Morning Conferences: From Dialogue to the Sacrificial Rite and the Formation of Scapegoats

In order to achieve the objectives of transparency and accountability, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has offered a press conference every morning since he took office. This situation seemed to be a transcendental change in the field of democratic dynamics and political communication in Mexico; however, not merely a means of communication, these conferences have instead become a method of government. Using postulates of Mimetic Theory, this essay analyzes AMLO’s conferences, showing how this daily practice has become propaganda for the regime.

A Nation in Crisis... in Three Acts

A dramatic, spoken-word performance based on a detailed examination of the text of more than 1.7 million tweets concerning coronavirus and covid that were sent during the hours surrounding the president's declaration of emergency on March 13, 2020 including the transcript of the remarks made at the Rose Garden press conference. The researcher used the Twitter JSON API to retrieve all of the tweets containing the search terms "covid" and "corona" occurring during the timeframe. A text analysis was performed to identify the most frequently occurring n-grams present in the corpus of tweets. Thematic analysis and sentiment analysis were used to categorize the tweets. The transcript of the Rose Garden press conference remarks was separately analyzed using the same techniques.

Valóságteremtés a koronavírus idején. Manipuláció és meggyőzés politikai szövegekben

„Vi kjemper en felles kamp mot en usynlig fiende”,1 azaz közös harcot vívunk egy láthatatlan ellenséggel szemben. Ez az idézet Erna Solberg norvég miniszterelnök2 beszédéből származik, amelyet a legelső koronavírussal kapcsolatos sajtótájékoztatón mondott el, és amely tanulmányom tételmondata is lehetne. Tanulmányomban három, időben egymástól elkülönülő, koronavírussal kapcsolatos politikai szöveget elemzek. Mindhárom Erna Solberg sajtótájékoztatóiról származik. Munkámban különbséget teszek a manipuláció és meggyőzés között, ismertetem a manipuláció kognitív folyamatokra gyakorolt hatásait, valamint megmagyarázom a címben jelzett valóságteremtő aspektusait is. A szövegek nyelvi elemzése során kifejtem, hogy az alany tudatos megválasztása, valamint a szenvedő szerkezet alkalmazása a manipulatív stratégia részét képezi. Mindezek előtt kitérek arra is, milyen összefüggés található a manipulációs szándék és a témák sorrendjének megválasztása között. A szöveg belső felépítése során ugyanis figyelembe kell venni a hallgató tudatosságát, kognitív állapotát is. Vi kjemper en felles kamp mot en usynlig fiende, that is, we fight together against an invisible enemy. This quote is originated from the very first coronavirus press-conference and comes from the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, which could also be the motto of my paper. In this research I have analyzed three transcripts (from different occasions) of Solberg’s COVID-19 speeches. I have distinguished between manipulation and persuasion, described the effects of manipulation on cognitive processes, and explained the reality-creating aspects indicated in the title. During the linguistic analysis of the texts, I have found that the conscious choice of the subject as well as the use of passive sentences can be a part of a manipulative strategy. But first of all, it has been emphasized that the pre-organized order of the topics is aligned with the manipulative intentions of the speaker. This decision on the texts inner structure depends on the cognitive state of the audience.

Increased Pressure Leads to Decreased Trust Among the Unvaccinated: Effects of the Announcement of the Re-Introduction of Covid Passports in Denmark

On November 8 2021, a press conference was held by the Danish government to re-introduce covid passports as a way of containing increasing COVID-19 infections and make life as an unvaccinated “more burdensome”. While new vaccinations increased in the weeks following the press conference, we show that this increased pressure also decreased trust among the unvaccinated. Using a difference-in-differences design on nationally representative survey data, we estimate that trust in the strategy of managing the COVID-19 epidemic decreased with 11 percentage points among the unvaccinated. When considering “pressure” as a pandemic management strategy it is important to be aware of these unintended costs and how they may shape the unvaccinated’s compliance with other health advice and their overarching support for the political system.

A Corpus-Based Study of Explicitation in Chinese-English Conference Interpreting

Based on the corpora CECIC (Chinese English conference interpretation corpus) and OENC (original English news corpus), this paper studies explicitation in the Chinese-English press conference interpreting in Chinese-English news conference interpretation in order to further explore explicitation in interpretation. This paper compares the numbers of connectives so as to provide a new typology of explicitation. In addition, it also discusses the motivations of explicitation from the aspects of the characteristics of interpretation itself, the habits of different interpreters and the different linguistic norms of Chinese and English.

Questions and Answers: The Information Content of the Post-FOMC Meeting Press Conference

Since 2011, the Chair of the Federal Reserve has held post-FOMC meeting press conferences. In a recent survey by the Hutchins Center at Brookings, which canvassed Federal Reserve watchers in academia and the private sector, respondents indicated that they view these live press conferences as the most useful of the Federal Reserve's communication tools, with more than 80 percent of respondents rating the press conferences as "useful" or "extremely useful."

Examining Press Conference and Press Release Accounts of Canadian Police Shootings

Little research examines the communication work that public police do following police shootings. Based on an analysis of 85 press releases, press conferences, and media interviews after police shootings in Canada spanning 2010–2020, we analyse narrative techniques used in police communications. Contributing to literature on police image management, we examine patterns in these communications, and we also identify silences and absences. We argue police press conferences and press releases after police shootings are less oriented toward misinformation or agenda-setting and more toward risk aversion. Sixty-two percent of communications in our sample used “euphemisms,” which obfuscate elements of use of force, while 31% of communications were “silent” and provided no justification for or information on the shootings. For these reasons, these communications may contribute to a sense of injustice felt by families of the victims of police shootings. Our findings may give pause to police administrators and media liaison officers who should consider what message such risk-averse communications send to families of victims, as well as to the public. In conclusion, we reflect on what these findings mean for literature on police image management.