The Radium Terrors

Nuncius ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 320-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Candela
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Radioactive Elements ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Public Imagination

At the beginning of the 20th century the collective imagination was fascinated and terrified by the discovery of radium. A scientific imagery sprang up around radioactivity and was disseminated by public lectures and newspaper articles discussing the ambiguous power of this strange substance. It was claimed that radium could be used to treat cholera, typhus and tuberculosis, but at the same time there were warnings that it could be used for military purposes. The media and the scientists themselves employed a rich vocabulary influenced by religion, alchemy and magic. The ambivalent power of radioactive elements exerted a great influence on science fiction novelists. This paper will examine some significant works published in Europe, America and Russia during the first decades of the 20th century and their role in the creation of the complex imagery of radioactivity that seized the public imagination long before the invention of the atomic bomb.

Living machines in our cultural imagination

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Szollosy
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Cultural Imagination ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Future ◽  
Public Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Public perceptions of robots and artificial intelligence (AI)—both positive and negative—are hopelessly misinformed, based far too much on science fiction rather than science fact. However, these fictions can be instructive, and reveal to us important anxieties that exist in the public imagination, both towards robots and AI and about the human condition more generally. These anxieties are based on little-understood processes (such as anthropomorphization and projection), but cannot be dismissed merely as inaccuracies in need of correction. Our demonization of robots and AI illustrate two-hundred-year-old fears about the consequences of the Enlightenment and industrialization. Idealistic hopes projected onto robots and AI, in contrast, reveal other anxieties, about our mortality—and the transhumanist desire to transcend the limitations of our physical bodies—and about the future of our species. This chapter reviews these issues and considers some of their broader implications for our future lives with living machines.

Epidemics and History: Multiple Approaches to the Subject

2021 ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Mikhel
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The 19Th Century

The problems of epidemics have increasingly attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. The history of epidemics has its own historiography, which dates to the physician Hippocrates and the historian Thucydides. Up to the 19th century, historians followed their ideas, but due to the progress in medical knowledge that began at that time, they almost lost interest in the problems of epidemics. In the early 20th century, due to the development of microbiology and epidemiology, a new form of the historiography of epidemics emerged: the natural history of diseases which was developed by microbiologists. At the same time, medical history was reborn, and its representatives saw their task as proving to physicians the usefulness of studying ancient medical texts. Among the representatives of the new generation of medical historians, authors who contributed to the development of the historiography of epidemics eventually emerged. By the end of the 20th century, they included many physician-enthusiasts. Since the 1970s, influenced by many factors, more and more professional historians, for whom the history of epidemics is an integral part of the history of society. The last quarter-century has also seen rapid growth in popular historiography of epidemics, made possible by the activation of various humanities researchers and journalists trying to make the history of epidemics more lively and emotional. A great influence on the spread of new approaches to the study of the history of epidemics is now being exerted by the media, focusing public attention on the new threats to human civilization in the form of modern epidemics.

Recognition and transformation: Beyond media discourses on the BRICS

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Dwyer ◽  
Olivier Arifon
Keyword(s):  
Political Elites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Brics Countries ◽  
The Press ◽  
New Development ◽  
Multilateral Institution ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses ◽  
Research Initiatives ◽  
Public Imagination

Based on literature review and interviews with journalists, we argue that the BRICS countries are constructing a collective vision, guided by logics of recognition and of transformation. The production of discourse reaches its high point during the BRICS leaders’ summits. To go beyond analysis of the discourse revealed in the media, this article examines projects, thereby aiming to qualify and label the justificatory discourses, in order to develop an understanding of intentions. The BRICS countries have become a reference point as the press increasingly makes comparisons between these countries. The notion of recognition, present in the political elites, also appears as a part of the public imagination and in the press. The leaders too seek transformation. The first official multilateral institution founded by the BRICS countries was the New Development Bank. Current efforts indicate the development of common scientific and technological research initiatives and official support for the establishment of an innovative BRICS Network University. Initiatives will appear as these countries try to consolidate their position.

scholarly journals In Visible Families: Gay Fatherhood and the Politics of Family Change

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gay Fathers ◽  
Gay Parents ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The Media ◽  
Family Inequality ◽  
Public Imagination

Who counts as a gay father? The answer to this question reaches beyond demographics, encompassing histories of family inequality, LGBTQ identity, and social movements. Presentations of gay fathers in the media and scholarship are often skewed toward white, middle-class, coupled men who became parents via adoption or surrogacy. Yet the demographic majority of gay parents continue to have children in heterosexual unions. My dissertation research uses ethnographic and interview data to argue that contemporary narratives of gay fatherhood have prematurely dismissed gay parents who have children in heterosexual unions. The choice to exclude gay fathers via heterosexual unions can be attributed to emerging narratives of LGBTQ identity and political strategies of the marriage equality movement. The consequences of gay fathers’ disproportionate visibility have led to a stratified system of access to gay parenting resources. By identifying the mechanisms that undermine gay fathers’ diversity in the public imagination and in gay parenting community settings, my dissertation amplifies the voices of marginalized gay fathers and offers an intersectional approach to the study of LGBTQ families through a social movements framework.

scholarly journals Etika Menulis dengan Cahaya

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 209
Author(s):  
Agus Toto Widyatmoko
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mass Media

Abstract :The mass media had great influence in conveying a message against their common. The values of the message was set out in the text and images are presented by the media. The message may contain meaning positive and inspiring in describing events, so that is not interfere psychological of audience.  In the context of photojournalism, the expression that the power of the image can be far beyond the message conveyed through text. Because the meaning of the message, the essence of photojournalism must pay attention to the rules of journalism were set in the Press Law and the Code of Ethics of Journalism. An understanding of the ethics of photojournalism is not only for internal media, but also to a audience. Thus, the public can judge the mindset of media displaying photographic work does pay attention to aesthetic aspects or ignore the rules of journalism. Keywords: Photojournalism, Press Law, the Code of Ethics Journalism, the Power of Image

“Nothing but Words”? Chronicling and Storytelling in Robert Coover's The Public Burning

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
THEOPHILUS SAVVAS
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Past ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Media ◽  
American Society

Robert Coover's 1977 novel The Public Burning is a dramatic re-presentation of the last three days of the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Dubbed the “atomic spies” by the media, the Rosenbergs were accused of passing on the “secret” of the atomic bomb to the Russians. The sensational trial provoked widespread attention for its seeming encapsulation of the fault lines in American society opened up by anticommunism and the emergent Cold War. Found guilty, they were the first American nationals to be executed for espionage. This paper analyses the different narrative methods that Coover employs to re-present the past. In particular I focus on Coover's juxtaposition of a third-person, seemingly omniscient, narrator with the first-person narratological voice of then Vice President Richard Nixon. I suggest that we can best understand this not simply as providing objective and subjective versions of the event, as some critics have claimed, but rather as a distinction between history as chronicle (or what I call a synchronic method of history), and history as storytelling (or diachrony). Through this The Public Burning becomes not just a satirical critique of the specific political culture of the time, I contend, but, more fundamentally, a general exploration of the difficulties of reconstituting past events into knowledge. It is here, perhaps, where the novel's continuing relevance for today lies.

scholarly journals Etika Menulis dengan Cahaya

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 209
Author(s):  
Agus Toto Widyatmoko
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Mass Media

Abstract :The mass media had great influence in conveying a message against their common. The values of the message was set out in the text and images are presented by the media. The message may contain meaning positive and inspiring in describing events, so that is not interfere psychological of audience.  In the context of photojournalism, the expression that the power of the image can be far beyond the message conveyed through text. Because the meaning of the message, the essence of photojournalism must pay attention to the rules of journalism were set in the Press Law and the Code of Ethics of Journalism. An understanding of the ethics of photojournalism is not only for internal media, but also to a audience. Thus, the public can judge the mindset of media displaying photographic work does pay attention to aesthetic aspects or ignore the rules of journalism. Keywords: Photojournalism, Press Law, the Code of Ethics Journalism, the Power of Image

Television and Public Service: A Brief History1

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Service Broadcasting ◽  
Broadcasting Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
British Culture

This chapter traces the history of public service television. The history of British public service broadcasting policy in the 20th century is characterized by a series of very deliberate public interventions into what might otherwise have developed as a straightforward commercial marketplace. The creation of the BBC, the launch of an ITV network required to produce public service programming, and the addition of the highly idiosyncratic Channel 4 gave the UK a television ecology animated by quality, breadth of programming and an orientation towards serving the public interest. At each of these three moments, the possibilities of public service television were expanded and British culture enriched as a result. The 1990 Broadcasting Act and the fair wind given to multichannel services may have ended the supremacy of the public service television ideal. However, public service television has survived, through the design of the institutions responsible for it, because of legislative protection, and as a result of its continuing popularity amongst the public.

An Ordinary Country

2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 687-690
Author(s):  
Dilip Menon
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
World Cup ◽  
The Public ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Public Imagination

South Africans see themselves as a nation that loves sport, but with the World Cup in football imminent, there appears to be a sense of exhaustion both in the media and among the population. One important reason is that football does not dominate the public imagination of sport, as cricket and rugby do. The game is played and loved in the black townships, the fortunes of African football-playing nations are followed devotedly, and players such as Didier Drogba have a larger-than-life standing in the country. But football has not become a metaphor for the nation, as rugby and cricket have become. Whether this reflects a racial affiliation alone is hard to get at, because the local team, Bafana (which could be genially translated as “the boys”), are eighty-eighth in the FIFA rankings, without a ghost of a chance of winning the Cup, while at rugby and cricket, South Africa are world beaters.

scholarly journals The 'White Army of Terror': European Converts to Islam and Public Imagination

ICR Journal ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Monika Gabriela Bastoszewicz
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Media Images ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Public Imagination

This paper focuses on the representation of European converts to Islam in the public imagination. Firstly, the theoretical grounds for representations of converts in public imagination are identified and media images of converts involved in political violence are presented. The second part of the paper discusses the three prevailing motifs pertaining to European converts to Islam within the context of political violence. The Young and Angry, Swift and Deadly, and Gullible and/or Brainwashed motifs present in public imagination, and ubiquitous in the media and pop culture, are often mimicked in scholarly analyses. While these three images are not the only media representations of European converts to Islam, they are the most prevalent and thus indicate the main influences in shaping the public imagination. This paper accordingly elucidates how such conceptualisation leads to a false and misleading perception of the connection between European converts to Islam and terrorism.

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