Hiding in plain sight: Private military and security companies’ use of Twitter as a distraction tool

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Schneiker ◽  
Magnus Dau ◽  
Jutta Joachim ◽  
Marlen Martin ◽  
Henriette Lange
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Business Communication ◽  
The Other ◽  
Security Services ◽  
The One ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods ◽  
Positive Light ◽  
Security Companies

Private military and security companies (PMSCs) have an image problem. They are frequently called ‘mercenaries’ or ‘dogs of war’, due to recurring scandals involving some of these companies, such as human rights violations, fraud and waste. Scholars have analysed the strategies that PMSCs use to distance themselves from such negative labels and to boost their image by studying the companies’ websites and advertisements. What is missing so far, however, is an analysis of how PMSCs use social media networking sites in order to present themselves in a positive light. In this article, the authors contribute to filling this gap. Based on assumptions generated with the help of literature on PMSCs, on the one hand, and on business communication and social media, on the other, they analysed the Twitter accounts of 58 PMSCs by using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Their findings suggest that PMSCs use Twitter similar to more generic companies: (1) to promote their own services and products, and (2) to monitor what others say about them. However, Twitter also serves a further purpose for PMSCs not acknowledged thus far. It helps to distract from what these companies are actually doing. Rather than engaging in more or less similar strategies as the literature on corporations’ social media use conveys, the functions of different platforms appear to vary across industries. In the case of PMSCs, their particular use of Twitter can be attributed to the sensitive nature of the security services they provide.

Email Issue for Working at Information Technology Field

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Idva Maria Das Dores Gomes Xavier
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Business Communication ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
First Time

The research was intended to know how matter of email function in working. Email has been used, when the first time everyone start to used internet. And email also the one of the social media that have in that time. Agree with the expansion of the internet, have a lot of people that use email to make a communication with the other people. One of the ways that make everyone happy to use email are easy to sending information and easy to use. Email afoot from optional communication to essential. This is proved if we see the work ethic in the big/great city. Every day and every time they can’t stop to open their computer to check out their account email. Because they use to make a business communication from email. Once of the most popular application in the mobile devices is email client.

The Politics of Arabic in Israel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camelia Suleiman
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The One

Arabic became a minority language in Israel in 1948, as a result of the Palestinian exodus from their land that year. Although it remains an official language, along with Hebrew, Israel has made continued attempts to marginalise Arabic on the one hand, and secutise it on the other. The book delves into these tensions and contradictions, exploring how language policy and language choice both reflect and challenge political identities of Arabs and Israelis. It combines qualitative methods not commonly used together in the study of Arabic in Israel, including ethnography, interviews with journalists and students, media discussions, and analysis of the production of knowledge on Arabic in Israeli academia.

Óscar Romero and the Politics of Sainthood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The One

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization

Ummah’s Rights or Human Rights? Universalism, Individualism, and Islamic Ethics in the Twenty-first Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Luisa Frick
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Islamic Ethics ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Societal Needs ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

Against the background of the trend of Islamizing human rights on the one hand, as well as increasing skepticism about the compatibility of Islam and human rights on the other, I intend to analyze the potential of Islamic ethics to meet the requirements for vitalizing the idea of human rights. I will argue that the compatibility of Islam and human rights cannot be determined merely on the basis of comparing the specific content of the Islamic moral code(s) with the rights stipulated in the International Bill of Rights, but by scanning (different conceptions of) Islamic ethics for the two indispensable formal prerequisites of any human rights conception: the principle of universalism (i.e., normative equality) and individualism (i.e., the individual enjoyment of rights). In contrast to many contemporary (political) attempts to reconcile Islam and human rights due to urgent (global) societal needs, this contribution is solely committed to philosophical reasoning. Its guiding questions are “What are the conditions for deriving both universalism and individualism from Islamic ethics?” and “What axiological axioms have to be faded out or reorganized hierarchically in return?”

To Discriminate in Order to Fight Discrimination

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dolores Morondo Taramundi
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Court ◽  
Main Technique ◽  
Antidiscrimination Law ◽  
The One ◽  
Paradoxical Results ◽  
Conflicts Of Rights

This chapter analyses arguments regarding conflicts of rights in the field of antidiscrimination law, which is a troublesome and less studied area of the growing literature on conflicts of rights. Through discussion of Ladele and McFarlane v. The United Kingdom, a case before the European Court of Human Rights, the chapter examines how the construction of this kind of controversy in terms of ‘competing rights’ or ‘conflicts of rights’ seems to produce paradoxical results. Assessment of these apparent difficulties leads the discussion in two different directions. On the one hand, some troubles come to light regarding the use of the conflict of rights frame itself in the field of antidiscrimination law, particularly in relation to the main technique (‘balancing of rights’) to solve them. On the other hand, some serious consequences of the conflict of rights frame on the development of the antidiscrimination theory of the ECtHR are unearthed.

Empire after Liberalism: The Transatlantic Right and Identitarian War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER VIALS
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
American Studies ◽  
White Male ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The One

American studies has developed excellent critiques of post-1945 imperial modes that are grounded in human rights and Enlightenment liberalism. But to fully gauge US violence in the twenty-first century, we also need to more closely consider antiliberal cultural logics. This essay traces an emergent mode of white nationalist militarism that it calls Identitarian war. It consists, on the one hand, of a formal ideology informed by Identitarian ethno-pluralism and Carl Schmitt, and, on the other, an openly violent white male “structure of feeling” embodied by the film and graphic novel 300, a key source text for the transatlantic far right.

scholarly journals Commercial Limits to Personality: Instagram Influencers and Commoditized Content Receptivity

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Tyler Horan
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Audience Reception ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
The One ◽  
Commercial Relationships ◽  
Network Power

Social media influencers-individuals who utilize various forms of network power on social networks occupy a unique identity space. On the one hand, their network power is often tied to their social identity as creators of engaging material. On the other hand, their ability to promote commercial products and services steps outside the traditionally distinct commercial–social, occupational–personal divides. In this work, the network morphologies of influencers are explored in relation to their delivery of sponsored and non-sponsored content. This article explores how the disclosure of content as ‘sponsored’ affects audience reception. We show how that the promotion of content on social media often generates higher levels of engagement and receptiveness amongst their audience despite the platform’s assumption of organic non-commercial relationships. We find that engagement levels are highest among smaller out-degree networks. Additionally, we demonstrate that sponsored content not only returns a higher level of engagement, but that the effect of sponsorship is relatively consistent across out-degree network sizes. In sum, we suggest that social media audiences are not sensitive to commercial sponsorship when tied to identity, as long as that performance is convincing and consistent.

Temporality and Truth

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Continuous Variation ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Time Image ◽  
Positive Light

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy?

scholarly journals Silencing Their Critics: How Government Restrictions Against Civil Society Affect International ‘Naming and Shaming’

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah Smidt ◽  
Dominic Perera ◽  
Neil J. Mitchell ◽  
Kristin M. Bakke
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The One ◽  
Naming And Shaming ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Cross National

Abstract International ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns rely on domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) for information on local human rights conditions. To stop this flow of information, some governments restrict CSOs, for example by limiting their access to funding. Do such restrictions reduce international naming and shaming campaigns that rely on information from domestic CSOs? This article argues that on the one hand, restrictions may reduce CSOs’ ability and motives to monitor local abuses. On the other hand, these organizations may mobilize against restrictions and find new ways of delivering information on human rights violations to international publics. Using a cross-national dataset and in-depth evidence from Egypt, the study finds that low numbers of restrictions trigger shaming by international non-governmental organizations. Yet once governments impose multiple types of restrictions, it becomes harder for CSOs to adapt, resulting in fewer international shaming campaigns.

Human Rights between Jurisprudence and Social Science

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA HUNEEUS
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Social Science Theory ◽  
Science Theory ◽  
The One

AbstractThis article argues that human rights law – which mediates between claims about universal human nature, on the one hand, and hard-fought political battles, on the other – is in particular need of a richer exchange between jurisprudential approaches and social science theory and methods. Using the example of the Inter-American Human Rights System, the article calls for more human rights scholarship with a new realist sensibility. It demonstrates in what ways legal and social science scholarship on human rights law both stand to improve through sustained, thoughtful exchange.

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