European public opinion and the Lisbon earthquake

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANA CRISTINA ARAUJO

At the end of November 1755, news of the Lisbon earthquake spread rapidly to all capital cities of Europe. Horrific reports gave rise to a wealth of sensational journalism. As Samuel Johnson and others attest, this was particularly marked in Great Britain. The catastrophe remained a popular subject of flysheets, newspapers, and engravings for months on end. The event was magnified many times over in the eyes and minds by the popular press, which led to forms of public distress. For the first time in the western world, the press, on the occasion of the Lisbon earthquake, helped create the illusion of proximity and unity between the peoples of different nations in Europe. As Voltaire said, ‘L'Europe ressemblait à une grande famille réunie après ses différences’.

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adamantios Th. Polyzoides

On November 7 Greece held its first general election under the system of proportional representation, using a modified form of the Belgian system. This innovation was imposed on the country despite the most strenuous opposition by all of the old parties, the majority of the press, and the bulk of public opinion, and its adoption was a clear victory of the minority parties, assisted by the Military League and the then dictator General Kondylis.The arguments of the established parties in favor of the old plurality system ran on lines too familiar to require extensive statement here. The former system, according to its supporters, usually assures the election of large majorities, one way or the other, and enables Parliament to give the country what we call a strong government, such as Greece needed at the time of the election. Great Britain and the United States were offered as the outstanding examples of the efficiency of the two-party system, which is best served by the old-fashioned electoral method of absolute plurality. Naturally enough, Belgium was cited as the worst exponent of the evils of proportional representation.


2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Horwood

The summer of 1908 was a summer of congresses in London. The decennial Pan-Anglican Congress assembled in July, the History of Religions Congress met in September, the Trades Union Congress held its annual meeting shortly thereafter, and the International Congress on Moral Education took place in October. None of these received as much newspaper attention as the Roman Catholic International Eucharistic Congress, which convened in England for the first time, from Wednesday 9 to Sunday 13, September. Many column inches were devoted to the preparations and proceedings; photographs were printed; and hundreds of readers’ letters were published afterwards. In reportage the newspapers differed slightly; in opinion, more so. Most of the proceedings were not controversial at all, consisting of liturgies, lectures on various aspects of Catholic belief concerning the Eucharist, and evening meetings in the Albert Hall. What excited the press and sections of the public was the proposed closing spectacular: a procession of the Blessed Sacrament through the streets around Westminster Cathedral.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-76
Author(s):  
Stefan Mertens ◽  
Olivier Standaert ◽  
Leen D'Haenens ◽  
Rozane De Cock

Earlier research has shown that public opinion and policy lines on the topic of immigrant integration are interrelated. This article investigates a sample of 24 countries for which data are available in the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX), the World Values Survey (WVS), as well as in the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS). To our knowledge, this is the first time that these data are connected to one another to study journalists’ views on their role to promote tolerance and cultural diversity in societies with diverging immigration policies. The WJS presents an analysis of the role conceptions of professional journalists throughout the world, including a variable measuring the extent to which journalists conceive promoting tolerance and cultural diversity as one of their tasks. Our findings show that journalists (as measured in the WJS) mostly tend to promote tolerance and cultural diversity in countries with more restrictive immigration policies (measured by MIPEX) and less emancipative values (measured by the WVS) Promoting tolerance and cultural diversity is associated with a so-called interventionist approach in journalism culture. Furthermore, we used cluster analyses to attribute the countries under study to meaningful, separate groups. More precisely, we discriminate four clusters of the press among the 24 countries under investigation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 150 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Abby Holekamp

Focusing on a close, contextualized reading of a single case of invented identity from 1906, this article illustrates how, in fin de siècle Europe, a mutually generative relationship between the real, the imagined, and the rapidly proliferating mass media transformed the female “nihilist” from an apocryphal Russian figure into a durable Russian archetype—an archetype that had significant consequences in the shaping of European public opinion about Russia.


Author(s):  
Nataliya V. Grishina ◽  

The annual prize, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, bears the name of the famous scientist Niels-Henrik Abel and has a reputation as a Nobel Prize for mathematicians, with its size in terms of money of about $1 million. Since Alfred Nobel, in his will, determined the range of scientific areas for the payment of bonuses that did not include mathematics, the Norwegian mathematician Sofus Lee at the end of his life devoted all his efforts and his international authority to create a foundation for awarding prizes to mathematicians. He wanted to give the award the name of Niels Henrik Abel, also a Norwegian mathematician. The article presents a historical background for the formation of the Abel Prize. The winners of the main mathematical prize for all the years of its existence and their major achievements are shown. Among laureates of the Abel Prize there are outstanding scientists from 11 countries: France, Great Britain, Lebanon, USA, Hungary, Sweden, India, Belgium, Russia, Canada and Israel. Three times the prize was at once awarded to two scientists. And in 2019, for the first time ever the woman – Karen Keskalla Uhlenbeck – professor, American mathematician, became the winner of the prestigious mathematics award.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172199563
Author(s):  
Alan Wager ◽  
Tim Bale ◽  
Philip Cowley ◽  
Anand Menon

Party competition in Great Britain increasingly revolves around social or ‘cultural’ issues as much as it does around the economic issues that took centre stage when class was assumed to be dominant. We use data from surveys of members of parliament, party members and voters to explore how this shift has affected the internal coalitions of the Labour and Conservative Parties – and to provide a fresh test of ‘May’s Law’. We find a considerable disconnect between ‘neoliberal’ Conservative members of parliament and their more centrist voters on economic issues and similarly significant disagreement on cultural issues between socially liberal Labour members of parliament and their more authoritarian voters. We also find differences in both parties between parliamentarians and their grassroots members, albeit that these are much less pronounced. May’s Law, not for the first time, appears not to be borne out in reality.


1995 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 412-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guo-Qiang Zhang ◽  
Sidney Kraus

This content analysis of Chinese newspapers before and after the Tiananmen Square protest examines the symbolic representation of the Student Movement of 1989 in China. The study reveals that top leaders manipulated symbols given to the media and that these symbols rigorously highlighted the dominant ideology of the Chinese Communist Party and isolated the movement participants. Officials attempted to legitimize the military suppression of the movement. The press construction of public opinion echoed the hegemonic process created and maintained by the party structure.


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