scholarly journals ‘They are just children!’ The Symbol of Childhood in Political Mobilization of Modern Russia

Author(s):  
Tat'yana Ryabova ◽  
Lyudmila Kleschenko

The first part of the paper describes the theoretical aspects of the issues regarding the politicization of childhood. The authors demonstrate that the representation of childhood in political rhetoric, on the one hand, reflects the ideas about it existing in society, and on the other hand, is its significant forming factor. The second part provides the analysis of the symbol of childhood along with the media coverage of 2017—2019 protest movement in Russia. The third part provides for the study of public opinion on the participation of minors in politics and the use of the symbol of childhood by political actors, based on interviews conducted by the authors. The authors conclude that according to the public opinion there is a need for minors to participate in political life. At the same time, in the course of using the image of childhood by political actors, the majority of informants is aware of its manipulative nature.

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Perla

AbstractThis article examines the determinants of public support for the use of military force. It puts forward a Framing Theory of Policy Objectives (FTPO), which contends that public support for military engagements depends on the public's perception of the policy's objective. However, it is difficult for the public to judge a policy's objective because they cannot directly observe a policy's true intention and influential political actors offer competing frames to define it. This framing contestation, carried out through the media, sets the public's decision-making reference point and determines whether the policy is perceived as seeking to avoid losses or to achieve gains. The FTPO predicts that support will increase when the public perceives policies as seeking to prevent losses and decrease when the public judges policies to be seeking gains. I operationalize and test the theory using content analysis of national news coverage and opinion polls of U.S. intervention in Central America during the 1980s. These framing effects are found to hold regardless of positive or negative valence of media coverage.


Author(s):  
Jens Wolling ◽  
Dorothee Arlt

The annual climate summits (Conferences of the Parties, or COPs) are major political events that receive considerable media attention. In this way, the topic of climate change returns regularly to both the media and the political agenda. It makes sense, therefore, that communication research regards COPs as occasion to investigating how the media cover climate change. Nevertheless, this strategy has two shortcomings: On the one hand the focus on the conferences might provide a distorted picture—because of the political character of the conferences, the role of political actors and policy-related frames might be overestimated. On the other hand, the political character of the conferences is not always considered appropriately. Most research is mainly interested in the coverage on climate change in the context of the conferences and not in the political discussions taking place at the summits. Future research should address these discussions more intensively, giving more attention especially to the debates in the various online media.


Author(s):  
Subir Sinha

COVID-19 is the cause of the greatest pandemic of the century that affects almost every nation of our globe. In India, mass media has played a significant role in this pandemic situation. The media coverage revealed fearlessly the condition of COVID-19 and provides a pictorial view of the situation in front of the readers and viewers. The main objectives of these fearless journalistic works were to provide the public valuable authentic information, create awareness among the public, eliminate fake propaganda and fake news, highlight the problem face by the ordinary public, and to provide the government a medium to speak with the public for the public interest. Mass media served as a vital weapon to fight against COVID-19. The valuable information and instructions provided by mass media created awareness among the public and which played a major role to deescalate the graphical representation of active COVID-19 cases. The outbreak of COVID-19 and the dogmatic approaches of the mass media in the pandemic situation have recalled the concept of media as the third pillar of democracy.


Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Savigny

In contemporary society public opinion is generally mediated by the mass media, which has come to encompass the Habermasian ‘public sphere’. This arena is now characterised by the conflict between market and democratic principles, by competing interests of politicians and the media. The presentation of information for debate becomes distorted. The opinion of the ‘public’ is no longer created through deliberation, but is constructed through systems of communication, in conflict with political actors, who seek to retain control of the dissemination of information. The expansion of the internet as a new method of communication provides a potential challenge to the primacy of the traditional media and political parties as formers of public opinion.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Szwed

Information about the support given by the public opinion to political actors has become a constant element of the public debate in Poland after the fall of Communism. Very soon polls became an argument in debates, a premise, or a way to justify decisions. At the same time they were criticized both by politicians and journalists convinced that polls can significantly influence the election results. But the fact was not noticed in Poland that all debates about the influence of polls on election outcomes should be preceded by a discussion of the way they are presented in the media. The present article joins this debate by subjecting to analysis the polls published in the Polish press during parliamentary campaigns in the dimensions of the role they played during the recent several years, the quality of methodological information, and of the way the polls were used in the media. As opposed to European and American analyses, no improvement in the conformity to standards of minimal disclosure in newspapers’ reporting of public opinion polls was noticed, although—like in other countries—a dramatic increase in the number of polls reported was observed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (15) ◽  
pp. e1912440117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan Nyhan

Previous research indicated that corrective information can sometimes provoke a so-called “backfire effect” in which respondents more strongly endorsed a misperception about a controversial political or scientific issue when their beliefs or predispositions were challenged. I show how subsequent research and media coverage seized on this finding, distorting its generality and exaggerating its role relative to other factors in explaining the durability of political misperceptions. To the contrary, an emerging research consensus finds that corrective information is typically at least somewhat effective at increasing belief accuracy when received by respondents. However, the research that I review suggests that the accuracy-increasing effects of corrective information like fact checks often do not last or accumulate; instead, they frequently seem to decay or be overwhelmed by cues from elites and the media promoting more congenial but less accurate claims. As a result, misperceptions typically persist in public opinion for years after they have been debunked. Given these realities, the primary challenge for scientific communication is not to prevent backfire effects but instead, to understand how to target corrective information better and to make it more effective. Ultimately, however, the best approach is to disrupt the formation of linkages between group identities and false claims and to reduce the flow of cues reinforcing those claims from elites and the media. Doing so will require a shift from a strategy focused on providing information to the public to one that considers the roles of intermediaries in forming and maintaining belief systems.


Author(s):  
Rob Whitley ◽  
Victoria Carmichael

LAY SUMMARY The media can shape the opinions, beliefs, and attitudes of the public towards Veterans, Veterans’ issues, and Veteran suicide. Given the Lionel Desmond murder-suicide was covered extensively in Canadian media, the authors read and analyzed the tone and content of Canadian newspaper coverage of this incident, using social science methods. On the one hand, the authors found the media sometimes violated some of the best practice guidelines about how to responsibly report suicide and mental health when writing about the Lionel Desmond incident, for example, rarely including help-seeking information. On the other hand, journalists typically wrote about this incident in compassionate terms, calling for more action to help Veterans’ mental health, as well as more support for Veterans who are in transition to civilian life. In sum, the study reveals that much media coverage of the Lionel Desmond incident adhered to reporting guidelines, but there also remains room for improvement. The results indicate a need for more educational resources and better outreach to help Canadian journalists responsibly report issues around Veterans’ mental health and Veteran suicide.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauro Cerbino ◽  
Francesca Belotti

Constitutional reforms in Ecuador and Bolivia and the subsequent laws on communications have opened up the media space to new social and political actors: public and community media. While the former tend to be associated with the state in form and with governments in substance, the latter are not clearly defined and occupy a place in the midst of the hegemonic struggle between the public and private sectors to enable citizens to actively intervene in the competition for shaping public opinion. It is therefore necessary to lay the groundwork for a definition of “community media” that includes both its legal and sociopolitical dimensions. Indeed, operationalizing such a definition might allow community media to recognize themselves in it and to take the measures required to fully project themselves as subjects of the law. Las reformas constitucionales de Ecuador y Bolivia, y las siguientes leyes de comunicación, han abierto el espacio mediático a nuevos actores sociales y políticos: los medios públicos y los comunitarios. Si los primeros tienden a ser referibles al Estado en la forma y a los gobiernos en la sustancia, los segundos se quedan indefinidos e irrumpen en la lucha hegemónica entre los sectores público y privado, para que la ciudadanía intervenga de forma activa en la disputa por la generación de opinión pública. Por lo tanto, es necesario sentar las bases para una definición del concepto de “medio comunitario” que sepa mantener unidas las dimensiones de significado legales y socio-políticas. Traducir en términos operativos esta definición podría permitir a los medios comunitarios reconocerse en los rasgos observables del concepto y, por ende, tomar medidas para proyectarse plenamente como sujetos de derecho.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Snyder

"This paper presents the findings of a study that examined how different political actors and the media presented the Chaoulli v. Quebec case to public. As should be clear, the Chaoulli v. Quebec case was both an extremely important case and an extremely complicated one. As a result, it is important to understand how it was presented to the public. The study was conducted in two parts. First, the specific issues frames expressed by political actors at the Supreme Court hearing were identified and mapped. This was done by examining the transcripts and factums from the hearing and noting the different problem definitions, causal interpretations, suggested remedies, and moral appeals expressed by political actors there (Entman 1993). This review revealed that three distinct specific issues frames were put forth during the hearing by three distinct sets of actors. Next, media coverage of the case was examined. Specifically, media coverage in the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Ottawa Citizen was examined from the day the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case until six-months after the Supreme Court announced its ruling. Using content analysis, this part of the study identified (1) the presence or absence of the specific issue frames identified in the first part of the study; (2) the type of generic news frames (e.g. the Human Interest Frame) (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000) used to present the case, and (3) which political actors were directly quoted in coverage of the case."--Page 4.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Snyder

"This paper presents the findings of a study that examined how different political actors and the media presented the Chaoulli v. Quebec case to public. As should be clear, the Chaoulli v. Quebec case was both an extremely important case and an extremely complicated one. As a result, it is important to understand how it was presented to the public. The study was conducted in two parts. First, the specific issues frames expressed by political actors at the Supreme Court hearing were identified and mapped. This was done by examining the transcripts and factums from the hearing and noting the different problem definitions, causal interpretations, suggested remedies, and moral appeals expressed by political actors there (Entman 1993). This review revealed that three distinct specific issues frames were put forth during the hearing by three distinct sets of actors. Next, media coverage of the case was examined. Specifically, media coverage in the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Ottawa Citizen was examined from the day the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case until six-months after the Supreme Court announced its ruling. Using content analysis, this part of the study identified (1) the presence or absence of the specific issue frames identified in the first part of the study; (2) the type of generic news frames (e.g. the Human Interest Frame) (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000) used to present the case, and (3) which political actors were directly quoted in coverage of the case."--Page 4.


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