scholarly journals Rumours in a Situation of Political Conflict: Catalonia and Its Referendum of Self-Determination

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 25-48
Author(s):  
Emili Samper ◽  
◽  
Carme Oriol ◽  

Catalonia is in a situation of political conflict with the Spanish State regarding its right to self-determination, a conflict that has been exacerbated in recent years by the growing demand from a part of Catalan society for an independent state. Throughout this situation rumours have appeared in relation to events as they unfold. One of the key moments in the conflict was the referendum on self-determination, which was approved, prepared, and held on 1 October 2017, in the face of continuous opposition from the Spanish State. The tensions, uncertainties, and fears experienced by those in favour of the referendum were fuelled by rumours that in many cases were ultimately proven to be false. The present paper will analyse the rumours that emerged in relation to the referendum and the political atmosphere at that time. The study will analyse the rumours relating to aspects such as the logistics required to hold the referendum, the key figures in the process, the organizations that support it and the actions of the media, among others.

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 685-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Gingras

Résumé.Dans ce texte, nous tentons d'évaluer le rôle sociopolitique des journalistes en posant les éléments fondamentaux d'une conceptualisation du rôle des médias en démocratie et en analysant les résultats d'une recherche empirique sur l'engagement des journalistes envers la démocratie menée de l'été 2008 au printemps 2010. Notre étude prend appui sur la dichotomie entre un rôle actif des médias et un rôle instrumental face au système politique, dichotomie que nous faisons porter sur les journalistes. Nous prétendons que les médias et les journalistes jouent le rôle de « médiateurs » dans les sociétés libérales, c'est-à-dire d'agents individuels ou collectifs par qui transitent des messages explicites ou implicites; ces agents ajoutent une couche de sens par diverses méthodes dont la sélection des nouvelles, la hiérarchisation des sujets ou le cadrage de personnes ou d'événements.Abstract.This paper aims to assess the sociopolitical role of journalists through a conceptual approach linking media and democracy and through an analysis of the data resulting from an investigation of journalists' commitment to democracy that was conducted from the summer of 2008 to the spring of 2010. Our study is founded on the dichotomy between an active role for the media and an instrumental one in the face of the political system, and this dichotomy is applied to journalists. We believe that the media and journalists function as “mediators” in liberal societies, that is, as individual or collective agents through whom explicit or implicit messages pass; these agents add a layer of signification by diverse methods, among which are the selection of news, the categorization of issues or the framing of individuals or events.


2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 417-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Esmark ◽  
Sarah R Schoop

The article contributes to the growing literature on framing of deservingness as an alternative to ‘blame avoidance’ strategies in the politics of welfare retrenchment. In particular, the article focuses on the interplay between political framing and media framing. Based on an analysis of two major welfare reforms involving reductions of social benefits in Denmark in 2005 and 2013, the article analyses the frames used by politicians supporting and opposing reform, as well as the frames used by the media. The article shows, first, that political reforms reducing social benefits are followed by increased framing of recipients as undeserving. The article finds a strong correlation between the political objective of reducing benefits and the reliance on frames that position recipients as undeserving. Second, the article shows that media framing remains significantly different from political framing in both years. However, the results also show that the media become less critical and more prone to frame recipients as undeserving along with the changes in political framing. Third, the article shows that media coverage of retrenchment reforms will be more critical under conditions of political conflict than in the case of political consensus. However, this result is also qualified by the observation that the media increasingly seek outside sources in order to find alternative voices under conditions approximating political consensus.


Author(s):  
Timothy Wilson ◽  
Mara Favoretto

In the 20th century Argentina experienced a series of dictatorial regimes of varying intensity, but the last dictatorship stands apart. The Process of National Reorganization or Proceso (1976–1983) was not only the most brutally repressive, “disappearing” 30,000 of its own citizens into concentration camps, but also the most ambitious in terms of ideological mission. Its campaign, officially called “the war against subversion,” was committed to the total eradication of leftist ideas from the political landscape of the country by any means necessary. This radical transformation was to be brought about not only in the torture chamber, but in the media as well. The regime planned an Orwellian redefinition of words: the systematic creation of a national vocabulary that would exclude certain ideas and parties. In order to achieve its overt project of the appropriation of language, the junta maintained obsessive control over the media, instituted strict censorship reinforced by terror, and bombarded the airwaves and newspapers with official communiqués. In the face of this repression, most journalists and writers and many artists could not express dissent of any kind. Yet singers of a new Argentine music genre that came to be known as rock nacional developed codified and oblique metaphorical expression in their lyrics that allowed them to evade censorship and to continue to criticize the military regime with relative impunity. Moreover, many Argentine youths found solace in the music and used it to create communities in which they could meet and express themselves. The regime had sought to deny young Argentines a forum for public speech; however, together artists and listeners created a rock nacional culture that provided community for the isolated and lent a voice to the silenced.


1947 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Butterfield

Even before the beginning of the movement which it is our purpose to examine, the position of the government of Lord North had come to be critical. Perhaps never in English history has a ministry known comparable distress and at the same time been compelled to go on existing through it. The difficulties came to a head in a catastrophic manner in October and November 1779, after the government had shown its helplessness in the face of a possible invasion of these islands, and news had come of the development of a semi-revolutionary situation in Ireland. And as Parliament was to reassemble on 25 November the internal condition of the ministry deteriorated—some members resigning, the rest in a state of anarchy, Lord North himself almost a pathological case, often paralysed by his doubts and incapacitated by his moods of depression—and, precisely because of these difficulties, there was the prospect of a union of opposition factions who might well believe that one last desperate endeavour would complete the overthrow of the ministry. On the top of everything, there was the fact that the next general election was beginning to seem imminent, and at this stage in the life of a Parliament the members in an extraordinary manner would begin to be sensitive to opinion in their constituencies. When Parliament re-assembled the political conflict was made more dramatic in that the issue was more clearly set out by the opposition as a matter of the People versus the King. On repeated occasions the dangerous influence of the crown—and especially the closet activity—was made the principal object of opposition attack. Henceforward this is a central theme in parliamentary debate.


1998 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Spence

The majority of the women who campaigned to save the Vane Tempest Colliery from closure in 1993 were involved because of their political understanding and allegiances rather than as a consequence of their practical involvement in mining life. Even those women who were married to miners did not conform to the stereotypical conception of ‘miner's wife’. However, the supporting labour movement and the media persisted in conceptualizing the Women's Vigil through romantic and masculinist discourses of miners and mining communities which could only locate the women as ‘wives’, which confined the campaign within historical stereotypes no longer appropriate to the actual situation and which persistently set the idea of socialism against that of feminism. This not only situated the women's campaign as secondary and subject to that of the NUM but it also subverted the possibilities of the women fully articulating their own experience and understanding within the campaign. The situation was further complicated by memories of the miners’ strike of 1984–5 in which women played such an important role. One aspect of this role, that of maintaining mining families in the face of hardship, continued to inform understanding of the women's role in the fight to prevent closure, although it was no longer appropriate. The Women's Vigil engaged with a much wider set of concerns and with a wider range of individuals and groups than did that of the miners themselves. There were serious possibilities for broadening the political campaign around the women's slogan of ‘Jobs, community and environment’ which were never fully exploited because of the difficulties of admitting that women could inhabit any position other than that of ‘miners’ wives’. This experience of the Vane Tempest Vigil indicates the significance and the centrality of gender issues within class based political action.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjørn Olav Utvik

Since the military coup of July 3, 2013, guns and batons have, broadly speaking, taken the place of open debate and elections in deciding the political future of Egypt. How can the political struggle be understood with regard to the shape and content of the reformed post-Mubarak state that took place during the period of relative free debate and of tentative steps towards a democratic system between February 11, 2011 and July 3, 2013. In light of the deepening polarization between the Muslim Brothers and the more secular political tendencies that characterized the period, the conflict is often portrayed by the media and by some researchers as between a project of Islamization and a secularist agenda. To what extent does this hold true? In this article I will argue (1) that what took place was rather a power struggle involving competing elites as well as what is sometimes termed the ‘deep state’, i.e., the entrenched power holders from Mubarak’s time, especially in the military, the police and the judiciary; and (2) to the extent that secularization was at stake, in some important aspects Islamists turned out to be, if anything, more secularizing than their secularist competitors. What follows is nothing near a full treatment of the transitional period. Neither is it a formal study of constitutional issues, although it does dwell on some important aspects of the new constitution finalized in 2012. The primary interest here is what the struggle over the new constitution, and more broadly over the path to be followed in the transition process, can tell us about the main forces at work at the heart of the intense political conflict that developed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Gingras

AbstractThis paper aims to assess the socio-political role of journalists through a conceptual approach linking media and democracy and through an analysis of data from an investigation of journalists’ commitment to democracy that was conducted from the summer of 2008 to the spring of 2010. Our study is founded on the dichotomy between an active role for the media and an instrumental one in the face of the political system, and this dichotomy is applied to journalists. We believe that the media and journalists function as “mediators” in liberal societies, that is, as individual or collective agents through whom explicit or implicit messages pass. These agents add a layer of meaning by various methods, which include the selection of news, the ordering of issues and the framing of individuals or events.


Ethnography ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146613812090793
Author(s):  
Bhavneet Kaur

This article traces women’s narratives of the political struggle in Kashmir through the realm of ordinary, scattered, and everyday practices of resistance. It attempts to undo the narrative that overlooks the complexity of women’s lives in the face of ongoing violent political conflict; instead it argues that women in Kashmir escape easy categorization into victimhood. This article is embedded in the idea that there is something spectacular in the everydayness of lives embedded in violence; that the everyday is ruptured and layered like the memory of its people. “In Kashmir, which is a historically and politically complex quagmire of violent protests, morbid silence, and killable lives, it is through the barbed spaces of the everyday we see varied surging affects: of loss, of pain, of anger, of endurance, of fear, and of silence” (Kaur). And in this article, I locate women as the protagonists of these circulating affects, inscribing new meanings to the “political” through the politics of emotion.


2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 423-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maged Senbel ◽  
Sarah P. Church

Empowering community residents to participate in neighborhood design may help overcome the tension between the urban densification requirements of climate change planning and the political infeasibility of rapid change. This research employed accessible visualization media in public workshops to test the capacity of the media to enable empowerment. In a community facing imminent development we found processes of mitigated empowerment through which residents accessed and generated information, were inspired to act in the face of complex problems, and expressed their ideas. The media did not enable design empowerment in the areas of community inclusion or integration into the design process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-120
Author(s):  
Yousef M. Aljamal ◽  
Philipp O. Amour

There are some 700,000 Latin Americans of Palestinian origin, living in fourteen countries of South America. In particular, Palestinian diaspora communities have a considerable presence in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many members of these communities belong to the professional middle classes, a situation which enables them to play a prominent role in the political and economic life of their countries. The article explores the evolving attitudes of Latin American Palestinians towards the issue of Palestinian statehood. It shows the growing involvement of these communities in Palestinian affairs and their contribution in recent years towards the wide recognition of Palestinian rights — including the right to self-determination and statehood — in Latin America. But the political views of members of these communities also differ considerably about the form and substance of a Palestinian statehood and on the issue of a two-states versus one-state solution.


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