scholarly journals The inter-institutional impact of digital platform companies on democracy: A case study of the UK media’s digital campaigning coverage

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110285
Author(s):  
Katharine Dommett

Digital platforms, such as Google and Facebook, are under increased scrutiny as regards their impact on society. Having prompted concerns about their capacity to spread misinformation, contribute to filter bubbles and facilitate hate speech, much attention has been paid to the threat platforms pose to democracy. In contrast to existing interventions considering the threats posed by interactions between platforms and users, in this article, I examine platforms’ impact on the democratic work of other bodies. Considering the relationship between platforms and the media, I reveal how platforms affect journalists’ ability to advance their democratic goals. Using a case study of journalistic coverage of digital campaigning at the 2019 UK general election, I show how platforms have hindered journalistic efforts to inform citizens and provide a watchdog function. These findings are significant for our understanding of platforms’ democratic impact and suggest policy makers may wish to regulate platforms’ inter-institutional impact upon democracy.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terry Flew ◽  
Rosalie Gillett

This article identifies a ‘policy turn’ in questions of internet governance, as politicians and policy-makers across multiple jurisdictions grapple with the power of digital platforms, and associated questions of accountability, transparency, market dominance and content regulation. The EU Hate Speech monitoring code, the Christchurch Call, the UK Online Harms Bill and Australia’s ACCC Digital Platforms Inquiry are manifestations of this trend, in what Philip Schlesinger has described as an emergent ‘regulatory field’. While corporate self-regulation has tended to be the dominant framework for digital sectors, there is growing pressure on the part of nation states for greater external regulation. In this article, we will consider different conceptual premises for understanding platform power, arising from neo-pluralist, class and elite theories, as well as the relative significance of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nation state governments, corporate self-regulation (e.g. Facebook Oversight Board) and supranational governance mechanisms, such as Tim Berners-Lee’s proposed ‘Contract for the Web’.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhavidan Sivalingam ◽  
Murugan Subbaiyan

Today’s youth have unprecedented access to modern technology and use them in expected and unexpected ways. Youth spend many hours a day using the technology, and the vast majority of them have access to Internet, cell phones, smart phone, video games and many more. Recent evidence raises concern about effects on academic performance. This chapter provides an overview of the impact of modern technology on the educational attainment of adolescents. The purpose was to examine the relationship between adolescent usage of computers and academic performance. Within the qualitative research the case study design was adopted. Interviews and focus group discussions were the primary tools used to gather data. The study found out that modern technology impacts learning both positively and negatively. Recommendations were made for parents, educationists, the media, and policy makers among others, for ways to increase the benefits and reduce the harm that technology can have for adolescents.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Heba Aziz ◽  
Osman El-Said ◽  
Marike Bontenbal

The objective of this study was to measure the level of cruise tourists' satisfaction as well as the relationship between satisfaction, recommendation, return intention, and expenditure. Also, the impact of factors such as nationality, length of the visit, and age on the level of expenditure was measured. An empirical approach for data collection was followed and a total of 152 questionnaires were collected from cruise tourists visiting the capital city of Oman, Muscat, as cruise liners anchor at Sultan Qaboos Port. Results of the regression analysis supported the existence of a causal relationship between satisfaction with destination attributes, overall satisfaction, recommendation, return intention, and expenditure. It was found that the average expenditure varies according to age and length of the visit. Recommendations for policy makers were suggested on how to increase the role of cruise tourism in strengthening the economy.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136754942199423
Author(s):  
Anne M Cronin ◽  
Lee Edwards

Drawing on a case study of public relations in the UK charity sector, this article argues that cultural intermediary research urgently requires a more sustained focus on politics and the political understood as power relations, party politics and political projects such as marketization and neoliberalism. While wide-ranging research has analysed how cultural intermediaries mediate the relationship between culture and economy, this has been at the expense of an in-depth analysis of the political. Using our case study as a prompt, we highlight the diversity of ways that the political impacts cultural intermediary work and that cultural intermediary work may impact the political. We reveal the tensions that underpin practice as a result of the interactions between culture, the economy and politics, and show that the tighter the engagement of cultural intermediation with the political sphere, the more tensions must be negotiated and the more compromised practitioners may feel.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-113
Author(s):  
Diann Hanson

This article explores the relationship between capital and education through the experiences of a British secondary school following a grading by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills that placed the school into special measures, considering the underlying assumptions and inequalities highlighted and obfuscated by the special measures label. The formulaic and ritualistic manner in which operational and ideological methods of reconstruction were presented as the logical (and only) pathway towards improvement is examined in an effort to disentangle the purpose of the ‘means-to-an-end’ approach within prevailing hegemonic structures, requiring a revisit to contemporary positioning of Gramscian concepts of ideology through the work of Gandin. The decontextualisation of schools from their socio-economic environments is probed in order to expose the paradoxes and fluidity of resistant discourse. The ambiguities between a Catholic ethos, neo-liberal restructuring and the socio-economic context of the school and the greater demands to acquiesce to externally prescribed notions of normativity are considered as a process that conversely created apertures, newly formed sublayers and corrugations where transformation could take root. Unforeseen epiphanies and structures of dissent are identified and will enrich the narrative of existence and survival in a special measures school in an economically deprived northern town in the UK.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjam Vossen ◽  
Lau Schulpen

Abstract This study investigates the relationship between media frames and public perceptions of global poverty. Building on a frame analysis, the paper reconstructs prevailing poverty narratives in British news articles and non-governmental organizations’ (NGO’s) advertisements between 2011 and 2013. Following this, these narratives are compared with the narratives that emerge from public opinion studies. The findings suggest that there is a strong connection between media frames and public knowledge and perceptions of global poverty. Both the media and the public define poverty in developing countries’ terms of destitute victims, lack of development and bad governance. Both suggest that the causes of poverty are internal to developing countries and imply that there has been little progress in reducing global poverty.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205630512110423
Author(s):  
Lauren Rouse ◽  
Anastasia Salter

Fan producers engaged in monetization, or what Suzanne Scott has termed “fantrepreneurs,” struggle with legal mechanisms for brand-building given the limitations of both copyright and platform moderation. These challenges have been amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has fundamentally changed the way that cosplayers, or fans who dress up as characters from their favorite television shows or movies, market themselves in an increasingly online space, as opposed to their initial public platforms of conventions. Restricted by digital platforms and their various moderation and monetization methods, cosplayer fantrepreneurs have developed new, multi-platform methods for sustaining their content and community connection. One prominent platform significant to this turn is OnlyFans, which is billed as a “peer-to-peer subscription app,” and allows users to “Sign up and interact with your fans!” Through a sample analysis of 50 cosplayers, this case study considers the approaches of cosplayers on integrating OnlyFans as part of a multiplatform struggle for economic viability. When we contextualize this platform labor in the history of cosplay, we note the hypersexualized labor that has always been central to monetization in this space, and the media franchise exploitation that profits from that labor at the expense of the fan producer, demonstrating the fundamental, gendered exploitation of the trend toward a patronage economy.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Swanwick

A brief review of the state of music education in the UK at the time of the creation of the British Journal of Music Education (BJME) leads to a consideration of the range and focus of topics since the initiation of the Journal. In particular, the initial requirement of careful and critical enquiry is amplified, drawing out the inevitability of theorising, an activity which is considered to be essential for reflective practice. The relationship of theory and data is examined, in particular differentiating between the sciences and the arts. A ‘case study’ of theorising is presented and examined in some detail and possible strands of future development are identified.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Button ◽  
Chris Lewis ◽  
David Shepherd ◽  
Graham Brooks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of measuring fraud in overseas aid. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on 21 semi-structured interviews with key persons working in the delivery of aid in both the public and voluntary sectors. It uses the UK Department for International Development as a case study to applying more accurate measures of fraud. Findings – This paper shows there are significant challenges to using fraud loss measurement to gauge fraud in overseas aid. However, it argues that, along with other types of measures, it could be used in areas of expenditure in overseas governments and charities to measure aid. Given the high risk of such aid to fraud, it argues helping to develop capacity to reduce aid, of which measuring the size of the problem is an important part; this could be considered as aid in its own right. Research limitations/implications – The researchers were not able to visit high-risk countries for fraud to examine in the local context views on the challenges of measuring fraud. Practical implications – The paper offers insights on the challenges to accurately measuring fraud in an overseas context, which will be useful to policy-makers in this context. Social implications – Given the importance of as much aid as possible reaching recipients, it offers an important contribution to helping to reduce losses in this important area. Originality/value – There has been very little consideration of how to measure fraud in the overseas aid context, with most effort aimed at corruption, which poses some of the same challenges, as well as some very different challenges.


Author(s):  
Jessica White

Has suburbia ever truly met the needs of the populations it claims to serve? Since its creation suburbia has been a centre of conflict between the image created by the media and lived realities. The post war images of femininity in the suburbs were ones of domesticity and a heteronormative family. In essence the “sitcom” family was created and reality was made to look like its television counterpart. Yet in real life, did any family look like that of Leave it to Beaver? Have our ideals of the perfect family living in the perfect house truly changed? If they have changed have they had an effect on policy makers and land developers? A brief historical examination of suburbia, its creation, and media images will be contrasted with the developments and policies we find in today’s suburbia. To partially answer my original question the demographic of women in suburbia, more specifically mothers will be discussed. Are today’s media images of suburbia a better depiction of lived realities or are urban political processes still at play to perpetuate an ideal image?


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