When journalists lose their foothold

The global #MeToo movement exposed the widespread structural problem of sexual harassment, which was also the case in Sweden and Norway. Across the various sectors of working life, women were able to identify with the call. This perspective, however, was under- mined in the public sphere when person-centred scandal stories about a few powerholders and media celebrities took over. In addition, a lack of verifiable documentation – and uncritical use of anonymous sources – ignited renewed debates about the ethical standards of professional journalism. This article discusses two alleged #MeToo cases: Aftonbladet’s dramatic and unfounded accusations against the theatre CEO Benny Fredriksson and VG’s misuse and manipulation of a “bar-dance” episode involving the Norwegian Labour politician Trond Giske. Both media stories developed into “critical incidents”, resulting in public criticism, self-examination and discussions around ethical rules and regulation.

Menstruation and the Bar Exam: Unconstitutional Tampon Bans

Some states have policies that prevent bar exam candidates from bringing their own menstrual products to the test. Via social media, awareness of these policies achieved new heights in the weeks leading up to the July 2020 bar exam. A small number of jurisdictions responded to public criticism by permitting test takers to bring menstrual products with them to the exam, whether administered traditionally or remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Not all states have adopted permissive policies, however. This Essay explains why outright bans on menstrual products at the bar exam likely are unconstitutional. So-called alternate policies, such as making menstrual products available in women’s restrooms, are inadequate. Only a “free-carry” policy for menstrual products is consistent with welcoming all qualified candidates to the legal profession, without regard to biology.

The Morass of Morale

The Ministry of Information (MoI) had a robust morale-research apparatus which, more often than not, failed to successfully appeal to the public in high-profile information campaigns. Cecil Day-Lewis, who worked in the Publications division of the MoI during the war, allegorized such failures through his detective fiction; in both Malice in Wonderland and Minute for Murder, he alludes to Ministry campaigns like the “Silent Column Campaign,” which failed to appropriately respond to public criticism elicited from Home Intelligence morale reports. Day-Lewis’s subtle critiques of MoI morale assessment are also mirrored in the wartime work of Elizabeth Bowen, who used her information work in Ireland to encourage the MoI to take on more sympathetic public stances towards the neutral nation during the war. While Bowen attempted to read and translate the desires of the Irish public to English officials, The Heat of the Day likewise emphasizes characters’ struggles in interpreting and mastering the desires of others. In both The Heat of the Day and in her wartime short stories, Bowen returns to early psychographic symbols of ghosts and apparitions to elucidate the precarious position of the public opinion worker during wartime. In this chapter, both Bowen and Day-Lewis remind readers that the desire to manifest interiority as material produces fear and anxiety amongst citizens who feel themselves spied upon and who see psychographics as just another means of control for governments and institutions against its citizens.

The Jesuitesses in the Bookshop: Catholic Lay Sisters’ Participation in the Dutch Book Trade, 1650–1750

The institutional Catholic Church in seventeenth-century Amsterdam relied on the work of inspired women who lived under an informal religious rule and called themselves ‘spiritual daughters’. Once the States of Holland banned all public exercise of Catholicism, spiritual daughters leveraged the ambiguity of their religious status to pursue unique roles in their communities as catechists, booksellers and enthusiastic consumers of print. However, their lack of a formal order caused consternation among their Catholic confessors. It also disturbed Reformed authorities in their communities, who branded them ‘Jesuitesses’. Whilst many scholars have documented this tension between inspired daughter and institutional critique, it has yet to be contextualized fully within the literary culture of the Dutch Republic. This article suggests that due to the de-institutionalized status of the spiritual daughters and the discursive print culture that surrounded them, public criticism replaced direct censure by Catholic and Reformed authorities as the primary impediment to their inspired work.

Trading Global Catastrophes: NATO’s Science Diplomacy and Nuclear Winter

This essay explores the reception of ‘nuclear winter’ at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This response is paradigmatic of how scientific predictions can work as stimuli for science diplomacy activities, and either inflate or deflate these forecasts’ public resonance. Those who elaborated the theory in the early 1980s predicted that the environmental consequences of a future nuclear conflict would have been catastrophic; possibly rendering the earth uninhabitable and leading to the extinction of humankind. This prospect was particularly problematic for the Western defence alliance, since it was difficult to reconcile with the tenets of its nuclear posture, especially after the 1979 Dual Track decision, engendering concerns about the environmental catastrophe that the scientists predicted. Thus, NATO officials refrained from commenting on nuclear winter and its implications for the alliance’s deterrence doctrine for some time in an effort to minimize public criticism. Meanwhile, they progressively removed research on nuclear winter from the set of studies and scientific debates sponsored by NATO in the context of its science initiatives. In essence, NATO officials ‘traded’ the promotion of these problematic studies with that of others more amenable to the alliance’s diplomacy ambitions.

Post-Christian Presupposition in Post-truth

This paper attempts to describe the challenges and opportunities of social media in post-truth. The author will discuss this in this paper that is first the process of presuppositions formation. Second, post-Christian presuppositions. Third, build theological presuppositions. The author found that the need for institutions that spread can discover elements of hoax in the narrative. Second, agencies are watching the news and responding to public criticism. Third, there is a competition to create the actual content—fourth, literacy training. Fifth, there is a guarantee of freedom of expression.

The Yugoslav factor in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and its impact upon Yugoslav-Soviet relations

This article is dedicated to the process of normalization of Yugoslav-Soviet relations, which took place on the background of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The goal consists in identification of causes for the absence of strong negative influence of the Yugoslav factor in the Hungarian events upon the relations between the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Using the analysis of a wide array of sources and systematic consideration of the international situation that formed in 1956, the authors characterize the dynamics and vector of Yugoslav-Soviet relations during this period, determine the degree of impact of the Yugoslav factor in all its manifestations upon the development of Hungarian events, as well as trace the influence of the Hungarian Revolution upon Yugoslav-Soviet relations. The scientific novelty of this research consists in the analysis of direct and indirect participation of Yugoslavia in the conflict, which has been traditionally regarded as the conflict between the Soviet Union and Hungary alone. The conclusion is made that in 1956, the Soviet Union sought to unite the socialist countries on the background of tense foreign policy situation, trying to overcome the consequences of the conflict of 1948 and “attach” Yugoslavia to the bloc. Despite the fact that such intentions were jeopardized by the events of 1956 due to a range of controversial steps taken by Belgrade, Moscow did not immediately turn to public criticism of the Yugoslavs, as the mutual cooperation between the two countries was rather advantageous that the return to the situation of 1948 – 1953.

Senegal's Sall will look to bolster his standing

Significance The changes follow recent public criticism over Sall’s poor response to flooding that caused significant damage in many areas, including the capital Dakar, coupled with anger over restrictive measures to combat COVID-19. Public attention has temporarily shifted to the inclusion in government of several opposition figures, most notably 2019 presidential runner-up Idrissa Seck. Impacts The successful third-term bids of his Guinean and Ivorian counterparts could bolster Sall’s purported aim to follow suit. Sall will try to use new social relief measures and social programmes to stem rising public anger. Oil and gas production will significantly boost public revenues, but not until at least 2023 after a recent postponement.

Trojan Women and Irish Sexual Politics, 1920–2015

This chapter traces representations of the status of women in Ireland through three twentieth-century productions based on the Trojan Women of Euripides. As a tragedy about the brutalities of colonialism, the play was immediately topical when it was produced by the Dublin Drama League in 1920, with Maud Gonne in the starring role as Hecuba. The play’s reception, however, underlined women’s lack of political agency, as did Brendan Kennelly’s Trojan Women (1993) and Marina Carr’s Hecuba (2015). Kennelly’s Trojan women are inspired by suffering Irish women from rural villages, but his Hecuba represents female collusion in sexist oppression from which men escape responsibility. Carr’s women are sexually liberated but they remain prisoners. Female sexuality continues to be connected with disempowerment at a moment when the absence of women from the Abbey Theatre’s 1916 commemoration programme was generating significant public criticism.