorization of politicians, the role of advertising and emotion, among others. An ideal text for students, academics, and researchers, the information presented in A Cross-Cultural Theory of Voter Behavior is also a vital resource for political practitioners such as consultants, candidates, lobbyists, political action committees, fund-raisers, pollsters, government officials, ad specialists, journalists, public relations executives, and congressional aides.

"Blisteringly witty." Kirkus "An essential guide." Publisher's Weekly "Timely." Booklist When Nina Jankowicz's first book on online disinformation was profiled in The New Yorker, she expected attention but not an avalanche of abuse and harassment, predominantly from men, online. All women in politics, journalism and academia now face untold levels of harassment and abuse in online spaces. Together with the world's leading extremism researchers, Jankowicz wrote one of the definitive reports on this troubling phenomenon. Drawing on rigorous research into the treatment of Kamala Harris - the first woman vice-president - and other political and public figures, Nina also uses her own experiences to provide a step-by-step plan for dealing with harassment, abuse, doxing and disinformation in online spaces. The result is a must-read for researchers, journalists and all women with a profile in the online space.

Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage provides the first sustained reading of Restoration plays through a performance theory lens. This approach shows that an analysis of the conjoined performances of torture and race not only reveals the early modern interest in the nature of racial identity, but also how race was initially coded in a paradoxical fashion as both essentially fixed and socially constructed. An examination of scenes of torture provides the most effective way to unearth these seemingly contradictory representations of race because depictions of torture often interrogate the incongruous desire to substitute the visible and manipulable materiality of the body for the more illusive performative nature of identity. In turn, Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage challenges the long-standing assumption that early modern conceptions of race were radically different in their fluidity from post-Enlightenment ones by demonstrating how many of the debates we continue to have about the nature of racial identity were engendered by these seventeenth-century performances.

The intersection of virtual and physical spaces at the heart of contemporary political protests is a pivotal element in new practices of activism. In this new and global ecology of dissent and activism, different forces, stakeholders, and spaces, once defiantly discordant, come together to define the increasingly malleable nature and terms of participatory politics and the performance of democracy. This book explores the emerging sites, aesthetics and politics of contemporary dissent as a critical attempt to foreground their mediation and negotiation in an era of neoliberal globalization. Contemporary forms of media activism occupy deeply ambivalent spaces, which Ardizzoni analyzes using the lens of what she calls "matrix activism." Rather than confining the analysis to a single platform, a single technology, or a single social actor, matrix activism allows us to explain the hybrid nature of new forms of dissent and resistance, as they are located at the intersection of alternative and mainstream, non-profit and corporate, individual and social, production and consumption, online and offline.

The links between distinctive political regimes and media systems are undeniable. As Siebert, Peterson and Schramm wrote (1956: 1) 60 years ago: 'the press always takes on the form and coloration of the social and political structures within which it operates'. Nevertheless, today's world and politics are completely different from the bipolar era that inspired the ground breaking Four Theories of the Press. What are the main changes and continuities that have driven the study of politics and the media in the last decades? How to approach this interaction in the light of the challenges that democracy is facing or the continuing technological revolution that at times hampers the media? This provocative book explores the main premises that have guided the study of politics and the media in the last decades. In so doing, it gives the reader key analytical tools to question the sustainability of past categorizations that no longer match up with current developments of both, political regimes and the media. In searching for clarification about current discrepancies between democracies and media's distinctive structures or purposes, Four Theories of the Press: 60 Years and Counting puts forward an alternative premise: the political-media complex.

Set in the larger context of the evolution of international human rights, this cogent book examines the tragic development and ultimate resolution of Latin America's human rights crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Thomas Wright focuses especially on state terrorism in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet (1973 1990) and in Argentina during the Dirty War (1976 1983). The author probes the background of these regimes, the methodology of state terrorism, and the human rights movements that emerged in urgent response to the brutality of institutionalized torture, murder, and disappearance. He also discusses the legacies of state terrorism in the post-dictatorial period, particularly the bitter battle between demands for justice and the military's claim of impunity. Central to this struggle was the politics of memory as two radically different versions of the countries' recent history clashed: had the militaries conducted legitimate wars against subversion or had they exercised terrorism based on a misguided concept of national security? The book offers a nuanced exploration of the reciprocal relationship between state terrorism and its legacies, on one hand, and international human rights on the other. When the Chilean and Argentine militaries seized power, the international human rights lobby was too weak to prevent the massive toll of state terrorism. But the powerful worldwide response to these regimes ultimately strengthened international human rights treaties, institutions, and jurisprudence, paving the way for the Rwanda and Yugoslavia genocide tribunals and the International Criminal Court. Indeed, Chile and Argentina today routinely try and convict former repressors in their own courts. This compelling history demonstrates that the experiences of Chile and Argentina contributed to strengthening the international human rights movement, which in turn gave it the influence to affect the outcome in these two South American countries. Ironically, the brutal regimes of Chile and Argentina played the major role in transforming a largely dormant international lobby into a powerful force that today is capable of bringing major repressors from anywhere in the world to justice. These intertwined themes make this book important reading not only for Latin Americanists but for students of human rights and of international relations as well."

During the last two decades Spain has undergone an unprecedented transformation from being a country of emigrants to receiving a significant number of migrants from all around the world. This book focuses on the analysis of documentaries and fiction films representing migrants in Spain in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Guillen Marin explores the ways in which migrant and non-migrant filmmakers reframe the urban and rural space to create opportunities for a free, although contested, exchange between marginal voices and mainstream Spanish society. She analyzes the extent to which the films challenge forms of exclusion and represent ethnicity in a space that includes some and excludes others.

'A scrupulous piece of reporting, necessary, timely and very sobering' John Le Carré

A Sunday Times Best Book of 2018

Agent. Prisoner. Target.
Who is Sergei Skripal?

4 March 2018, Salisbury, England. A man and his daughter are found slumped on a bench, poisoned by the deadly nerve agent Novichok. He was a Russian national that became a MI6 spy.

Russia are publicly accused of carrying out the attack by the British government, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West.

Then two innocent people find a discarded perfume bottle used in the attack and one of them, Dawn Sturgess, tragically dies. It is now a murder investigation. How exactly did we get here?

In The Skripal Files Mark Urban explains the most shocking espionage incident in a decade. Based on interviews with Sergei before his poisoning, Urban describes precisely how an otherwise loyal Russian intelligence officer was turned into an agent by MI6, how Skripal was betrayed so that he found himself in a Siberian prison, and why, years later, was he was targeted for assassination.

Visions of Empire explores film's function as a medium of political communication, recognizing not just the propaganda film, but the various ways that conventional narrative films embody, question, or critique established social values underlying American attitudes toward historical, social, and political events. Stephen Prince discusses Hollywood film productions of the 1980s in terms of salient political issues of the period, including anxieties about declining U.S. military power, the wars in Central America and the prospects for U.S. intervention, the legacy of the Vietnam War, and urban decay. In analyzing these images and narratives, the author also describes and evaluates the cinematic styles available in the Hollywood tradition to filmmakers who address political issues. Chapter 1 establishes the theoretical framework by considering features of the political landscape of the Reagan era. Theories about political representation and the place of ideology in film are also examined. Chapters 2 through 5 focus on the major cycles of political films. Chapter 2 examines the new Cold War films which played upon fears of the Soviet menace (Rambo, Invasion USA, Red Dawn, and Top Gun). Chapter 3 discusses the small group of films--Under Fire, Salvador, El Norte and others--that addressed the wars in Latin America and the ways they explained the origins of the conflicts and the U.S. role therein. Various histories and mythologies on film of the Vietnam War are examined in Chapter 4 as examples of the symbolic reconstruction of social memory. Chapter 5 looks at politicized science fiction films (Blade Runner, Aliens, Robocop, and Total Recall) offering critical commentaries on the pathologies of contemporary urban society and capitalism.

Images, Issues, and Attacks explores important differences between incumbents and challengers in the uses of televised advertising in modern presidential elections. Elections since 1956 can be divided into three categories: elections with strong incumbents, the incumbent wins; elections with weak incumbents, the incumbent loses; and elections with surrogate incumbents, the vice president runs. Incumbent and challenger advertising emphasizes personal imagery, links the imagery to specific issues, and attacks rivals for opposing those images and issues. The first part of the book describes how incumbents and challengers used these themes in the elections from 1980 to 2000. The second part applies those findings to the 2004 election and shows how George W. Bush presented himself as a strong incumbent and how he and his challengers varied their mix of images, issues, and attacks over different periods of the election campaign.